MANN, HORACE

Attorney, politician, and reformer of U.S. public education Horace Mann transformed the nation's schools. Mann was a gust of wind blowing through the doldrums of nineteenth-century teaching. In 1837, he left a promising career in law and politics to become Massachusetts's first secretary of education. In this capacity, he rebuilt shoddy schools, instituted teacher

training, and ensured widespread access to education for children and adults. These reforms not only revived the state system but also inspired great national progress. The spirit of opportunity and the duty of citizenship guided Mann: "In a republic," he said, "ignorance is a crime." Later, he served in the U.S. Congress before becoming a professor at and the president of Antioch College. Besides these contributions, his legacy to U.S. education is still felt in the contemporary debate over school prayer. He helped wean education from its religious origins in order to create a truly public system.

Mann was born in poverty on May 4, 1796, in Franklin, Massachusetts. His father, Thomas Mann, was a farmer in Franklin. Neither his father nor his mother, Rebecca Mann, received much formal education, which was not widely available in the years following the American Revolution. Little opportunity existed for Mann, a sensitive boy driven to tears by hellfire-and-brimstone sermons on Sundays. Although an avid reader, Mann never attended school for more than ten weeks of the year. His extraordinary mind might have gone no further than the family's ancestral farm were it not for a traveling Latin teacher who tutored him when Mann was twenty. Provided with decent instruction, Mann's gifts were revealed: he qualified for entrance as a sophomore to Brown University. He graduated with high honors in 1819; remained briefly as a tutor in Latin and Greek; enrolled in litchfield law school, in Connecticut, two years later; and was admitted to the bar of Norfolk County in 1823.

Mann practiced law for fourteen years while making his name in politics. He first won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1827; election to the state senate, where he served as president, followed in 1833. He left his mark on the legislature in two ways: by seeking state help for mentally ill persons and by passing the landmark education bill of 1837. The law created a board of education at a time when Massachusetts's public schools were barely limping along. Buildings were crumbling, teachers underpaid, and teaching methods erratic. Much the same could be said of the nation's public schools. In Massachusetts, moreover, one-third of the children did not attend school at all, and one-sixth of all students attended private schools. To clean up this mess, the 1837 law called for the appointment of a state secretary of education. Mann, despite the promise of further success as a lawyer and politician, took the job.

Over the next twelve years, Mann's success was stunning. His efforts rebuilt Massachusetts's education system from the ground up: he centralized control of its schools, invested in better facilities, established institutes for teacher training, revamped the curriculum, discouraged physical punishment, and held annual education conventions for teachers and the public. Educators nationwide sought out his ideas, published in a bimonthly magazine that he founded, called the Common School Journal, as well as in annual reports. In 1843, pursuing new ideas for improving the quality of Massachusetts's system, he toured schools in eight European countries. His praise for the rigors of the German model brought him into open conflict with schoolteachers back home, who thought him critical of their work. Mann stood his ground; he had not spent five months abroad only to be bullied by the status quo.

"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men,—the balance wheel of the social machinery."
—Horace Mann

Even more controversial was Mann's position on Bible reading in public schools. In the mid-nineteenth century, the practice remained a leftover from the colonial period, when schools were each run by a church of an individual sect, or group. Mann thought Bible reading useful for teaching moral instruction, and he promoted it, but only so long as it was done without comment. As a Unitarian, he did not want teachers imposing views on students of different faiths; this had often led to bitter disagreements. (In the early 1840s, disputes over classroom Bible reading would cause Catholic-Protestant riots in New York and Philadelphia.) Under Mann's influence, Massachusetts adhered to the law it had passed in 1827 banning sectarian instruction (instruction specific to or characteristic of a particular religious group) from public schools. Orthodox church leaders sharply attacked Mann, one calling his policy "a grand instrument in the hands of free thinkers, atheists and infidels." History was on Mann's side, however. The sectarian influence would continue to die out over the next half century, a historical trend culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark rulings banning school prayer in 1962 (engel v. vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 82 S. Ct. 1261, 8 L. Ed. 2d 601 [1962]) and Bible reading in 1963 (abington school district v. schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S. Ct. 1560, 10 L. Ed. 2d 844 [1963]).

