Horace Mann

Horace Mann
Birthday	Wednesday, May 04, 1796
Birthplace	Franklin, Massachusetts
Died	Tuesday, August 02, 1859
Occupation	College president, educator, politician
Education	Litchfield Law School

Mann, Horace

(1796–1859) educator, public official; born in Franklin, Mass. He overcame limited educational opportunities, attended Brown University, and practiced law in Dedham and Boston, Mass. (1821–37). As Massachusetts state representative, senator, and senate president (1827–37), he worked to establish the first state hospital for the mentally ill and a state board of education. As head of the new board, his 12 annual reports (1837–48) comprehensively established the basis for universal, nonsectarian public education. Using his legal skills, he established public high schools, built teacher-training schools, curbed child labor, gained acceptance for women teachers, and fended off opposition from religious and business interests. After serving in the U.S. Congress (Whig, Mass.; 1848–53), he became president of Antioch College (1853–89), which was nonsectarian and open without regard to sex or race. The public school system he established in Massachusetts served as the nation's model, hence his appellation, "the father of American public education."

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

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.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.