Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/horacemanncommonOOhins HOEACE MANN Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER HORACE MANN THE COMMON SCHOOL REVIVAL IN THE UNITED STATES B/Af HINSDALE, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of the Science and the Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan " Let the next generation, then, he my client " HORACE MANN NEW YORK CHAKLES SCRIBNEE'S SONS 1898 TWO COPIES RECEtVED ^t ^\ I u 3448 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE The single purpose of this book is fairly to set before the reader Horace Mann as an educator in his historical position and relations. Everything is made to bend to this central idea. The aim is to tell the story clearly and simply, and in a manner to utilize some part, at least, of the great motive power with which Mr. Mann's life is charged. The materials for the story have been drawn mainly from the Life and Works of Horace Mann, five Vols., Boston, 1891. The other sources of information used in the prepara- tion of the work are generally indicated in footnotes. Mrs. Mann's Life of Horace Mann, which is Vol. I. of the Life and Works, aboimds in extracts from his letters and diaries, and also contains many letters and extracts from letters written to him. It is, therefore, to a great extent a book of original materials, and its value is largely due to this fact. In some parts of the present work, and particularly in Chapter III., Mr. Mann's own language is often used with little change beyond what is necessary to transfer the nar- rative from the first person to the third person. This vi PREFACE lias seemed better than to load the pages with formal quotations. Mrs. Mann's work is commonly referred to simply as The Life. Some facts have been fur- nished by Mr. George C. Mann of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, son of Horace Mann. For this cour- tesy, and other valuable assistance that he has cheer- fully rendered, the author extends to Mr. Mann his grateful acknowledgments. B. A. HINSDALE. University of Michigan, November 15, 1897. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Two Centuries of Common Schools . . 1 II. Horace Mann's Forerunners . . . .46 III. Horace Mann's Schools and Schoolmasters . 75 IV. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board op Education 105 V. The Secretaryship in Outline .... 115 VI. The Massachusetts Normal Schools . . 145 VII. The Reports to the Board of Education . 162 VIII. The Controversy with Boston Schoolmasters 181 IX. The Controversy with Religious Sectaries . 210 X. Mr. Mann a Member of Congress . . . 233 XI, Horace Mann President of Antioch College 242 XII. Horace Mann's Character and Work . . 266 XIII. The Progress of the Common School Revival 281 Bibliography ......... 311 Index . . .321 vn HORACE MANN CHAPTER I TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS Any adequate account of Horace Mann, and of the Common School Eevival in the United States with which his name is connected, must be introduced by a general view of the progress of elementary educa- tion in the country for the first two centuries of its history. Accordingly, the first and second chapters of this work will be devoted to that object. Principal attention will be given to New England. Moreover, Massachusetts will hold the pre-eminence, because it was on her soil that the American system of common schools originated, and because she was both the home of Horace Mann and the first beneficiary of the great work that he accomplished. I. Massachusetts The Puritan character had been well annealed in the hot furnace that glowed in England following the Eeformation, and it is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the New England colonies. " God sifted a whole nation," the familiar quotation runs, "that he might send choice grain out into this B 1 2 HORACE MANN wilderness." The New England Puritans were as learned as they were pious, and as thoroughly de- voted to education as they were to religion. Men of learning so abounded among them that, at one time, they counted one Cambridge graduate for every two hundred and fifty persons, and not a few Oxford men besides. In repute the teacher stood next to the minister. The leaders were thoroughly acquainted with the results, both of the Eenaissance and of the Eef ormation ; they regarded them as inseparable ; and so as soon as possible, after they made their first be- ginning, they took steps to plant the school and the church side by side in their new home. In February, 1635, the town of Boston took action to establish its celebrated Latin school, the most venerable educational institution in New England.^ Other towns followed the example that Boston had set, and by 1647 as many as seven similar schools existed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. In 1636, 1637 the General Court founded Harvard Col- lege, the oldest American seat of higher learning. The first colonial action relating to general education was had in 1641, when the General Court desired "that the elders would make a catechism for the instruction of youth in the grounds of religion." This expression of desire was soon followed by some- thing more decisive. The grammar schools and the college together would fill the two upper divisions of the tripartite scheme of education; but the educa- tional system could not be considered satisfactory 1 The Oldest School in America. An oration by Phillips Brooks, D.D., etc. Boston, 1885. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 3 until proper elementary schools were founded, and tlie grammar schools put upon a firmer foundation than mere local consent or agreement. So, on June 14, 1642, the General Court enacted compulsory edu- cation. Since many parents and masters neglected the training of their children in learning and em- ployment profitable to the Commonwealth, the Court ordered that the selectmen in every town should thenceforth stand charged with the care of redress- ing the evil; and to this end they should be clothed with power to take account, from time to time, of all parents and masters, and of their children in respect to calling and employment, and especially in respect to their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country. Fines should be imposed upon all who neglected the training of their children, or refused to render an account to the selectmen when called upon to do so.^ While the Act of 1642 made education compulsory, it did not provide schools or teachers; the people were still left to domestic instruction, to private teachers, and to such voluntary schools as they should organize among themselves. The situation was illogical as well as inconvenient ; so at least the statesmen of the Plantation seem to have thought, for, on November 11, 1647, the General Court enacted a general school law, the first one, be it observed, met with in American history. In modernized spell- ing this law runs as follows : 1 A collection of the early Massachusetts statutes relating to education will be found in The Repoi^t of the Commissioner of Education for 1892, 1893, Vol. II., pp. 1225-1339. 4 HORACE MANN "It being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, — ^^ It is therefore ordered, That every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forth- with appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint: Provided, Those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other towns; and " It is further ordered. That where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university: Pro- vided, That if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such town shall pay five pounds to the next school until they shall perform this order." In 1647 Massachusetts consisted of some thirty TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 5 towns, inhabited by about twenty thousand people. The law of that date rounded out the outline of the system of public instruction as it exists to-day. Evolution and not revolution has characterized the system from the beginning. Let us see what this outline really contained. The Act recognizes the three customary grades of education, — elementary, secondary, and higher, — and all are made subject to the State's control. It lays stress upon the relation of education to the State; what is profitable to the Commonwealth is set up as the criterion to govern the action of the General Court. Again, while the responsibility of educating children is placed primarily upon parents and mas- ters, the State may see to it that parents and masters perform their duty. Money may be raised by gen- eral taxation to defray the cost of public education; whether it shall be done or not, it is left with the towns themselves to determine. School provision is made compulsory, but not school attendance; the " shall " of the Act of 1647 is directed to towns not parents, and so is the fine that is to be imposed for non-compliance with legal duty. Citizens may pro-- vide tuition for their children at home, or in private schools as before. The schools are not formally free therefore, since they are to be supported either by those who use the schools or by the inhabitants of the town in general by way of supply, or by both of these. Important history turned on this word "or," as we shall see hereafter. In the first elementary schools of Massachusetts only writing and reading were required to be taught. 6 HORACE MANN The names that the secondary schools bore, Latin schools and grammar schools, suggest the staple of the teaching that they furnished. The curriculum of Harvard College consisted mainly of the Greek, Roman, and Oriental languages and divinity. Two reasons may be suggested for the stress that the Puritans placed on languages and language teaching. In its inception the Eenaissance was a distinctly classical movement; while Comenius, the ^ founder of the Realistic School of Pedagogy, was the contemporary of the founders of New England.