Ironically, the prayer ban arose from an attempt by administrators of education in New York to compose a bland, inoffensive prayer in the spirit of Mann's anti-sectarianism.

Mann spent the last decade of his life in public service and education. Resigning the education secretary's post in 1848, he won election to the U.S. Congress and served there four years. A run for governor of Massachusetts failed in 1852, and he accepted the offer of the presidency of newly founded Antioch College, a multiracial school for men and women, where he also taught courses in philosophy and theology. The college suffered financially. Mann's health failed, and he died August 2, 1859, at the age of sixty-three. Shortly before his death, at a commencement ceremony, he left the graduating class to ponder this sterling ideal: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

further readings

Blanshard, Paul. 1963. Religion and the Schools: The Great Controversy. Boston: Beacon Press.

cross-references

Education Law; Schools and School Districts.

Horace Mann

The American educational reformer and humanitarian Horace Mann (1796-1859) was enormously influential in promoting and refining public education in Massachusetts and throughout the nation in the 19th century.

Horace Mann was born in Franklin, Mass., on May 4, 1796. He labored on the family farm and learned his letters at home and in the district school, supplemented by long hours in the town library. Guided by his parents, he developed an appetite for knowledge. Mann's father died in 1809. The next year, when his older brother drowned while swimming on a Sunday, the local Congregational minister elaborated on the dangers of breaking the Sabbath, instead of consoling the family. This confirmed Mann's growing alienation from the Church.

After briefly attending an academy in Wrentham and intensive tutoring by an itinerant schoolmaster, Mann entered the sophomore class of Brown University in 1816. He developed a lively interest in debating, frequently speaking in support of humanitarian causes. He graduated as valedictorian in 1819. A growing interest in public affairs led him to study law after graduation. He interrupted his legal education to serve as tutor of Latin and Greek at Brown but returned to legal study in 1821 at the famous school of Tapping Reeve in Litchfield, Conn. He was admitted to the bar in 1823.

Mann practiced in Dedham and Boston, acquired an admiration for Whig politics, and was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1827. Essentially an activist, Mann came to believe that public education, which he called "the great equalizer of the conditions of men," was more likely to yield the general social improvements he desired than piecemeal efforts in behalf of prison reform, humane treatment of the insane, and temperance. A fellow legislator had studied educational conditions in Massachusetts and reported that barely a third of the school-age children were attending school; that teachers were ill-prepared, poorly paid, and unable to maintain discipline; and that public schools were avoided by those who could afford private education. As a result, in 1837 the assembly created the Massachusetts State Board of Education. The board was required to collect and disseminate information about public schools and, through its secretary, report annually to the legislature.

First Secretary of the State Board

Mann abandoned his promising political career to become secretary of the board. For 12 years he campaigned to bring educational issues before the people. He toured the state speaking on the relationship between public education and public morality, developing the theme of education as "the balance wheel of the social machinery." He believed that social and economic distinctions, unless reduced by a common educational experience, would create communities of interest that would eventually harden into warring factions.

In publicizing his cause, Mann found arguments attractive to all segments of the community, but he sometimes irritated powerful interests. Because he admired the Prussian system of education, his loyalty to democratic institutions was questioned. Because he believed the schools should be nonsectarian, he was attacked as antireligious. His advocacy of state supervision antagonized local politicians. His criticism of corporal punishment angered the influential Boston schoolmasters.

All the reform impulses of the American 1830s and 1840s converged in Mann's devotion to the cause of the common schools. He created teachers' institutes to improve teaching methods and arranged public meetings to discuss educational theory. He established and edited the Common School Journal. With private benefaction and state support he established three state normal schools for teacher education, the first in the country. His annual reports were lucid examinations of educational issues. Widely distributed and discussed, they exerted a powerful influence on public opinion in Massachusetts and the nation.

In Massachusetts, Mann's leadership produced dramatic change. The school curriculum was broadened and related more closely to the social outcomes he admired. Teaching methods, especially the teaching of reading, and the professional status and salary of teachers were improved. Facilities and equipment were increased, and more than 50 new high schools were established. Mann's influence became national and international.

