RR #1

The “Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education” By Horace Mann, written in 1848, is about the importance of a general education system in America.  In this particular piece ( He has written quite a bit on this subject) he stresses this using three different aspects of education, Physical Education, Education as a means of avoiding poverty, political, and Religious Education.  He believed that with proper education society would learn to create their own existence, and people of all different backgrounds and religions would truly have the same opportunity for success.  He worked to better every aspect of the common school, he wanted the public to get interested and help schools financially to ensure that improvements were made.  He spent many years going to a lot of different schools in America and discovered a few main principles that he believed were most important.

 This was written during a time period where the united states was still growing, and Mann believed that the gap between classes was growing instead of getting smaller like it should be, and believed education was the best way to bridge that gap.  One being that education should be a way to abolish poverty, because if people are ignorant they will continue to work minimum wage because that’s all they know.  I think he thought more educated people would go and create new jobs.  Basically it comes down to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.  He wasn’t necessarily a poor man, so I think that caring so much about the welfare of others in society really shows his good character.

Mann thought that school should welcome people of all backgrounds and religions.  He still wanted schools to teach values and morals, but didn’t think that they should be particularly religious.  This is due to the fact that not nearly everyone would agree on the same one, and teaching kids good character is important.  I feel like that if school tried to teach this using religion a lot of kids wouldn’t listen or would think that these values were tied to that idea.

Mann also worked to better the actual school buildings, wanted well trained teachers who were paid enough to be motivated to give a quality education, and a larger more well rounded curriculum.  Mostly he just wanted the people themselves to understand the importance of education and be excited to make it better.  I really like this because before it seemed like school might not have been taken that seriously, and I’m glad that he made way for the future to have a better chance.  A lot of the ideas he came up with are still going on today and he contributed more time and effort than anyone I’ve ever heard of.