The Horace Mann Blog 2nd Edition

The Horace Mann Blog
2nd Edition.

In our first edition of the Horace Mann blog we introduced you to the Twelfth Annual report by Horace Mann. Horace Mann while Secretary to the Massachusetts State Board of Education, published twelve annual reports. While required by law, these reports do much more than provide a public record of the activities of the State board. They set out a philosophy on the value and place of public education in the United States.

The Twelfth Report is considered the most important by educators. It is his last report written after he had left the board to assume a seat in congress made vacant when John Quincy Adams became President. Mann knew this report was his last and is it “far and away the most inclusive and searching of the twelve documents. It draws together all of the themes of the earlier reports into one great credo of public education” (Cremin pg. 179)

All of the themes raised by Mann in the Twelfth Report have stood the test of time. They are time honored set of principles that are used today to understand current controversies like voucher programs, the separation of church and state in public instruction, and value of good education on both the American economy and its political functioning.

In our last blog we identified the four major principles set out by Mann as justification for a functioning public education system. In this blog we aim to take that discussion one step further. We intend to explain the philosophical history and background each of the principles in order to see where they came from. Each of these ideas and principles came from somewhere. Whether from the mind of Horace Mann himself, or as part of the period of reform in which he lived, it is interesting to see why he thought the way he did and how his time in the reform age influenced his thoughts.

Mann’s Principles of Public Education
Public Education is Means of Removing Poverty and Securing Abundance

In the Twelfth Report, Mann set out his argument that a strong Public school system. He argues that the advancement of a society and its economy is dependent on the intelligence of its citizens. Of course he notes that the overall intelligence of a society is linked to its willingness to provide each child with a quality education. (Cremin pg. 88) This idea seems to come from Mann’s belief and understanding in the right of self–determination of each individual. He notes in the report how in Europe everyone has a preordained lot in life whether it is as a worker or a nobleman. He notes that European society is disadvantaged by this thinking and that the American approach that everyone can become whatever they want to become is better for society. It allows the best in everyone to come forth. (Cremin pg. 88) This is an idea that comes directly from the reform age. (Foner pg 296) Mann believed that a system of education could make equal the opportunities for every person and by giving everyone equal opportunity American had a chance to eliminate poverty and create great wealth.

Public Education Must be Separate from Religious Education

The most controversial and difficult part of the public school movement was its opposition to religious based schools. Mann and his fellow public school proponents argued that the private school system impacted the public school system in two different and very negative ways. First they take the children and parents of the upper class away from the public schools depriving them of the talents of the parents on the school boards and parent committees. Plus, they deprive the other school children the examples that could be set by most well to do children. (Cremin pg 25) Second, he argued that private schools took money from the public coffers that was desperately needed to educate America’s youth. (Cremin pg 25) This seems to come from a uniquely American point of view. Mann rails against private schools as a tradition in the worst tradition of European society. (Mann pg 89) He seems to be a populist at heart that see value in bringing every kind of race, creed, and religion together to have them share and be educated together.

Public Schools are a Place to Provide a Moral Education

Mann is a moralist that sees education as a means to promote the moral good of man. The Twelfth Report states that moral education is the primal necessity of social existence. (Mann pg 99) He complains that the natural parent child relationship is not sufficient to ensure that we raise a moral and just society. Instead he believes that the schoolroom is the proper place to instill the proper moral guidance in every child that is necessary for our ongoing well being. As Mann says “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart form it”. (Mann pg 100). In this regard Mann is step with the social reformers of his era. Like Noyes, Owen and Lee and the others that sought a more perfect society, Mann is seeking the same. He is looking to make the perfect moral society by teaching every child the right way to think and behave.

A Republican Form of Government requires an Educated Public

In the Twelfth Report Mann devoted a great deal of effort to discussion what he calls “political education”. (Mann pg 89) He argues that a republican form of government where representatives are elected by the public to conduct the government business requires an educated public. He likens a republican form of government without an educated and intelligent public as the same as a “mad house without a keeper or superintendent”. (Mann pg 90) With this position Mann seems to be again championing the common man. He was a reformer at heart being active in the abolition and temperance movements as well as the movement to reform public education. (Messerli pg 377) His arguments seemed to imply that the elite class within a society does not always have the best approach to curing society’s ills and that the people need to active in setting the proper course for government. He sees this as best done by an intelligent society. In the Twelfth Report Mann links education and intelligence so he can state that an education is necessary for functioning republican government. (Mann pg 90) That seems to be the reformer in him speaking out.

Conclusion

As his most famous biographer puts it, “living at a time when political and technological revolutions seemed to be ushering in the new dawn of an age of unprecedented human welfare” Mann “sought to make his mark on society” (Messerli pg xii) . He was a product of his time but also someone that made a profound make on American society.

