Horace Mann Pioneers Change in the American Education System

Mann wanted to schools to better prepare children for the workforce. Schoolboys in a woodwork class, circa 1915. (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Although Horace Mann grew up poor and without a solid means of education, he went on to become a pioneer that would change the way Americans received education for centuries to come. In fact, Mann was a lawyer, politician, and educator who had many beliefs and ideals that were well ahead of his time.

His career as a lawyer and politician would eventually lead him to his legacy as a public education reformer. Even today, Mann is known as the “father of American education” because many of the principles he implemented as the Massachusetts Secretary of the Board of Education in the 19th century are still used across the country in public schools. Mann also created the first school to train teachers, which all other U.S. states quickly replicated.

Throughout his life, Mann was a devoted Christian and belonged to the Unitarian Church, which guided many of his beliefs about politics and public education. He was also a strong abolitionist who believed in equal rights for everyone, including women.

Out of all of his accomplishments, Mann was most well known for the ideals he brought to the education system at a time when the country needed a strong, centralized means of educating the youth. “No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends,” professor of education Ellwood P. Cubberley wrote in 1919.

Self-Educated Lawyer

Mann was born on May 4, 1796 in Franklin, Massachusetts to a poverty-stricken farming family. His father passed away when Mann was only 13 years old.

For most of his childhood, he lived a life of hardship and received little education from poor, untrained teachers. Between the ages of 10 and 20, Mann only attended school for six weeks a year at the most.

Horace Mann, circa 1840, is called the father of American public education. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

However, Mann educated himself by spending most of his time studying at the Franklin Public Library, which was the country’s first public library. At the age of 20, Mann enrolled in Brown University as a sophomore and graduated after three years as class valedictorian. During his college years, Mann also learned Latin and Greek from Samuel Barrett, who would eventually become well known as a Unitarian minister.

After Mann graduated college, he got a job at Brown University as a Latin and Greek tutor and a librarian. While he was working at the university, Mann began studying law in Wrentham, Massachusetts and at Litchfield Law School. In 1823, Mann was admitted to the bar and he opened his law practice in Dedham, Massachusetts.

In 1827, Mann’s political career kicked off when he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature. During his tenure as a state representative, he took great interest in reforming public education, public charities, and laws to suppress alcohol and lotteries. As a state lawmaker, he was credited for helping establish the country’s first asylum for mentally ill people in Worcester and served as the chairman of the asylum’s board of trustees in 1833.

After Mann relocated to Boston, he was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate in 1835 and he was the president of the Senate in 1836 and 1837. While he was in the Senate, he focused on infrastructure and funded the construction of canals and railroads.

Mann believed that all American kids deserved an education, and that having an educated population was vital for a democracy to survive. A teacher writes on the blackboard to teach her young pupils how to spell, 1930. (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

First Secretary of Education

While Mann was a member of the state senate, the legislators voted to create a board of education for Massachusetts to aid with the education reform movement. In 1837, Mann was appointed as the secretary of the new board of education, making him the first person in the country to ever hold a similar role.

More than anything, the state’s new board of education needed someone who could lead with strong moral character. Mann took his new position seriously and, after he was appointed secretary, withdrew from politics and all other business engagements.

When he first started his new job, Mann traveled to every school in the state of Massachusetts, which at the time had the country’s longest running public education system. Mann physically examined the grounds of each school to get a better idea of what was needed across the state.

Mann believed that all American kids deserved an education that was paid for by the public, and that having an educated population was vital for a democracy to survive. During his 11-year tenure as secretary of education, Mann held teachers’ conventions and traveled the country to deliver lectures about his new ideas related to the “common school movement.”

In 1838, Mann founded and edited a bi-weekly publication entitled The Common School Journal, which he used to talk about the public education system and its current problems. The journal was focused on the following six main principles for public education: (1) the public should no longer remain ignorant; (2) that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public; (3) that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds; (4) that this education must be non-sectarian; (5) that this education must be taught by the spirit, methods, and discipline of a free society; and (6) that education should be provided by well-trained, professional teachers, as stated in The Common School Journal)

In 1843, Mann took a trip to Europe to study the school systems utilized overseas. While there, he spent a lot of time observing the schools in what was then Prussia. After his trip, he wanted to create a universal schooling system for Massachusetts similar to what was in Prussia, educating all classes of students in the same school to give the less fortunate an opportunity to advance on the social scale.

Mann believed that schools should not only teach reading writing, and arithmetic, but help to build their students’ character as well. Mann wanted schools to help instill values like promptness in attendance, obedience to authority, and time organization skills to help better prepare them for the workforce.

Mann also believed that schools should be non-sectarian and not cater to a single sect of the Christian religion. Instead, he desired that schools teach all-around Christian morals and the Bible be used as the basis for moral education.

Horace Mann wanted schools to teach all-around Christian morals A teacher watches over a class of schoolboys, circa 1925. (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Even though many of his beliefs would end up being utilized in the public education system, Mann’s views saw their fair share of backlash from different groups of people. Some parents felt that schools should stick with basic curriculum and leave the moral teaching to the families. Some religious institutions did not like the idea that the public schools would become non-sectarian.

Mann was also known for establishing the country’s first “normal schools,” which were institutions designed specifically to train teachers. Mann focused primarily on training women in his “normal schools” as a way to help them enter the workforce.

Despite some of his views being unpopular, states across the country started adopting some of the principles of Mann’s common school system. Every other state in the country also ended up adopting some form of Mann’s normal schools to train teachers.

Fight to End Slavery

In 1848, Mann was elected to the U.S. Congress to fill a seat left vacant due to the death of John Quincy Adams, and he resigned as Secretary of Education. His first speech in Congress had to do with taking steps to end slavery.

“I think the country is to experience serious times. Interference with slavery will excite civil commotion in the South. But it is best to interfere. Now is the time to see whether the Union is a rope of sand or a band of steel,” Mann wrote in a letter shortly after being elected to Congress. “I really think if we insist upon passing the Wilmot proviso for the territories that the south—a part of them—will rebel; but I would pass it, rebellion or not. I consider no evil so great as the extension of slavery.”

Mann served in Congress until March 1853. In 1852, Mann was nominated to be the governor of Massachusetts by the Free Soil Party, but he lost the election.

Horace Mann was the first president of Antioch College. (Clifton res/CC BY-SA 3.0)

That same year, Mann was appointed president of the newly established Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a job he would hold for the remainder of his life. During the college’s graduation in 1859, Mann spoke to the students and said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Mann collapsed shortly after his commencement speech, and passed away that summer of typhoid fever.