Horace Mann And The Conception Of The Common School

Horace Mann And The Instauration Of The Common School

by Graham Warden

Horace Mann Pioneer of Common Education
Horace Mann Pioneer of Vernacular Education

Horace Mann (1796-1859), "The Father of the Common School Movement," was the foremost proponent of education reform in antebellum USA. An impassioned member of the Whig Party, Mann argued that the common school, a free, universal, not-sectarian, and public institution, was the best agency of achieving the moralistic and socioeconomic uplift of whol Americans. The reform trend he led sought-after to create the impeccant republican citizenry needed to sustain American political institutions, the educated workforce required to expand the American economy, and the trained generation inevitable to forbid the social disorders so popular in American cities in the decades before the Civil War.

Brother-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne and close friend of Samuel Gridley Gordon Howe, Mann was well adjoining to the cultural and political elite of New England. Mann held numerous thought offices in Massachusetts state governance in 1820s and 1830s, and helium represented Massachusetts as an anti-slavery Whig in the Theatre of Representatives from 1848 to 1853, pickings the seat vacated by the death of John Josiah Quincy Adams.

The to the highest degree influential military post he occupied, nonetheless, was that of Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. From that pulpit, to which he was appointed in 1837, Mann would spread the gospel of education as friendly redemption. The common school would extenuate class conflict, circumvent anarchy, enhance civic engagement, and perhaps most importantly inculcate moral habits, all past molding society's to the highest degree malleable members. Like his friend Howe, Mann was a Protestantism, and his cellular inclusion of the Holy Writ in school curriculum was based on Protestantism philosophical system. Children were to follow uncovered to the words and moral teachings of the Bible but would non be indoctrinated to any particularised denomination. Such openness merely reflected the liberal theology of his Unitarianism. The monotheism Congregationalists of New England opposed many an of Mann's reforms.

Mann's ideas reached far beyond the borders of the Laurus nobilis State. A nationalistic spokesman for education reform, he wrote many books and founded and edited "The Common Civilis Journal," a oscillatory that successful spread the message that public schools should be more open and nurturing, with a wider curriculum delivered by vocation teachers. He visited Massachusetts schools to determine their needs and went to Europe in 1843 to research educational institutions on that point. Atomic number 2 was especially impressed with the schoolhouse system extant in Preussen, including the Prussian approach to educating thoughtless children.

Like those of many reformers, Horace Mann's historical legacy is mixed. Many historians consider his movement American Samoa an important step toward a Sir Thomas More open and fluid society in which meritoriousness would trump birth. Other historians view the common school American Samoa a rather blunt creature for elite group contain, indefinite that tended both to stifle sophisticated curiosity and to suppress multifariousness. He sure as shooting sought to universalize the values and beliefs of the mainstream Protesting bourgeoisie of the To the north. The Irish immigrants to MA were especially vociferous in their condemnation of his Protestant-centered morality and reacted by constructing their own system of parochial schools.

For people with disabilities, Mann legacy is peculiarly troubling. The controversies about Thomas Mann's reforms influenced Howe's handling of Laura Bridgman. For Deaf Americans, Mann's role as an early advocate of oral exam education had long-handled-term negative consequences. Accordant to Horace Mann, reason required viva-voce speech communication. While lauding Howe's work on Perkins Institution, he was furthermost less sanguine roughly the glide slope to deaf education initiated by Thomas Gallaudet at the American Asylum for the Indifferent in Hartford, Connecticut. Mann's attacks connected sign in linguistic process may represent the opening salvos of oralism.

Selected Bibliography

R.A.R. Edwards, "'Speech Has an Prodigious Humanizing Power': Mann and the Problem of Nineteenth-Century American Deaf Instruction," in The Newborn Disability History, ed. by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (Current York, New York University Crush, 2001); 58-82.

Ernest Freeberg, The Education of Laura Bridgman: Best Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Terminology (Cambridge University: Harvard University Pressur, 2002).

Bob Pepperman Joseph Deems Taylor, Mann's Troubling Legacy: The Education of Democratic Citizens (Lawrence: University Urge of KS, 2010).

Root: Graham flour Warder, "Horace Mann and the Institution of the Park School," Disability Chronicle Museum, http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/edu/essay.html?id=42 (accessed date).

How to Cite this Clause (APA Data format):Warden, G. (2015). Horace Mann and the creation of the Common Cultivate. Retrieved(March 17, 2015) from hypertext transfer protocol://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/edu/essay.html?id=42.

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Source: https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/programs/education/horace-mann-creation-common-school/