Education became a growing concern the 19th century and reformers like Horace Mann tried to fix the problem. You will read the following passages as well as the material in your textbook regarding this topic. Here is a brief description of the movement:

Education Reform

Reformers also sought to expand public education during the antebellum era, because many at the time considered public schooling to be only for the poor. Wealthier Americans could pay for their children to attend private schools and academies but disdained the idea of paying higher taxes to educate the poor. Over the course of the antebellum period, however, more and more cities and states began to realize that education was essential to maintain a democracy.

Horace Mann was one of the greatest champions of public schools. As secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Mann fought for higher teacher qualifications, better pay, newer school buildings, and better curriculum. Catherine Beecher, sister of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, also crusaded for education but believed that teachers should be women.

Horace Mann was an important advocate for free public schools. Here are three passages from a report he wrote in 1848. As you read, think about this question: How did Mann believe that education could improve the nation’s social and political life?

If one class possesses all the wealth and the education, while the residue [rest] 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 [servants] and subjects of the former. But, if education be equally diffused [spread], it will draw property after it by the strongest of all attractions; for such a thing never did happen, and never can happen, as that an intelligent and practical body of men should be permanently poor....

 'Education... is a great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery. [It] gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich: it prevents being poor.... The spread of education, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this education should be universal and complete, it would do more than all things else to obliterate [erase] factitious [artificial] distinctions in society. '

[The] establishment of a republican government, without well-appointed and efficient means for the universal education of the people, is the most rash and foolhardy experiment ever tried by man. Such a Republic may grow in numbers and in wealth.... Its armies may be invincible, and its fleets may strike terror into nations on the opposite sides of the globe, at the same hour.... But if such a Republic be devoid of [without] intelligence, such a Republic, with all its noble capacities for beneficence [ability to do good], will rush with the speed of a whirlwind to an ignominious [shameful] end; and all good men of after-times would be fain [eager] to weep over its downfall, did not their scorn and contempt at its folly and its wickedness, repress all sorrow for its fate.‖

Think about the following questions:

1. What were Horace Mann’s major goals?

2. Why do you think he felt education was important?

3. List four reasons using Mann’s own words that explain why he thought education was important.

4. Why do you think it was difficult for Mann to convince some people for the needs for publicly funded education?