Later Years

In 1848 Mann resigned his secretaryship to accept election to the U.S. Congress. He now enthusiastically entered the slavery debate, opposing the extension of slavery into the territories. His stand generated such hostility that he declined to run in the 1852 election and, instead, unsuccessfully campaigned for the governorship as a Free Soil candidate.

In 1852 Mann was elected president of Antioch College in Ohio. He discharged his new duties with customary zeal, creating a curriculum, doing much of the teaching, and contending with difficult economic problems. But the work proved too much for Mann, in ill health since boyhood. He died on Aug. 2, 1859, 2 weeks after telling the graduating class to "be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

Further Reading

The Republic and the School: The Education of Free Men (1957), edited by Lawrence A. Cremin, contains a thorough analysis of Mann's educational positions and extracts from his annual reports. E. I. F. Williams, Horace Mann: Educational Statesman (1937), is somewhat eulogistic but complete and well documented. Louise Hall Tharp, Until Victory: Horace Mann and Mary Peabody (1953), is a popular treatment, well written and rich in background but sometimes casual in documentation. Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann (1972), is a perceptive and revealing biography, particularly informative on Mann's 12 years as secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education.

Additional Sources

Downs, Robert Bingham, Horace Mann: champion of public schools, New York, Twayne Publishers 1974.

Sawyer, Kem Knapp, Horace Mann, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993.

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

Horace Mann (1796-1859)

Sources

Public school crusader

Lawyer and Legislator. Born and raised in Franklin, Massachusetts, Horace Mann graduated from Brown University in 1819. He served as a tutor at Brown for the next three years while simultaneously studying law. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar of Norfolk County, Massachusetts. Mann practiced law at various places throughout the state from 1823 to 1837 and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833 and the Massachusetts Senate from 1833 to 1837. As a legislator he was instrumental in the creation of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, of which he served as secretary for nearly twelve years. Mann began his task as secretary with exuberance, exclaiming on 2 July 1837: “My lawbooks are for sale. My office is to let! The bar is no longer my forum. My jurisdiction has changed. I have abandoned jurisprudence, and betaken myself to the larger sphere of mind and morals.” Such enthusiasm and urgency rarely slackened for the remainder of his life. In 1848 he resigned as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education to succeed John Quincy Adams in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he stayed for five productive years, championing the cause of education nationally. Later in life Antioch College in Ohio appointed Mann its first president, a position he held until his death. At each stop he remained committed to education reform.

Public School Reform. Mann stood at the center of the movement for a tax-supported common school system. In the debate between those who hoped public schools would guarantee civic virtue, national loyalty, and industrious workers and those who feared state-sponsored autocracy, Mann remained committed to his cause. Constantly opposed by contemporaries who viewed universal public education as a waste of money and local groups who detested the homogenizing effects of state-run education, Mann utilized the popular American lyceum movement to generate mass support for public education. In addition to lecturing throughout the East, in 1838 he founded the Common School Journal as an organ for reformers’ ideas. As secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education he campaigned effectively for more and better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum. He traveled from town to town, gathering information, propagandizing for improved schools, and encouraging school committees and citizens to commit themselves to greater efforts for the education of their children. From his modest power base Mann proceeded not only to transform the educational system of his home state but also to become the foremost leader of the common school movement in the nation.

Loyalty and Social Order. Mann’s lectures and writings preached universal public education as the only means to transform America’s disorderly masses into a disciplined, law-abiding, republican citizenry, which he believed would eliminate the risk of anarchy and class conflict. Concerned about the “additional thousands of voters every year crossing the line of manhood to decree the destiny of the nation,” Mann explained in 1842 that “without additional knowledge and morality, things must accelerate from worse to worse.” Two dangers awaited the nation if it failed to extend the most basic of educational opportunities to immigrants and the poor: “the danger of ignorance which does not know its duty, and the danger of vice, which knowing, condemns it.” At the same time Mann wanted to prevent a sort of industrial feudalism from emerging, with a small group of wealthy capitalists dominating the growing factory system. “If one class possesses all the wealth and education, while the residue of society is ignorant and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be called: the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents and subjects of the former.” Mann envisioned a society of order and opportunity, a system that rewarded righteous behavior and honest work with material well-being and the responsibilities of leadership.

