Horace Mann
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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He opposed the "recitation" teaching method of the past
as well as corporal punishment.
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He insisted that the "academic" portion of the curriculum
be limited to the subjects taught in the common schools.
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Rather than incorporating teacher education into existing
institutions, Mann opted for new institutions which would be separate.
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Teachers also needed to be moral exemplars. Click
here to see some of the rules teachers were expected to follow.
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By the end of the 1840's, common school teaching was viewed
as a feminine occupation, a drastic change from the 18th century.
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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?"
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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
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Common school reforms placed control in a centralized
government away from local control
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Exclusion of religion from schooling
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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.
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Public tax support for those schools that were non-sectarian
Protestant in orientation but not for schools that were Catholic
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Instead of schooling for religious and republican virtue,
he was instituting a system of schooling for social control
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Minority groups had little active participation in the
fundamental decision making about their education