Background Analytic Entries

Analytic Entry
Background

It started with the “common school reform movement” which was a slow moving process. A basic education consisted of fundamental literacy skills from a mom or local woman. Any education that they had was almost valueless. The upper class was using tutors while the lower class was settling with no real education system at all. The change was finally brought during the American Revolution when people started to notice the importance of an educated population. Because the students were limited in their schooling it prevented them from ever improving classes in life. Horace Mann worked with others to reach new goals. They wanted more school terms, smaller classes with age limits and separations, more students that would be taught by highly educated teachers, and text book shat were American rather than British. Horace Mann’s seemed to be crazy to people for fighting for these school requirements that are necessary for students to learn. The opposing opinions on public education was that there should be no tax funding for these schools because it was wrong to pay “what they considered local issues,”(Common Schools). Public education was nothing more but a “local issue”, making taxes appear to be a waste. When the world began to quickly develop and the cities were booming, the job market started to change. The work world was looking offering job that required an education, such as an accountant. These jobs acted as proof to people that schools were needed. Although the proof was evident in the country change didn’t come over night. The changes in school took a long time to progress. It took some time but the American colonists created schools and this era was also creditable for the system of public education. Home schooling was the first form of education. It was up to the family’s parents to teach their children what they felt was important; there was an optimistic outlook that the parents would be good teachers. Because parents were the only source of education the next generation was restricted to the career their parent worked in and massed on. The boys of the family were destined to be what ever their father was while the girls were prepared to be married off. These limiting qualities are what made it necessary for public education. The public education was mostly used for the poor and the orphaned children that would have no other possibilities of gaining a future. This was one step our country took for the common good of the people. As schools began to be created Dr. Benjamin Rush established a school for woman. The reason he had created the school was because he felt that it was important that the girls that would one day become the mother of the country’s leaders should be able to offer them a the best moral education possible. The big change came with McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader (1836). McGuffey’s book was a schooling program that contained lesions and story that connected with the people reading them. It started with basic vocabulary and grammar and then worked its way up to harder leaves throughout the book. This program that was just simple teaching books was a large piece in the public school movement. After the first text book began to appear other things followed such as secondary schools, middle schools, and universities. All of things appeared rapidly throughout one hundred years. This was no small task. To start not only a new school but a completely new type of schooling, where different ages and material were being taught is something revolutionary. Education was always opened to the public though. Outside of public education different private schools were being created for people of different religions. It shares that while the private schools were used for the upper class “free public education centered on the poor.” The separation was in clear existence during this schooling period. The rich had tutors while the poor progressed with the new system of education.
Horace Mann gave a speech to the state legislature on the board’s activities. He explained that there are two different types of theories for the ways of life. The European theory is that men are not equal. Men should be divided into social classes and rated as human. In Europe it was expected that some people would never be able to succeed in life, they worked and labored for nothing while “others to seize and enjoy” (Horace Mann). The class separation in Europe was discouraging and expected throughout Europe. Horace Mann is placing the British theory against the Massachusetts theory. In the Massachusetts theory he explains that it represents equality. The Massachusetts theory shows that “all are to have an equal chance for earning, and equal security in the enjoyment of what they earn” (Horace Mann). The Massachusetts theory on classes allows for people to move up in the class system. There are no locked in classes like the ones that are set for generation in the British system. It then explains to reach the goal of the Massachusetts system of maintaining a republic it would require the people to have the potential to be equal. The people of the republic should all be able to have a free education, and the possibilities to have a brighter future. To attempt to run the Massachusetts theory without public education “is the most rash and foolhardy experiment ever tried by man…” (Horace Mann). He was appalled to find that people didn’t see the massive problems in that plan. Horace Mann became emotional when reaching the republic portion of his speech. He explains his plan for the future. To create the America we claim to have we must have an education system that “… knows no distinction of rich and poor…”(Horace Mann), so that all students have the possibility to succeed. He wants America to be all of the equal things that it wishes to represents.
Horace Mann had been giving speeches in gain support for public
education. The Pecuniary Value of education by Horace Mann, 1842, was his Fifth Annual Report and it was used to support the poor. He used this to show people that public education would benefit the population as a whole.
He understood that it is not a common goal of the population to have public education but it is a necessity none the less. Horace Mann felt it was important for people to demand public education. He was well aware of “Thousands who are now indifferent about the education of their offspring because they foresee no reimbursement in kind, no return in money, or in money’s worth, for money expended.” (Horace Mann) but that doesn’t mean that the reasons are not there. Horace Mann works to explain to the people that their money that is being used now will give them an opportunity for their children to make more, it will provide them with a more informed population, and a better government over all. Education isn’t an item you buy that will at some point lose its value; education is an investment in a child’s future. The people of the country have to see that this is goal is not for one person or one social class, this should be a common goal of all people. A child with out an education “would have been condemned to perpetual inferiority of condition and subjected to all the evils of want and poverty…” (Horace Mann) America is the land that disregarded the British class system, and fought for a land that would allow to attempt to work for what they wanted. Without public education this was not the same America that was fought for. It is a mockery to use the same title. Horace Mann explains how the United States may not assign the classes but it locks them in place by not offering a basic tool to improve future generation’s ways of life. These schools would bring a light of hope to every citizen in the country because not only would they be eliminating the permanent classes, but they would also be living in the real Untied States that were fought for.