^ It preceded and, to a great extent, caused the Ref- ormation. Then Protestantism rests upon the au- thority of a book, a fact that has given primary education a great importance in all thoroughly Prot- estant countries. Now, to borrow Burke's famous phrase,^Puritanism was the dissidence of dissent, the Protestantism of the Protestant religion; so that for a Puritan to contend earnestly for the faith once de- livered to the saints was to contend earnestly for the Bible. The preamble of the Act of 1647 is aimed straight at the Church of Rome and at those Angli- "cans who affected her ways, and the Act itself is alive with the spirit that emanated from Erasmus and Luther. The question where the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay got their educational ideas' has been sometimes 1 On the authority of a passage iu Cotton Mather's Magnolia, it has been assumed that Comenius was offered the presidency of Harvard College. Mr. W. H. Monroe has subjected the assumption to a thorough examination, and reached the conclusion that Mather was in error. — Educational Bevieio, November, 1896, ^' Was Come- nius called to Harvard ? " TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 7 asked. These Puritans were Englishmeii, and they sought to reproduce Old England, freed from what thej thought her faults, in New England. The men who laid the foundations of the new Cambridge had studied at the old Cambridge, and they patterned after it. The grammar schools that they set up in Boston and the other towns were modelled after the grammar schools that they had attended in the old home. The originals of the primary schools are less definite. Still the three grades of schools grow out of the nature of studies as related to the human mind: Comenius had already formulated the divi- sion in The School of Infancy ; while the idea, and to a certain extent the practice, of the tripartite division had become familiar in all countries that had been touched by the genius of Protestantism. How generally or completely the foregoing legis- lation was carried out in Massachusetts, it is not easy at this distance of time to determine. In gen- eral it may be said that the system of education established in those early years grew for a time with the growth of the Commonwealth. The many learned to write and read in the elementary schools ; the few fitted for college in the Latin schools and graduated at Harvard. Previous to the Revolution Massachusetts, far more than any of the colonies outside of New England, was self-educated. The native schools furnished a supply of learned men for the service of the State and of the Church. The primary schools and grammar schools were created, managed, and in part supported by the towns, but they were not for a long time generally 8 HORACE MANN free. The first planters had paid school fees in England, and they continued the practice in their new home. Then Governor Winthrop says: "Divers free schools were erected, as at Eoxbury (for main- tenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house or land for a yearly allowance forever) and at Boston (where they made an order to allow forever £50 to the master and an house, and £30 to an usher, who should also teach to read and write and cipher, and Indian children were to be taught freely, and the charge to be by yearly contribution, either by volun- tary allowance, or by rate of such as refused).'^ This order was confirmed by the General Court. Other towns did the like, providing maintenance by several means. ^ But the logic of events led straight to free schools. The question, whether those who used the schools or the inhabitants of the town should maintain them in whole or in part, was left to those to determine who ordered the prudentials of the town, and these in- clined more and more to town support. The cost of the schools tended to outgrow the ability of par- ents and guardians to keep them up; while private benevolence is commonly slow when the public au- thorities can touch the lever of public taxation. The poor were unable to pay the tuition of their children, and discrimination between the poor and the rich was odious in the democratic atmosphere that surrounded the colony. And so the germs planted in 1642 and 1647 continued to grow until, 1 History of New England, 1630-1649. Boston, 1«53, Vol. II., p. 264. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 9 I about the middle of the eighteenth century, the I schools became practically free. The dame school I pictured in The New England Primer is proof of I the currency of primary teaching. As time wore on there was little additional school j legislation: the brief ordinances already enacted i proved in the main sufficient. In 1671 the Court ; doubled the penalty imposed upon towns having one ' hundred families that failed to support a Latin i! school, and a little later it doubled it again. In jl 1683 the Court enacted that every town consisting 1 of more than five hundred families or householders ; should set up and maintain two grammar schools I and two writing schools, and that the penalty im- posed on towns having two hundred families or householders that failed to comply with the require- ment of the law should be £20. Before the close of the seventeenth century, it is claimed, an educational declension had set in. The doubling on two occasions of the fine imposed upon towns that failed to comply with the compulsory law in respect to Latin schools, is significant. This declension is commonly ascribed to the wars with the Indians and the French that wasted the blood and treasure of the colony; the political and social contentions that disturbed its peace; the uncertain relations that existed between Massachusetts and the Mother Country, and internal, economic, and social changes. There can be no doubt, too, that the brightness of the early Puritan ideal had become dimmed. It was impossible even for the Puritans to resist the deteriorating influences of environment; 10 HORACE MANN while in education it is always harder, other things being equal, to hold a large and somewhat heterogene- ous community up to a high standard than a small and select one. One of the internal changes that worked against the school should be particularized. For a century or more the schools were all town schools, and what is now known as the Township Unit System prevailed. There were no school offi- cers as such, but the selectmen, assisted by the ministers, who were real school supervisors, carried on the schools under the laws, subject to the in- structions given by the freemen in the town meet- ing. The typical New England town of the first period was a small concentration of population, with outlying farms and a piece of common land grouped around the church and schoolhouse. This organiza- tion tended strongly to intensify the internal life of the community, as well as to make it much more capable of resisting external attacks. Sometimes the public authority defined the circle within which houses must be built, as one or two miles of the meeting-house.^ But when the increase of the colony and the down- 1 W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of Neiv England, Vol. I., pp. 282, 283, gives the following description : "Next the meetiug-honse, locally and in the hearts of the settlers, was the common school. The location and definition of the Haverhill building, about 1670, for schools and for other uses of the community, was a type of the system. The house was placed on the common land, as near the meeting-house, * which now is as may be.' It was to be used for schools and for a watch-house, and on Sabbath days for the entertainment, between services, of those who did not go home. It was in substance an ' annex ' of the meet- ing on its social side. There they taught reading, writing, arith- TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 11 fall of King Philip removed or mitigated the imme- diate fear of danger, the growing population of the towns began to break ranks and scatter into the wilderness. Towns increased in number rapidly. But this was not all: the character of the towns, socially and economically, and to some extent politi- cally, began to change. The new town was not so much a body of population gathered about the meeting-house and schoolhouse, as it was a body of population scattered over a township. Being less concentrated, life was less intense and vital than before. For example, a single school or a single church no longer answered the wants of the people as well as it had done, and a process of modification set in, which naturally went much far- ther in the educational sphere than in the religious sphere. We now begin to meet the "travelling" school or " moving " school, which for a time gained a considerable prominence, and continued to the time of Horace Mann. The travelling school reversed the usual practice: the school went to the children, not the children to the school; that is, the single town school was kept a certain time in one corner of the town, then in another, and so on until the circuit had been completed, the periods that it spent in the different localities being equal or unequal, as circum- stances might determine. Even grammar schools metic; in some instances, Latin and Greek, and 'good manners.' But in most schools there was little progress beyond the elementary- rudiments. As in the famous Pepperell family, near Kittery Point, an English grammar was preserved, to show the teaching, but the evidences are that the pupils made scant headway in such abstruse learning." 12 HORACE MANN circulated. This method was called "squadroning out" the schools.^ But this evil was light and tran- sient compared with those now to be mentioned. Soon the one central school of the town began to break up into a plurality of schools in the angles or " squadrons " of the town. Eor a time these schools were managed by the selectmen as before; but in a democratic society the portions of the town that had once gained schools would naturally soon begin to demand that their management be handed over to them, and just as naturally, the townships first, and then the Commonwealth, would in the long run yield to the demand. The result was the ap- pearance and establishment of the school district. At first the district was established solely for the purpose of bringing the school to the people, and of regulating school attendance, leaving control, as before, in the selectmen of the town; but in time it became fully autonomous, a body politic and cor- porate.