Horace Mann Research Paper

The Common School Movement of the antebellum era brought to America a universal, publicly financed school system devoted to promoting values of morality, discipline, patriotism, mutual understanding, and cultural assimilation. Horace Mann’s public education was meant to bring together students of all economic, religious, and political groups and provide each student with equal learning opportunity. Reformers sought to centralize control of schools through state education agencies and superintendents, and common textbooks. To ensure high-quality teachers, teachers’ institutes, normal schools, and teachers’ journals were used to help with teacher training and communication. Schools also started to grade students, introducing nationwide competition amongst American students for the first time. While common school reformers pushed the same program in every state, the movement was met with mixed reactions and results. Putting Mann’s vision into today’s world, his movement begets even more complexities with educational trends.

Much of schools today have been developed by his reform movement. All children are obligated to go to school until 16, students are taught and tested with a common curriculum, teachers are thoroughly trained and assessed, most schools are nonsectarian and are funded by tax. Surely, education is inclusive to students of all races, genders, and socioeconomic classes. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 marked a new moment in American education history by expanding inclusive education as a federal endeavor and placing all curriculum and tests on a Common Core Standard. Mann’s visions of common schooling, it seems, have worked out for America, after