Horace Mann Research Paper

Horace Mann
Foundations of Education
2100
May 22, 2014
Abstract

Horace Mann, the father of free public schools. He saw how education was and wanted to improve and expand the opportunities for every student and teacher. Mann’s vision for improving education was to give Americans a better quality of life for years to come.
Horace Mann
Horace Mann is known as the father of the common schools. His concept for the common school stressed several principles, the biggest of them was the desire to create a foundation proficient for teaching and preparing students to build a more positive and thriving society. To achieve this desire, Mann advocated his ideas for what show education should be. First Horace Mann believed that
Mann talks about his early teachers saying, “My teachers were very good people, but they were very poor teachers…with all our senses and our faculties glowing and receptive how little were we taught” In 1837, Mann became Secretary of Massachusetts Board of Education. In his second and twelfth annual report he states
“Facts incontrovertibly show, that for a series of years previous to 1837, the school system of Massachusetts had been running down. Schoolhouses had been growing old, while new ones were rarely erected. School districts were divided, so that each part was obligated to support its schools on the moiety of a fund, the whole of which was a scanty allowance” (Downs, 1974, Chapter 4)
In the Common School Journal, Mann writes “that the duty of government is see that the whole people are educated,-but that the duty has been neglected by both the general and state government” (Mann, 1852, p. 1). The most destructive all was that the private schools were taking all the funds, the common schools of Massachusetts were weakened, they lacked supervision and the wealthy families had lost interest. Horace Mann wanted to bring school districts to a centralized authority and also to being some sort of standardization to the towns throughout the state, this was the Prussian educational
There may be training a teacher may need to take to stay up to date. Some believed that public, or free schools were only for children that were poor, but rather publicly supported schools are for all children regardless of social class, gender, religion, ethnicity, and or country of origin ("Common school movement," n.d.). It was not till the General Court of 1642, where it passed the compulsory education law; this is where every child in their districts should and could be educated. However, the 1642 law did not make education free, it was not till 1674 when another law was passed to change the discrepancy and would make schools compulsory and education both free and