^ In its rudiments the district system was in practical operation by the middle of the last cen- tury, but it was not formally legalized in Massa- chusetts until near its close. There can be no doubt that it tended to the diffusion of education, or that this diffusion was purchased at the cost of depth and thoroughness. Had the district served simply the first purposes that it was created to accomplish, it would have been much more than defensible under 1 G. H. Martin, The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System. Boston, 1894, Lect. II. 2 The Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1894, 1895, Chap. XXXIV. \ TWO CENTUEIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 13 existing conditions. Perhaps the system worked for the best as it was ; but the disruption of the central educational authority in the town, when it came, and the introduction of a plurality of authorities, en- tailed upon the Commonwealth serious evils which will claim our attention hereafter. The old system of town control did not disappear at once; in fact, the Law of 1789, soon to be mentioned, assumes that it is still in vigorous operation. In 1780 the constitution of Massachusetts was framed, ratified, and put in operation. It took under its protecting aegis the State system of education. It contains by far the most generous recognition of education found in any of the State constitutions of the period, and has never been outgrown. The con- stitution was followed, in 1789, by a revision and codification of the school laws, which was practi- cally an adaptation of the law to the existing state of things. The declension of this law from the stand- ard set by the Puritans is very marked in two par- ticulars. A six-months' school takes the place of the earlier permanent school, and two hundred fami- lies is substituted for one hundred in the description of towns required to maintain a Latin school. This law would have wrought great havoc, provided all the towns had been complying with the old require- ment. Under the old law two hundred and thirty towns out of two hundred and sixty-five were re- quired to maintain a Latin school; under the new law, only a hundred and ten.^ This was a long step 1 Martin, Tlie Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School Sys- tem, Lect. III. 14 HORACE MAKN in the wrong direction, and was soon followed by others of the same kind. Mr. Weeden calls the early part of the eighteenth century " ' the dark days ' of New England in education and social culture." "Schools were half neglected in many districts; in a few they were totally neglected. The daughters of men holding important offices in town and church were obliged often to make a mark instead of writing their signature. Yet in many places there was a dame school, and women per- formed important functions in education." English grammar was a rare science.^ Mr. Martin makes the more specific statement that "of women whose names appear in the recorded deeds of the early part of the eighteenth century, either as grantors of prop- erty or as relinquishing dower, something less than forty per cent sign their names ; all the others make their mark." ^ Towards the close of the same century Mr. Weeden reports that Noah Webster's Spelling Book was just coming into use, with Webster's Selec- tions, Morse's Geography, and the Youth's Preceptor. The Bible was the ground work of all reading. " The helps to the pupils being few in comparison with modern resources and methods, the self-help and reli- ance developed by this crude system of education was something remarkable." ^ 1 The Economic a7id Social Condition of New England, etc., p. 419. 2 The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System, p. 75. 3 Reviewing the whole course of education in a typical Massa- chusetts town down to 1800, Mr. C. F. Adams has said: "In point of fact, the children were neither taught much, nor were they taught well; for through life the mass of them, while they could do little TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 15 The American Ee volution did not, as we might now think it should have done, usher in an educa- tional revival. The war left the country too much exhausted, and there were too many other things to think of. Colleges at once began to multiply, but the new institutions failed to maintain the earlier college standard. No new ideas, inspirations, or enthusiasms marked the period.^ In respect to public schools, Massachusetts con- tinued on her downward course. The recognition of the school districts in 1789 left the powers of taxation and control still in the hands of the town : the districts served for supply only. If a district wanted a new schoolhouse built or an old one re- more in the way of writing than rudely scrawl their names, could never read with real ease or rapidity, and could keep accounts only of the simplest kind. As for arithmetical problems, the know- ledge of them was limited to the elementary multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. None the less, after a fashion and to a limited extent, the Braintree school child, like the school children of all other Massachusetts towns, could read, could write, and could cipher; and for those days, as the world then went, that was much." — Three Episodes in Massachusetts History. Boston, 1892, p. 781. 1 The Marquis de Chastellux, a member of the French Academy and a major-general in the French army under Count de Rocham- beau, travelled extensively in the United States in 1780-1782. He states that he found Americans suffering not a little from the reflec- tion which occurred frequently ; that their language was the language of their oppressors. This feeling '* they carried so far," the Marquis says, "as seriously to propose introducing a new language; and some persons were desirous, for the convenience of the public, that the Hebrew should be substituted for the English. The proposal was that it should be taught in the schools, and made use of in all public acts." — Travels in North America, etc. Translated from the French by an English gentleman who lived in America at that period. London, 1787, Vol. H., pp. 265, 266. 16 HORACE MANN paired, there was nothing for it but to provide the means by voluntary contributions. But in 1800 the taxing power was conceded to the districts so far as providing buikling sites, schoolhouses, and furniture was concerned. In 1817 the districts became corpo- rations with the usual powers. In 1827 the districts gained the power to choose and contract with their own teachers, the power being exercised by a pru- dential committeeman who might be chosen in town meeting, but who was commonly chosen in school district meeting. The end of the road had now been reached. Democratic ideas had triumphed; and it was not until the Act of 1882 swept the new system away that the system of the Puritans was restored. Two limitations remained. The town still deter- mined the total amount of school money to be raised, and levied the tax; but when the money had once been apportioned to the districts there was no ac- counting and no responsibility. Legally, the certifi- cating of teachers still continued a town function, but this was more nominal than real. The district- ing of towns was not compulsory, and some were never districted. The foundation of the State school fund was laid in 1834. The results following the later legislation that has been recounted were both social and educational in character. There ensued the contentions, school poli- tics, irresponsibility, favoritism, small ideas, and wastefulness; the small schools, short terms, low ideals, lack of oversight, poor teachers, and poor teaching that have generally marked the introduc- tion of the Township Unit System, In 1826 the law TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 17 w?.s so clianged that no town was required to main- tain a town high school unless it contained five hundred families, and then it was excused from pro- viding instruction in the Latin and Greek languages unless its population so desired. Previous to 1826 there were one hundred and seventy-two towns in the State that were required to maintain schools in which Latin and Greek were taught; the legislation of that year removed the obligations from all of these but seven, and the seven were all maritime towns. Kor was Latin much taught in the schools that pro- fessed to teach it. The ancient and honorable name " grammar school " now disappeared from the Massa- chusetts statute book, and the name "high school" took its place. Verily, the State had found the descent to Avernus an easy one! The people of Massachusetts seemed almost as anxious to get rid of their schools as their ancestors had been to get them. In the second half of the eighteenth century there set in an important educational movement that was partly the effect and partly the cause of the decline of the public schools. This was the founding of academies. Dummer Academy was opened, in New- bury, in 1763, but was not incorporated until 1782. Other institutions of the same grade followed in quick succession. The first of these schools origi- nated in private beneficence; but about the close of the century the legislature adopted the policy of making such academies as complied with the terms of the law grants of wild land in the District of Maine, a half township each, thereby giving the 18 HORACE MANN schools so favored a gitasi-public character. The academies may be viewed under two aspects. First they took the place, for the most part, that the decayed grammar schools no longer filled as fit- ting schools for college. In some counties at that time boys who fitted for college at home were com- pelled to fit themselves, with such assistance as they could get from the pastors of the churches. The academies sent to the colleges a better class of stu- dents than they had been receiving, thus enabling them to raise their acquirements