Horace Mann

First in the Classics in Education Series, this volume offers excerpts from Horace Mann's famous annual reports with an eye to their relevance to today's educational problems. "This series presents the sources of the American educational heritage. There could be no more appropriate beginning than a volume of selections from Horace Mann's reports ( 1834– 1848) to the Massachusetts Board of Education. As the commanding figure of the early public school movement, Mann more than anyone articulated the nineteenth-century American faith in education. His work still stands as the classic statement of the relationship between freedom, popular education, and republican government." —From the Foreword by Lawrence A. Cremin

Horace Mann was an early proponent of universal public education in the United States; these writings summarize his views and ideals about making tutoring available to every child in the nation. Born to a farmer of modest circumstances, Mann knew what it was like to be disadvantaged by birth; he obtained merely six weeks of schooling a year for most of his childhood. Yet his curious mind also made use of the Franklin Public Library of Massachusetts, and this self-education propelled him to academic success and graduation from Brown University with superb grades. Convinced that others could benefit greatly from better tutoring early in life, Mann entered politics and became a pioneering advocate of publicly funded education for the betterment of all. This book contains the foremost examples of Mann's thinking; he eloquently expresses a rich variety of arguments in favor of a public education system. At times artful and poetic, at times rational and pragmatic, it is clear throughout that the author considered his life's passion for universal education intensely. He weds his beliefs in education to the achievements of trade and industry, to the strength and endurance of society, and to the very life of the country.