Mann

Horace Mann

Horace Mann felt that a common school would be the "great equalizer." Poverty would most assuredly disappear as a broadened popular intelligence tapped new treasures of natural and material wealth. He felt that through education, crime would decline sharply as would a host of moral vices like violence and fraud. In sum, there was no end to the social good which might be derived from a common school.
Mann was responsible for the improvement of the physical setting of school life by publicizing each town's rank in school expenditures with respect to school construction.
He strongly believed schools should instill moral values in students. He wrote, "to impress on the minds of children and youth, committed to their care instruction, the principles of piety, justice and sacred regard to truth, love to their county, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded." He believed these were great "Christian truths" which he believed all rational men would agree upon.
Mann modeled his common schools based on the Prussian module of the volkschule. See your chart on page 63 for details. Among the elements are compulsory attendance for all common children and the development of Normal Schools for teacher training.
Mann also believed that educating the masses would result in increased economic benefits for the nation. The better educated the worker, the more productive the company. This was the first statement proposing the "human capital theory".

Teacher Education

Mann believed teachers needed special preparation to comprehend the nature of learners, the learning process, the subjects of the common school curriculum, and how to teach. They also needed knowledge of organization of curricular materials, classroom organization, pedagogic methods and discipline.
He opposed the "recitation" teaching method of the past as well as corporal punishment.
He insisted that the "academic" portion of the curriculum be limited to the subjects taught in the common schools.
Rather than incorporating teacher education into existing institutions, Mann opted for new institutions which would be separate.
Teachers also needed to be moral exemplars. Click here to see some of the rules teachers were expected to follow.
By the end of the 1840's, common school teaching was viewed as a feminine occupation, a drastic change from the 18th century.
Not only were women cheaper labor, but Mann thought their nature better suited the instruction of children.

"Is there not an obvious, constitutional difference of temperament between the sexes, indicative of a prearranged fitness and adaptation, and making known to us, as by a heaven imparted sing, that woman, by her livelier sensibility and her quicker sympathies, is the fore chosen guide and guardian of children of a tender age?"

Regarding discipline, it was believed that men were more rational, thus male teachers would demand justice in retaliation for offenses. Women, in contrast, put affection above reason.

Criticisms of Mann

Common school reforms placed control in a centralized government away from local control
Exclusion of religion from schooling
Conflicts between the Whig Party (Mann's) and the Democratic Party. Democrats thought the Normal Schools would teach Whig values to teachers who would then impart them to the children.
Public tax support for those schools that were non-sectarian Protestant in orientation but not for schools that were Catholic
Instead of schooling for religious and republican virtue, he was instituting a system of schooling for social control
Minority groups had little active participation in the fundamental decision making about their education