horace mann's accomplishments.
Horace Mann had many great accomplishments along with fixing the school
systems. First, he went to Brown University and graduated with a law degree.
After college, he became an official lawyer and worked in Massachusetts. In 1836, he was on the Massachusetts senate and held there for a few years. Since Horace Mann was such a great public speaker and had many revolutionary ideas, he was elected to the House of Representatives and represented Massachusetts for 6 years. While on the House, he played a big role in the slavery
movement and was part of the abolitionist movement of 1850. Not only did he
strongly believe in the Education Reformation, he also believed strongly in the
abolition of slavery. He wanted immediate emancipation of slavery and voiced a role in getting that decision passed. That decision also tied into Mann's principles about slaves and getting them educated once they were freed.
Contributions to the School systems
Another action that Mann performed was he enforced the school systems make schools accept everyone who wanted to attend. He felt that if
everyone was properly educated, and was able to attend school, it would be
the great equalizer. Because of equal education, people could obtain better
jobs and overall crime would go down because of moral vices. Along with making schools accepting everyone, Mann made it mandatory for all children to attend school. He felt so strongly about the positive impact of a great education that he made it necessary for all children to attend school. He felt so strongly about mandatory education that he wanted it to be a law but the other members of the board did not agree with Mann. One act he performed for the teachers while Horace was on the board of education was that he created a bi-weekly magazine/journal that helped the teachers with the curriculum and how to properly teach. He called it the "Common
School Journal' and wrote it in all 12 of his years on the board.
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What Horace Mann is most known for is his contributions to the Education Reformation. He believed that every child coming from any background should have the right to a good education. Since he believed that, he created a Board of Education in 1837. He was the head of the board and was its the secretary for 12 years and introduced many successful ideas. He set up the Board and collected money to fund these changes. Since he believed that the teachers should also be properly educated, he set up a separate school to train teachers and improved their salaries. He called this school the "Normal School" where teachers went for 2 years at a time. Second, he believed that schools should be open for more than a couple months out of the year. When he was a young child, the schools were only open for two months so while he was on the board, he made it mandatory for all Massachusetts schools to be open for at least 6 months.
To view the full 386 page Common school Journal click on the link
https://archive.org/stream/commonschooljou00manngoog#page/n1/mode/2up This video is made courtesy of Tim Peters. This video teaches many things including his normal, non educational life.
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An additional matter Horace Mann felt strongly about was he wanted to make all schools nonsectarian. He did not want schools to be focused mainly on religion instead of teaching. In other words, teachers could not favor one religion or persuade students to be a part of a certain religion. The most important thing Horace Mann was known for is the creation of the public school. Although he did not create the general concept of school, he did create the idea of public, equal education. Horace Mann's life goal was to make schools public and informational so students could go on to do great things for society.