Horace Mann

Mann, Horace 

Born May 4, 1796, in Franklin, Mass.; died Aug. 2, 1859, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. American educator and public figure.

Mann engaged in the practice of law from 1823 to 1837. From 1837 to 1878 he headed the Massachusetts State Board of Education, which had been created on his initiative. From 1848 to 1853 he was a congressman from Massachusetts. He defended man’s right to liberty and the all-around development of his talents regardless of race, nationality, religious affiliation, or property qualifications. In 1838 he organized the Common-School Journal, which was published in Boston until 1852. Mann’s 12 annual reports on the state of public education in Massachusetts are very well known. Each was devoted to a group of specific educational problems. The seventh contains descriptions of European schools. Mann did much for the improvement of teacher training in what were called the normal schools.

REFERENCES

Piskunov, A. I. “Deiatel’nost’ i pedagogicheskie vzgliady Gorasa Manna.” Sovetskaia pedagogika, 1955, no. 8.
Morgan, J. E. Horace Mann, His Ideas and Ideals. Washington, D. C, 1936.
McCluskey, N. G. Public Schools and Moral Education: The Influence of Horace Mann, William Torrey Harris and John Dewey. New York, 1958.
The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men, 5th printing. Edited by Lawrence A. Cremin. New York, 1960.