Bibliography

Cremin, Lawrence A. 1957. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. New York: Teachers College Press.

Mann, Horace. Education and prosperity. From his Twelfth Annual Report as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1848. [Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, 1903].
Messerli, Jonathan. Horace Mann: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1972

Horace Mann

Horace Mann and the Twelfth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education

It may be hard to imagine that going to school was a rare occurrence for children in the United States in the years before the Civil War. Only in the last half of the 1800’s, was an elementary school system provided and funded by the State a common practice. (Tharpe pg. 15) At that time laws requiring parents to send their children to elementary schools became the norm. The person most commonly credited with the development of widespread education for all citizens in the United States is Horace Mann.

Prior to Mann’s efforts in the 1830’s and 1840’s, only private schools existed and education was generally limited to the very rich (Cremin pg. 24). The vast majority of Americans received no formal education and instead simply followed their parents into the workforce. As part of the reform movements of the 1800’s, when a lot of the roles of the state in society were questioned and changed, Mann and his like- minded colleagues fought for an educational system that was open to everyone.

Mann was born into privilege and was one of the few Americans that had access to an education. He was educated at Brown University and later studied law. While a lawyer he became involved in Massachusetts’ state politics. As a state official he sought an appointment to the newly created state Board of Education. In 1937 he was “appointed secretary of the newly organized board of education” (Cremin pg. 140). Required by state law to make an annual report to the legislature on the condition of the state's school districts and programs, Mann turned the legal mandate into a yearly treatise on educational philosophy and methods.

These annual reports laid out the arguments and philosophy behind the need for the benefits of widespread compulsory public supported education. Over 150 years later these reports are still remarkable in the clarity and logic of Mann’s thoughts. Even today they are widely circulated and read in Education departments of Universities and in Scholl Boards across all of America. The ideas and arguments he set forth are raised over and over in debates on the value and need for funding for public schools and in the endless debates on school voucher programs. They are in many ways the logical and philosophical underpinning of our entire system of education.

The Twelfth Annual Report published in 1848 is considered the most famous of his annual reports. This primary source report deals with the broad topic of education and national welfare. This primary source is a public record written to the people of Massachusetts. Horace Mann wrote this document to set expectations to the people of Massachusetts and the nation outlining his views on what American education in a democracy should look like. In this report he makes three main points.

The first point made in the report is that education is the great equalizer in society and without an open access to a quality a society can never truly be free and equal. He states in the report that “education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery” (Mann pg. 4). He argues that the goal of a free society must allow every citizen to “strive to obtain for themselves and their families that the necessities and conveniences of life” and not “accept what is needed for life form the hand of charity or extorted by poor laws” (Mann pg. 4). His view is that “education should be universal and complete to obliterate fractious distinctions in society” (Mann pg. 4).

The second argument is in the report is that in the best interest of society that the public be educated and that and ignorant public is creates a burden that is far greater than the cost of an education. In his words “every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power” (Mann pg. 7). He argues that all of society will improve as the “intellectual consistency” of all citizens increases. If there is an educated society then “contributions to the common good and wealth of all would numberless and inestimable value” (Mann pg 8). He also argues that the current wealthy class would benefit from the education of the masses. “To men of property he asserted that their security and prosperity depended upon having literate and law-abiding neighbors who were competent workers and who would, via the common school, learn of the sanctity of private property” (Mann pg. 10).

His final point in the Twelfth Annual Report is that a republican form of government is too complicated to function without an educated public making informed decisions in selecting those who represent them. His view was that through education and the resulting educated public, “educated legislators will never surpass their elector” (Mann pg 13). He also was adamant that a well informed and educated public was critical to understand the “true nature and functions of a government under which they live” (Mann pg. 15).

In other annual report he set out his ideas on education. May of these ideas were radical at their time and were not often well received. He argued that such education to ensure equality and equal treatment for everyone that this education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public (Cremin pg. 157). Further he argues that a free society requires that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children of all diversities. An education in a diverse setting furthers the goals of free society which he argues cannot be done when that education is provided in a sectarian or religious setting (Cremin pg 157). Finally he argued that that this education must be taught by the spirit, methods, and discipline of a free society; and which can only be provided by well-trained, professional teachers (Tharp pg. 215).

As is clear in his Twelfth Annual Report, Mann's commitment to common schools stemmed from his belief that political stability and social harmony depended on universal education. One hundred and fifty year after its publication, the report still stands out as a call to educate all of our society and a way of making all of our lives better and allowing us to live in greater freedom.

References

Cremin, Lawrence A. 1957. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. New York: Teachers College Press.

Mann, Horace. Education and prosperity. From his Twelfth Annual Report as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1848. [Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, 1903].

Messerli, Jonathan. Horace Mann: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1972.

Tharp, Louise Hall, Until victory: Horace Mann and Mary Peabody, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977