for admission. They were also finishing schools, sending into soci- ety much larger numbers of pupils than they sent to the colleges. Upon the whole, the standard of the academies was probably higher than that of the grammar schools had been. They taught the Eng- lish, Latin, Greek, and French languages; writing, arithmetic, geography, declamation, geometry, logic, and natural philosophy. Some of the charters also embraced the clause, "And such other liberal arts and sciences as the trustees shall direct." On this side there is nothing but good to be said of the academies. But there is another side to the shield. The new schools hastened the decline of the old ones, and made their practical abolition, in 1826, possible. No community can emphasize two competing systems of education; and by as much as Massachusetts built up her academies, she pulled down her grammar schools. Besides, along with the academies a class of schools more distinctly private, and commonly of an inferior grade, sprang up. What might have TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 19 been anticipated, followed: people who were able to pay for the scliooling of their children sent them to the academies and private schools, while those who were not able sent theirs to the public schools. So the schools, taken together, contributed to build up an odious class distinction that the old Puritans never would have brooked on Massachusetts soil. To break down this middle wall of partition was a part of the work of Horace Mann. So far as the public records show, the Pilgrims of Plymouth were much slower to move than the Puri- tans of Massachusetts Bay. The first schools, no doubt, were individual or associated private enter- prises. In 1658 the Court proposed to the several townships that they take into serious consideration the provision of a schoolmaster in every town, to train up the children to reading and writing, and five years later this recommendation was repeated. - In 1673 the Court voted that the charge of the free school, which was £30 a year, should be paid by the treasurer out of the profits arising from the fishery at Cape Cod, and the next year the grant was re- newed and confirmed. In 1677 the Court gave to the towns that should maintain a grammar school, taught by "any meet man," power to levy a school rate, and decreed a fine of £5 upon all towns of seventy families and upwards that should not main- tain such a school. Plymouth was in all w^ays a feebler colony than Massachusetts Bay — in educa- tion as in other things. The Massachusetts school laws were extended over Plymouth when the consoli- dation took place in 1691. 20 HOKACE MANN II. The Other New England States Connecticut was an offshoot from Massactiusetts, and her institutions were like those of the parent colony, not so much by reason of imitation as by reason of the operation of similar causes.^ The founders of Connecticut were men of the same kind as the founders of Massachusetts Bay. In respect to education, the daughter followed the mother, but not with equal steps. Schools were established both at Hartford and New Haven almost at the birth of the two colonies, and after the union, in 1662, there was a single school system. From this time there was a continuous educational development in the colony. Connecticut was exceedingly prolific of school laws ; important legislation was had in 1672, 1690, and 1750. By the time that the statutes of the Com- monwealth were revised in 1750, the schools were tending slowly downward, owing to the operation of causes similar to those already met with in Massa- chusetts. Here we encounter again the tendency to disintegration, whereby schools were multiplied and weakened. In 1766 towns and societies were au- thorized to divide themselves into proper and nec- essary districts for keeping their schools, every one with its own share of the public money. "By the 1 An elaborate History of Education in Connecticut from the earliest times to 1854 is found in Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. IV., pp. B57-710 ; Vol. V., pp. 115-154 ; Vol. XIII., 725-73G ; Vol. XIV., pp. 244-275, 276-331. To these may be added the article on "Henry Barnard," Vol. I., pp. 659-738. For the History of the Connecticut Common School Fund, see Barnard, The Ameri- can Journal of Education, Vol. VI., pp. 367-424. TWO CENTUKIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 21 practical operation of this act," says Dr. Barnard, "the school system of Connecticut, instead -of em- bracing schools of different grades, was gradually narrowed down to a single district school, taught by one teacher in the summer and a different teacher in the winter, for children of all ages and in variety of study residing within certain territorial limits." This step was followed by others in the same direc- tion until 1798, when an act passed that substituted ' for the town a new corporate body known as a " school society " with territorial limits sometimes coextensive with the town, in some places embrac- ing part of a town, and in others parts of two or three towns. "For a time," Dr. Barnard says, "the effect of this change was not apparent, but, coupled with the change in the mode of supporting schools provided for about this time by public funds, and dispensing with the obligation of raising money by tax, the results were disastrous." The reference here is to the State school fund, soon to be men- tioned. The grammar schools ceased to be obliga- tory, but every school society might, by a vote of two-thirds of the inhabitants present in any legally held meeting, establish a high school for the common benefit of all the inhabitants, in which reading, pen- manship, English grammar, composition, arithmetic, and geography, as well as the Latin and Greek lan- guages, and the first ]3rinciples of religion and mo- rality, should be taught. The common schools of the Commonwealth had always been the main reliance of the people in re- spect to the rudiments of education; they were re- 22 HOKACE MANN sorted to by the people generally for these studies, and with such success that, according to Dr. Bar- nard, it was rare to find a native of Connecticut who could not read "the Holy Word of God and the good laws of the State." In 1795 the legislature set apart the proceeds of the Western lands belonging to the State, $1,200,000, for a perpetual common school fund. This fund soon became productive, and there is reason to think that for a time it gave an impulse to popular education. Most unfortunately, however, the State made the fatal mistake of granting the money to the school districts unconditionally, in- stead of requiring them to match the money proceed- ing from the fund, dollar for dollar, with money raised by taxation, thus teaching the people, not to rely upon themselves, but rather to look to a per- manent fund, the income of which would either be stationary or tend to diminish, while the cost of keeping up the schools would, necessarily increase. A Connecticut-born man of the highest authority has told the result in three sentences: "Before 1837 Connecticut surpassed the other States in the educa- tion of its people. But the mighty engine of super- vision wielded by a Horace Mann immediately turned the scale in favor of Massachusetts. Municipal taxa- tion proved a far more powerful instrument than a school fund, although the latter had done good ser- vice in its day."^ For a time New Hampshire and Maine were depend- 1 Dr. W. T. Harris, preface to J. L. Pickard's School Supervision. See also the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools, pp. 24, 25, 126, 127. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 23 encies of Massachusetts — the first until 1692, and the second until 1820. While they continued in this condition, all the Massachusetts laws applied to them ; but owing to various causes, as the greater distance from the centre of authority, the greater sparseness and smaller wealth of the population, and the larger prominence of frontier life, these laws were never as fully carried out as in Massachusetts proper. Still in a very imperfect way the characteristic educa- tional institutions of Massachusetts were reproduced in both districts — elementary schools, grammar schools, academies, and colleges. When New Hampshire came to be an independent government, it regularly copied the Massachusetts school laws; but they only existed on the statute books, never being enforced. In 1789 the legislat- ure repealed all existing acts, and passed a new one authorizing English grammar schools for teach- ing reading, writing, and arithmetic in the towns, and grammar schools for teaching Latin and Greek in the shire and half -shire towns. Jeremy Belknap, writing in 1792, says that formerly, when there were but few towns, much better care was taken to observe the law concerning schools than after the settlements were multiplied; but there was never uniform atten- tion paid to the matter in all places. Much depended upon the character and influence of the leading men in the town, and those who were disposed to do so had little difficulty in finding ways of evading the law.^ When Maine became an independent State, she con- 1 History of Neio Hampshire. Boston, 1792, Vol. III., p. 288. 