Mann: The Struggle for Public Schools Normal Schools and Women’s

5-3b mann: the struggle for public schools

When the Massachusetts legislature established a state board of education in 1837, it appointed Horace Mann (1796–1859), a prominent Whig political leader and a steadfast proponent of common schools, as its secretary.14 His Annual Reports provided a rationale for public schools. As editor of the Common School Journal, Mann also sought to win national support for public schools.15 (For Mann’s appointment and other events in American education, see Overview 5.1.)

Mann used his political acumen to mobilize support and build a coalition for public education. He convinced taxpayers that it was in their self-interest to support public schools. Applying the Calvinist stewardship theory to his common-school campaign, Mann argued that wealthy people, as stewards of society, had a special responsibility to provide public education. He told businessmen that tax-supported public education was an investment in Massachusetts’s economic growth. Common schools would train productive workers to be responsible citizens who obeyed the law and worked hard and diligently. Mann convinced workers and farmers that common schools would be the great social equalizer, providing their children with the skills and knowledge needed to climb the economic ladder.

Building on Jefferson’s case for civic education, Mann argued that public education was necessary for a democratic society. Citizens needed to be literate to make intelligent and responsible decisions as voters, members of juries, elected public officials, and civil servants.

Whereas Jefferson sought to improve educational opportunity for academically talented young men, Mann wanted to provide greater equality of access to schools. Although common schools would minimize class differences, Mann, like a true Whig, believed the upper social classes should still control the economic and political system. Like Noah Webster, Mann supported an “Americanization” policy, arguing that a common-school system would provide the United States, as a nation of immigrants, with a unifying common culture.

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& Pho tog rap hs Division [LC-USZ62-78299] s t n P r i Lib rar y of C on gress 14The definitive biography remains Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1972). Reprints of books on Horace Mann are B. A. Hinsdale, Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2007); Matthew Hale Smith, William B. Fowle, and Horace Mann, The Bible, The Rod, and Religion in Common Schools (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008); Joy Elmer Morgan, Horace Mann: His Ideas and Ideals (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008). 15For Mann and common schools and his Report No. 12, see Gutek, An Historical Introduction to American Education, pp. 86–89 and 108–114.

1800 Publishes A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases

1774 Enters yale university

1778 graduates from yale

1780 Studies law in Litchfield, and opens school in Sharon, Connecticut

1783 Publishes American Spelling Book or Blue-Backed Speller

1755 1765 1775 1785 1795

1758 Born