Influence. Horace Mann symbolized the Yankee reformer of the era, completely convinced of the righteousness of his cause and willing to spare no effort to attain his goals. Imbued with a Puritan sense on the necessity for society to be governed by a strict moral code, Mann was also a humanitarian who regarded education as the starting point for universal reform. For Mann the mission of the public school was to be nothing less than to offer opportunities for the fullest development of each individual, to secure progress through social harmony, and to guarantee that intelligent and moral citizens would guide the new republic. He was not original in his advocacy of such goals, but no predecessor or contemporary had presented them so convincingly, expressed so eloquently their importance, or described in such detail how the nation could best attain them. He was certain that schools would accomplish wonders if they could first gather the nation’s children under education’s roof. Mann’s deep conviction in the nearly limitless potential of education to resolve America’s problems set in motion a national faith whose power still guides reformers today.

Sources

Robert E. Downs, Horace Mann: Champion of Public Schools (New York: Twayne, 1974);

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

Mann, Horace (1796–1859), lawyer, Whig party politician, leader of the common‐school reform movement.Born in Franklin, Massachusetts, Horace Mann was the son of a struggling farmer. After chores, he and his sisters braided straw hats to supplement the family's income. “Industry,” wrote Mann, “became my second nature.” The family's religion was also austere. When Horace's brother drowned on a Sunday, their Congregational minister, Nathaniel Emmons, seized on the tragedy as an occasion to preach against Sabbath breaking. Reacting against both of these harsh realities, Mann eventually became an ambitious lawyer and a Unitarian. To his district school education, Mann added private lessons in Latin and mathematics, and, at age twenty, took his small inheritance and enrolled at Brown University.

Emerging from Brown in 1819 as a skilled debater and class valedictorian, Mann proceeded during the next decade from practicing law in Dedham, Massachusetts, to serving as president of the Massachusetts Senate. An enthusiastic Whig, he promoted railroads, helped establish the state insane asylum, and generally supported an active government role in the economic and social realm. Thus, he was open to a surprising career change when the Whig philanthropist and manufacturer Edmund Dwight persuaded him in 1837 to become secretary to the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education. With industrialization and immigration accelerating, the time was ripe for the creation of tax‐supported, state school systems throughout the Northeast and the Midwest. Perfectly consistent with the Protestant, Whig ideology that informed Mann's career, the common‐school reform movement made him a national figure. The state's Democrats, with some dissident Whigs, attempted to abolish the Board of Education in 1840, but Mann survived in a close vote. Subsequently, in a series of annual reports that circulated nationally, he laid out the rationale and desired policies for common public schools, with moral education and stability at the center, but promising economic growth, more equal opportunity, and lessened social‐class tensions as well. Mann helped articulate and launch two enduring trends in American educational history: the centralization of public‐school oversight, from the local to the state level; and the strategy of making public schools inclusive by attempting to make them politically uncontroversial and religiously neutral. After resigning from the Board of Education, Mann served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1848–1852) and seven years as president of Antioch College in Ohio.
See also Antebellum Era; Education: The Public School Movement; Protestantism; Unitarianism and Universalism.

Bibliography

Jonathan Messerli , Horace Mann, 1971.

Carl F. Kaestle

Mann, Horace (1796–1859),secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education (1837–48), raised the standards and improved the equipment of the free schools of the state. His influence was widespread, and he was instrumental in improving common school education throughout the U.S. In 1852 he founded and became the first president of Antioch College, a progressive institution. He was also identified with such liberal movements as the Free‐Soil party, temperance agitation, and efforts to establish state insane asylums. His Lectures on Education was published in 1845.

Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806–87), his wife, a sister of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, aided him in his educational and philanthropic work and published the self‐effacing Life and Works of Horace Mann (3 vols., 1865–68).

Mann, Horace (1796–1859) US educational reformer. As secretary of the Massachusetts board of education (1837–48), he established teacher-training schools, increased teachers' salaries, and improved teaching practices. He served in Congress (1848–52) as an anti-slavery Whig.