24 HORACE MANN tinned to develop the educational system that had sprung up under the dominion of Massachusetts. The original population of Vermont was mainly- furnished by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the last one preponderating. The New Hampshire Grants gave character to the State. Natu- rally, therefore, we find reproduced in feeble form the common educational institutions of New Eng- land. Local initiative and control mark the first schools, and a purely voluntary system of education sprang up before there was any regular form of gov- ernment. The first constitution declared that a com- petent number of schools ought to be maintained in each town for' the convenient instruction of youth, and that one or more grammar schools ought to be incorporated and properly supported in each county. In 1794 the towns were authorized by the legislat- ure to levy a local tax for the support of schools, and measures were taken to provide an endowment of school lands. Three years later the legislature enacted that each town should support a school or schools; but instead of imposing a pecuniary fine for non-compliance, the law merely stipulated that towns should forfeit their right to a part of the general school tax. A Vermont historian, writing in 1809, remarks upon the attention that was paid to the edu- cation of children. Parents did not so much aim to have their children acquainted with the liberal arts and sciences, as to have them all taught to read with ease and propriety, to write a plain and legible hand, and to have them acquainted with the rules of arith- metic, so far as might be necessary to carry on the TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 25 common occupations of life. He represents that these attainments were well-nigh universal. Enlarg- ing upon their practical value, he uses the following language : " Such kind of education and knowledge is of more advantage to mankind than all the specula- tionSj disputes, and distinctions that metaphysics, logic, and scholastic theology have ever produced. In the plain common sense promoted by the one, virtue, utility, freedom, and public happiness have their foundations. In the useless speculations pro- duced by the other, common sense is lost, folly be- comes refined, and the useful branches of knowledge are darkened and forgot." ^ Among the Kew England States, Ehode Island has an educational history that is peculiarly her own. She did not enact a common school law until the year 1800, and this she did not enforce, but rather repealed three years later. Not until 1828 was such a law put upon the statute book that remained there. But it must not be supposed that the people from Eoger Williams' day down were altogether un- schooled. Besides domestic instruction, there were voluntary schools carried on by individuals, associa- tions, or towns. Schools are mentioned from time to time in the town records. An annalist of Provi- dence, describing the state of things that existed towards the close of the last century, says that pre- vious to 1770 schools were but little thought of; there were in his neighborhood three small schools, not counting an equal number of dame schools, with 1 Samuel Williams, History of Vermont. Burlington, 1809, Vol. n., pp. 370, 371. 26 HORACE MANN perhaps a dozen scholars each. It was not uncom- mon to meet with people who could not write their names. ^ The causes that made the history of Rhode Island so unique in other particulars explain this singular state of affairs. III. General View of New England, 1780-1830 John Adams, writing to the Abbe de Mably, in 1782, found the key to New England history in four institutions: the towns, churches, schools, and mili- tia. After stating the terms of the law in regard to schools, he said: "All the children of the inhabi- tants, the rich as well as the poor, have a right to go to these public schools. There are formed the candidates for admission as students into colleges at Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, and Dartmouth. In these colleges are educated future masters for these schools, future ministers for these congrega- tions, doctors of law and medicine, and magistrates and officers for the government of the country.'^ ^ 1 T. B. Stockwell, Public Education in Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island, p. 11. An article entitled " Common Schools in Rhode Island," The North American Review, Vol. LXVII., pp. 240- 256, 1848, contains an interesting account of the condition of educa- tion in that State from the earliest times. 2 Works of John Adams, Vol. V., p. 495. Noah Webster, reply- ing to Dr. Priestley in 1800, wrote : " The truth seems to be that in the Eastern States knowledge is more diffused among the laboring people than in any country on the globe. The learning of the people extends to a knowledge of their own tongue, of writing and arith- metic sufficient to keep their own simple accounts ; they read not only the Bible and newspapers, but almost all read the best English authors, as the Spectator, Rambler, and the works of Watts, Dodd- ridge, and many others. If you can find any country in Europe where this is done to the same extent as in New England, I am very ill informed." — Horace E. Scudder, Noah Webster, p. 106. TWO CENTUEIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 27 Soon after his election to the presidency of Yale College, Dr. Timothy Dwight began a series of trav- els that extended over a number of years, in the course of which he visited all the principal regions of New England and New York; and his notes, written at the time for the interest of his family, were afterwards published. He says of the ISTew Englanders, as a whole, that they had established parochial schools at such near distances as to give every child, except in very recent settlements, an ample opportunity of acquiring the common branches. He claims for New England greater educational ad- vantages than can be accorded to any other country of the same wealth and population in the world. In his review of Connecticut, he confesses the absence of statistics, but from such data as he has at hand, he estimates that there were in the State more than fourteen hundred schools, with an attendance of more than forty thousand pupils. Children who lived near enough to the schoolhouse were generally sent to school at three years of age, but sometimes at two years; from eight to ten years of age many of them were employed, in the warm season, in the business of the family; while girls often left school at twelve, and most commonly at fourteen years of age. He says there was scarcely a child in the State who was not taught reading, writing, and arithmetic ; poverty had no effect to exclude any one from this degree of education. Every school society appointed suitable overseers or visitors of the schools within its limits. These overseers examined the instructors, displacing such as might be found deficient, or would not con- 28 HORACE MANN form to the regulations; superintended and directed the instruction of the children in religion, morals, and manners; appointed the public exercises; visited the schools twice at least during each season, particu- larly to direct the daily reading of the Bible by such children as were capable of it, and their weekly in- struction in some approved catechism, and recom- mended that the master should conclude the exercises of each day with prayer. In the schools other in- structions were added to reading, writing, and keep- ing accounts, according to the disposition of the teachers and the wishes of the parents. At first children of both sexes were placed under the instruc- tion of women teachers, at a more advanced stage under that of men. Throughout a considerable part of the country the sexes were sent to different schools. Dr. D wight reports that there were more than twenty academies in Connecticut, about half of them incorporated, and somewhat less than half sus- tained by their own funds. In Massachusetts there were forty-eight, all incorporated and most, if not all of them to some extent, endowed. The District of Maine had its full proportional share. New Hampshire had a list of thirteen academies, and Vermont of twelve. The lack of schools in Ehode Island he attributed to the general causes that had ■worked in the history of the State, and particularly the course that had been pursued relative to religion and churches.^ 1 Travels in New England and New York. By Timothy Dwight, S.T.D., LL.D., late President of Yale College, etc. In four volumes, illustrated with maps. London, 1823, Vol, I., pp. 460, 461; Vol. III., pp. 54, 55 ; Vol. IV., pp. 284-287, 292, 293. \ TWO CENTURIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 29 Mr. James G. Carter, in two publications that will be described more at length, in the next chapter, writing in 1824-1825, gives a somewhat different view of matters. It does not follow, however, that popu- lar education has in the mean time lost ground. Carter's object was to reform the schools, and not merely to report on their condition, and he was therefore critical and suggestive. He says that the free schools of Massachusetts had received almost no legislative attention for forty years. They had not lost ground absolutely, but relatively ; they had even improved, but had not kept pace with the progress of society in other respects. There had never been a time when the schools of the Commonwealth were farther in the rear of society than now, and the ret- rograde movement was being accelerated. Mr. Carter declared that if things went on as they were going, twenty years longer, the institution which had always been the glory of New England would be extinct. The district schools were in session from three to six months in the year, and often longer. The winter schools were taught by men, the summer schools by women. The subjects taught in all the schools were reading, spelling, and English grammar; in the bet- ter schools writing, arithmetic, history, and geogra- phy were taught in addition. The summer schools ranged from twenty to forty pupils, the winter schools from thirty to eighty. Both sexes attended summer and winter; the summer schools were in- tended particularly for the younger children, the winter schools for the older ones. Maintaining a winter school cost six or eight dollars a week, a 30 HORACE MANN summer school two or three dollars a week. The col- leges and academies furnished the better schools com- petent teachers ; but a majority of the teachers found in the country schools lacked experience, education, and professional training. A very great majority of them had received their own education in precisely such schools as those that they taught themselves. Mr. Carter contends stoutly that the influence of the academies on the free schools is very harmful. Where the academies flourish most the free schools flourish least. The property of the rich is still subject to taxation for school purposes, as before the academies appeared; but the interest of the higher classes, their directive intelligence, go mainly to the schools in which their own children are taught. The first re- sult is that a social differentiation begins in the schools of the Commonwealth; there are schools for the rich and schools for the poor — a state of things that would have been very hateful to the old Puri- tans. Thus the schools were sapping the foundation of the ancient democracy. As we shall see hereafter, this growing evil was one that Mr. Mann strove to the utmost to counteract. The State school fund of Connecticut had not met expectations; the common schools were no better than those of Massachusetts, if they were as good; the people had not been stimu- lated to tax themselves to augment the income of the fund.^ 1 In his book entitled A Neiv England Boyhood, New York, 1893, Rev. Edward Everett Hale gives an interesting picture of school life in Boston in the decade 1825-1835. He attended a private school at first, and afterwards the Latin school. There was no thought of sending him to a public school ; there was no public school below TWO CENTURIES OE COMMON SCHOOLS 31 In the course of the preceding pages mention has been made of the dame school. While considerably prominent, this school never attained such conspicu- ity in New England as in Old England. It may be doubted whether it would have commanded the genius of a ISTew England Shenstone. It was sometimes called a "ma'am" school. For example, Eev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister of note in his time, born in 1797, reports that between the ages of five and eight years he attended ma'am schools in Boston.^ In 1817 as many as one hundred and fifty-four private schools were re- ported in Boston, nineteen of them taught by men and one hundred and thirty-five by women. The great majority of these private schools were dame schools. In some respects the education of women is a better judge of public education than that of men. It is worthy of observation that previous to 1789 girls were not admitted to the public schools of Boston. At the reorganization of the schools in that year they were admitted to the grammar schools,^ but not the Latin school to which his father would have sent him any more than he would have sent him to jail. 1 Life of Samuel J. May. Boston, 1873, p. 22. 2 The school nomenclature of Boston, and to some extent of Mas- sachusetts, is perplexing. (1) The Latin school and the grammar school of early times were the same thing. Its function has been described aboA^e. Li course of time the name " grammar " as applied to this school was dropped. (2) The writing school was created to meet the wants of pupils who desired to be directly fitted for busi- ness pursuits ; it emphasized writing, arithmetic, accounts, and pen- making. (3) Towards the close of the last century reading schools appeared which laid stress on instruction in the English language. (4) By 1820 the name " grammar school " was given to the writing and reading schools. The characteristic study was English gram- mar, as Latin was of the Latin school. At first the reading and 32 HOEACE MANN at the same hours as the boys, and only from April to October of each year. In 1785 the school committee of Boston denied admission to the writing schools of children unless they were seven years of age. The laws of the State provided that youth should not be sent to the gram- mar schools unless they had learned to read plain English lessons; the laws also provided for prepara- tory schools where English was not taught; but fol- lowing the adoption of the rule of 1785 there were no such schools in Boston, and, accordingly, all chil- dren in order to prepare for the grammar schools were thrown back on private schools. This state of things continued until 1818, when, after a deter- mined effort on the part of the respectability of Boston to prevent it, the town meeting voted that primary schools should be established. Hundreds of children now flocked to these schools, which were superior to the competing private schools.^ What passed for writing schools were in separate buildings, and even when they were found in the same building they had each its own staff of teachers. The double-headed system continued until 1847, when the present system of grading was introduced. (5) In 1845, two years before these schools were consolidated, the reading schools taught reading, geography, and grammar as required studies, and history, natural philosophy, and astronomy as optional studies. In the writing schools writing and arithmetic were required, while algebra, geom- etry, and book-keeping were options. See Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., p. 325; Woodbridge, American Journal of Education, 1826, Vol. I., p. 321 ; Annals of Education, Vol. IV., 1834, p. 556. The writer also acknowledges his indebted- ness to Mr. G. H. Martin, author of The Evolution of the Massa- chusetts Public School System, for personal assistance in clearing up this difficult subject. 1 Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee from its First Establishment in 1818 to its Dissolution in 1855. Compiled by Joseph N. Wightman. Boston, 1860, pp. 58, 59. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 33 good primary teaching in Boston in 1820, at least with one very intelligent man, can be learned from Mr. Elisha Ticknor's report of an official visitation that he made to some of these primary schools in that year. He says a child six years of age repeated to him from the spelling book between fifty and sixty rules, being all it contained, in relation to letters and pronunciation. He was surprised by this remarkable display of memory and attention, and says the child appeared at the same time to understand the rules. The teacher assured him that no child was allowed to pass from the second class to the first one who was incapable of this feat. There is much more to the same effect.^ Any account of education in Xew England would be incomplete that omitted The New England Primer. which for several generations did more to form the minds of youth than any other book except the Bible. With its cuts, poetical selections, Bible facts, brief biographies of ancient worthies, verses, and precepts it was admirably adapted to make a deep impres- sion upon the minds of children; but such an impres- sion as few parents called intelligent would to-day look upon with favor. The Primer was the strong- hold of the Calvinistic theology. Still further it was reinforced by The Assembly's Shoi'ter Catechism, in which the minister questioned the pupils at recurring intervals. IV. The Other States There are two reasons why the larger parts of the Union can be passed lightly over in this history. 1 Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee, p. 59. 34 HORACE MANN One is, that outside of New England we do not meet witli a single public school system until this century was well opened, and the other, that Horace Mann built on the Massachusetts foundation. It does not follow, however, that there was no elementary educa- tion in the other States because they had no public elementary schools. When men come habitually to associate certain effects with certain causes exclu- sively, they are apt to conclude that in all cases where these causes are absent, the familiar effects do not exist. This is a great fallacy. No doubt there was more instruction in the old Middle and Southern States, for example, than we, accustomed to our present methods of education, would at first think possible. Still it cannot be doubted that, down to the be- ginning of the Common School Kevival, the other States were all far in the rear of Massachusetts and Connecticut. For this there were many reasons, some external and some internal. Nowhere outside of New England do we find that intense town life which did so much to stimulate men's minds, includ- ing schools and learning. And nowhere else, save among the Scotch-Irish of the frontiers, did the pre- vailing type of religious belief and ecclesiastical or- ganization tend so strongly to diffuse intelligence and promote education. There was a wide interval between the planters of the South, for instance, and the farmers, lawyers, ministers, and tradesmen of the New England States. Learning held no such place in the mind of the one as in the mind of the other. The typical Virginian was a man of vigorous facul- TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 35 ties, knowledge of the world, force of character, and book education sufficient for his purposes; he bore himself well on the plantation and in the hunting field, in the vestry meeting, at the hustings, and in the House of Burgesses; but he was no theologian, dialectician, or scholar. He was a Protestant, indeed, but he belonged to the Established Church, which was always sluggish in respect to popular education as compared with the more vigorous dissenting bodies that have done such great things for education on the Continent, in Great Britain, and in the United States. Finally, at the South slavery was an impor- tant factor that the historian who treats the subject thoroughly must deal with. The means of education employed in the different States now under consideration were not very dis- similar. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, replying to a question sent out by the Commissioners of Planta- tions in 1670, relative to the instruction of children in religion, threw out a suggestion that is of wide application, applying, no doubt, to secular as well as religious teaching. He said the same course was taken as in England outside of the towns, "Every man according to his ability instructing his children." Persons who were able to do so often engaged private tutors for their children. Others associated them- selves together for the purpose of carrying on sub- scription schools. Andrew Bell, afterwards known to fame as the author of " The Madras System of Educa- tion," taught the learned languages in Virginia, in both a private and public capacity, in the years 1774-1781. Bell, it may be observed, vindicated his nationality 36 HORACE MANN by accumulating £900 by teaching and speculating in tobacco and American currency, and his High Church and Tory principles by speaking ill of the country after he had left it. Southern gentlemen sometimes owned the teachers of their children: convicts or in- dentured persons whom they purchased of the skippers that laid them down in the harbors. There is an old story, not very well authenticated, that Washington received his early lessons from a convict servant whom his father had bought in the market.^ The ministers of the churches often eked out their slender salaries and contributed to the enlightenment of their several communities by teaching school, and, perhaps still oftener, by teaching private pupils. In education, as in other things, necessity is the mother of invention. In education, too, as in other things, general conditions assert themselves. Inter- esting examples, falling under both these observations, are furnished by types of schools that appeared at different times in different parts of the country. The " log colleges " of the Scotch-Irish, the " neighborhood schools " of Pennsylvania, and the " old field schools " of Georgia offer attractive features to the student of social life, as well as to the student of educational history. Indeed, the typical pioneer school is an object of much artistic as well as educational interest. But it must not be supposed that west and south of the Hudson River the means of education were limi- ted to such imperfect and precarious agencies as have been described — that there were no schools at once well organized and permanent. Most, if not all, of 1 Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington, -p. 60. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 37 the States did something in some way for education. Some of them made grants of land for schools; some provided that escheats should inure to the benefit of learning. The oldest school in the country to-day is the School of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in the city of New York, which was founded in 1633, and thus antedates the Boston Latin School four years. ^ The Dutch, and afterwards the English, founded schools in the towns of New York. South Carolina, perhaps on account of her Huguenot popu- lation, took a more active interest in education than some of the other States. A free school, in the old English sense of the word, is met with in Charleston in 1712. Philadelphia boasts of one or more schools that count their years from the days of William Penn. It is also to be observed that the New England men who flowed into the northern part of this State, and founded Westmoreland just after the French and Ind- ian War, established a school system like the one that they had left behind them, which afterwards ex- erted a beneficial influence upon the course of school legislation. Previous to the opening of the new era New Jersey has little to offer to our consideration, and yet she is the only State that, previous to the Revolution, had founded two colleges, — Nassau Hall, now Princeton University, and Queens College, now Rutgers. More than in the Middle States, and far more than in New England, fathers south of Mason and Dixon's Line sent their sons to Europe to be edu- 1 History of the School of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in the City of New York from 1633-1883. By authority of Con- sistory. Second edition revised and enlarged. New York, 1883. 38 HORACE MANN cated. Nor was it by any means uncommon for them to send their daughters also. The motives that oper- ated to bring this about were religious zeal, interest in the old home, dearth of educational opportunity in the new home, and professional ambition. Young men, fitting for the professions of law and medicine, resorted to the English and Scottish schools in con- siderable numbers. Fifteen of the eighty-nine men who set their names to the Declaration of Indepen- dence and the Constitution of the United , States, not counting the three of foreign birth and breeding, had studied in Europe ; and it is significant that only one of the number, Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia, rep- resented a Northern State. ^ Charleston, South Caro- lina, sent more students across the ocean than any other equal population on the Continent. The Washingtons belonged to the Northern Neck of Virginia, which is said to have sent more youth abroad for schooling than any other section of Vir- ginia. George Washington's father and elder broth- ers were taught at Appleby School, England, and there is every reason to suppose that George himself 1 The following are the names of the eighteen men : Charles Car- roll of Carrollton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Dickinson, Edward Rutledge, John Rutledge, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Arthur Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Wm. Paca, John Witherspoon, James Wilson, Thomas Hayward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton, Button Gwinett, John Blair, Robert Morris. Mr. Colyer Meriwether publishes a list of 114 Americans who were admitted to the Inns of Court, London, as members between 1759 and 1785. They are distributed as follows by States, not counting the 10 who are simply entered as " Americans " : South Carolina, 44 ; Georgia, 3; North Carolina, 1; Virginia, 20; Maryland, 17; Pennsylvania, 10; New Jersey, 1; New York, 5; Massachusetts, 3. — History of the Higher Education in South Carolina. Washington, 1889. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 39 would have gone there had not his father's death pre- vented. What he and the country lost, or gained, by the failure, if anything, suggests a curious subject for speculation. In some of the States a quickening of interest in common schools accompanied, or soon followed, the Eevolution. Mr. Jefferson's grand scheme, brought forward in 1776, was a melancholy failure, owing to the fact that Virginia was not ready for it. Still fur- ther, the law of 1796 was mainly ineffective because its provisions in regard to school supply were permissive when they should have been mandatory. The Virginia Literary Fund, a small common school endowment, dates from 1810. South Carolina created in 1811 the rudiments of a system of public schools, which con- tinued until the Civil War. New York began to move slowly at first, but afterwards with a vigor that made partial amends for her past delinquency. Governor George Clinton urged the subject of education upon the legislature in 1787, and the Eegents of the Uni- versity of the State of New York were incorporated in that year. State lands were voted to schools two years later. In 1795 Governor Clinton urged the es- tablishment of common schools throughout the State, and the legislature made, for five successive years, an annual appropriation of fifty thousand dollars for that purpose. When President Dwight visited New York, early in the century, he found no system of school education, nor anything which resembled such a sys- tem. He speaks of several charity schools belonging to the various churches, and mentions a school on the Lancasterian plan, conducted under the patronage 40 HOEACE MANN of the city corporation and containing, at different times, from five to seven hundred scholars. Eor the rest, he says schools were generally established in the following manner: "An individual, sometimes a liberally educated student, having obtained the proper recommendations, offers himself to some of the inhabi- tants as a schoolmaster. If he is approved and pro- cures a competent number of subscribers, he hires a room and commences the business of instruction. Sometimes he meets with little, and sometimes with much, encouragement." ^ Still, from this time onward, we are able to trace a slow but steady progress. The State common school fund and the society afterward known as the Public School Society of the City of New York were both founded in 1805. In 1813 a State superintendent of common schools was ap- pointed — the first officer of the kind in the country. Governor De Witt Clinton recommended a local visi- torial authority over the schools in 1826, and his rec- ommendation bore fruit in the local superintendency, or its equivalent, established somewhat later. The opening up of the West affected educational history in many ways. It created a vast educational need and supplied some new conditions. The Na- tional Government adopted the policy of devoting one thirty-sixth part of the wild lands in all the public land States to common schools, and of making each State a generous endowment for higher institutions of learning. This prime fact is jiever to be forgotten when dealing with Western education. Naturally, the people that flowed into the West carried with 1 Travels in New England and Neio YorTc, Vol. IV., p. 443. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 41 tliem the ideas and institutions to which they had been habituated in their earlier homes — a fact that will enable us to despatch the new States in a few paragraphs. Kentucky and Tennessee followed in the footsteps of Virginia and the Carolinas^ but with a quicker stride. Many of their first inhabitants were Scotch- Irish from beyond the mountains, who were devoted to their ancestral religious and educational ideas. Academies, seminaries, colleges, universities even, appeared simultaneously with the establishment of civilization. Judge Hall relates in his JRomance of Western History that the classical school sprang up at once in the wilderness ; that " in rude huts were men teaching not merely the primer, but expounding the Latin poets, and explaining to future lawyers and legislators and generals the severe truths of moral and mathematical science."^ Private schools were numerous in both States. The academies, seminaries, and colleges even must have furnished much element- ary instruction; for it is impossible to believe that the ten colleges with 1419 students that Kentucky reported to the Census Bureau in 1840 were, most of them, colleges in anything but name. Both States were slow to build up common school systems, and neither one can be said to have accomplished any- thing worthy of the name before the great educa- tional revival had fully set in. "Here, more than elsewhere," says Professor Shaler, dealing with edu- cation in Kentucky, "we see the vicious system of 1 W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literal^ Culture in the Ohio Valley, pp. 183, 184. 42 HORACE MANN county government by whicli the South is cursed — an evil that even as much as slavery has served to retard advancement in educational methods."^ Ohio had a greater variety of population, and so a greater variety of ideas and institutions, than her sis- ter States at the South. She put in her first constitu- tion the immortal declaration of the Ordinance of 1787, that schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged. Still, beyond taking steps to preserve and utilize the school lands, found the two State universities, and pass acts authorizing the incor- poration of school societies, the legislature did noth- ing for education until 1821. All this time the people were wholly dependent upon voluntary agencies for the teaching of their children — private schools, academies, and the like. In the year just named the legislature authorized the division of townships into school districts, the appointment of school com- mittees, and the imposition of a limited tax upon property for school purposes. School lots might be bought and schoolhouses erected at public expense. For teachers' salaries, the rate bill was the great reli- ance, but the committees might apply public funds to paying the charges of pupils whose parents were too poor to pay them. While this act was permissive, not mandatory, it laid the foundation of the State system of public instruction. New grants of power, accompanied by mandatory provisions, followed in due course of time. The public schools of Cincinnati were organized in 1829 under a special act, and four years 1 Kentucky, in the American Commonwealth Series, p. 397. l! TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 43 later they counted 2000 pupils to 1230 reported in private schools.^ The iirst constitution of Indiana, 1816, is note- worthy for two reasons. It was the first State con- stitution to throw its aegis over the public school lands, as it was the first to declare that the legis- lature, as soon as circumstances would permit, should provide by law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation from township schools to a State university, where tuition should be gratis and equally open to all. While there is earlier legis- lation relating to education, some of it dating from Territorial days, the first real effort to establish a State system of instruction was made in 1824. Be- fore this time, and after it too, until the State system had been formed, the educational facilities of Indiana were like those already met with in the South and West. One fact of much significance relating to the Eevo- lutionary era should receive due mention. Six of the States (counting Vermont) incorporated educa- tional articles in the constitutions that they adopted in consonance with the advice of Congress, Pennsyl- vania leading the way.^ These articles do not, how- ever, appear to have been followed by appropriate legislation. After a sharp struggle the following article, which was practically a reaffirmation of the earlier one, was placed in the Constitution of Penn- sylvania in 1790: "The legislature shall, as soon as 1 W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, pp. 421, 424, 425. 2 These provisions will be found grouped in The Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1892, 1893, Vol. II., pp. 1312-1317. 44 HOEACE MANN conveuiently may be, provide by law for the estab- lishment of schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis." Natu- rally enough, this clause gave rise to a class of public schools that were nicknamed " charity " schools and "pauper " schools, because they taught the children of the poor gratuitously, while requiring the rich and the well-to-do who patronized them to pay tuition fees. Experience shows that schools con- ducted on this basis will be despised by rich and poor alike. The experiment was tried in the early years of the Common School Kevival by other States than Pennsylvania, and always with like results. The schools were despised because they were poor and for the poor, and they were poor because they were despised. The American public school is per- haps the most democratic of American institutions, and it cannot safely discriminate between man and man. The friends of popular education in Pennsyl- vania, determined to rid the State schools of the offen- sive labels, agitated the subject unceasingly, and in 1834 their labors were rewarded by the passage of the Free School Act, with which the history of education in the State takes a new departure.^ While the first constitutional provisions were bar- ren of immediate results, later ones were very fruit- ful. In time every State, old and new, assigned to education a status in its fundamental law. This fact 1 J. P. Wickersham, A History of Education in Pennsylvania, Private and Public, Elementary and Higher, from the Time of the Swedes settled on the Delaware to the Present Day. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1886. Sydney George Fisher, The Making of Penn- sylvania, etc. Philadelphia, 1896, pp. 119-124. TWO CENTURIES OF COMMON SCHOOLS 45 is closely connected with one of the most pronounced features of modern education ; that is, its secularizing tendency. In the Colonial time the common schools of New England were closely affiliated with the Church. The clergy used them, as they used their pulpits, and probably more effectively, as means of propagating their theological system. In the other States also education had a strong ecclesiastical basis. The educational provisions incorporated in the early constitutions mark the beginning of the transition from the old to the new order of things. They are an intimation, no doubt half unconscious at the time, that the State is about to take exclusive charge of the public school and make it a distinctly civil institu- tion. The clause in the school law of Massachusetts, requiring resident ministers of the Gospel to use their best endeavors, that the youth of the towns shall regularly attend the schools, is the sole survi- val to the clergy of an educational function imposed by law that was once greater than the function exer- cised by civil officers.^ 1 Much information relating to the state of education in the United States at the close of the last century will be found in the following work: An Historical, Geographical, Commercial, and Philosophical View of the American United States and of the European Settlements in America and the West hidies. By W. Winterhotham. In four volumes. London, 1795. CHAPTER II HOEACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS Frederic Harrison tells us in one of his able essays that, in all human affairs, there is this pecul- iar quality: "They are the work of the combined labors of many. ISTo statesman or teacher can do any- thing alone. He must have the minds of those he is to guide prepared for him. They must concur, or he is powerless. In reality he is but the expression of their united wills and thoughts." ^ This is just as true of educational movements as of any others. It must not therefore for a moment be imagined that the great educational revival in the United States came unher- alded — that Horace Mann had no John the Baptist. On the other hand, for twenty years or more before his advent as an educational reformer, a definite prepa- ration for such a revival had been going on. Indeed, the revival had already distinctly begun. It will be the aim of this chapter to name the principal of Mr. Mann's precursors, and briefly to characterize their work. The writer of an "Essay on the Importance of Studying the English Language Grammatically," pub- lished in The Massachusetts Magazine for June, 1789, threw out one notable suggestion. He argued that, 1 The Meaning of History, p. 19. 46 HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 47 because tlie Latin schools maintained by the towns of Massacbusetts in pursuance of law were seldom at- tended by more than three or four boys studying the learned languages, and because these boys were the only persons to reap any direct benefit from the great expense incurred, therefore these schools should be annihilated, and that there be established in every county in the State a public grammar school in which English grammar, Latin, Greek, rhetoric, geography, mathematics, etc., should be taught by an able pre- ceptor in order to fit young gentlemen for college and school teaching. He urged that this preceptor, to- gether with the school board of overseers, should examine every young gentleman designed for a school- master in reading, writing, arithmetic, ' and English grammar, and that those whom they found qualified for the office of school teaching, and able to teach these branches with ease and propriety, they should recommend for this purpose. If this was done, a worthy class of teachers would soon be forthcoming. This article led to nothing, and the only reason for mentioning it here is that it is the first suggestion of the kind found in our educational annals.^ In 1816 Denison Olmstead, afterwards professor of natural philosophy and astronomy in Yale College, on taking his Master's degree at that institution, delivered 1 This article was anonymous, but Dr. Barnard supposes that it was written by Mr. Elisha Ticknor, father of the distinguished scholar and teacher, Professor George Ticknor, who will soon be mentioned in his own right. — The American Journal of Education, Vol. n., p. 2; Vol. XVI., p. 25. See also J. P. Gordy, The Rise and Groioth of the Normal School Idea. Washington, 1891, p. 9, and Horace Mann's Common School Journal, Vol. IV., p. 169. 48 HORACE MANN an oration entitled " The State of Education in Connect- icut," in which he urged the desirability of the State's establishing a seminary for schoolmasters, where gra- tuitous instruction should be furnished. The young Master of Arts worked out his plan in full, describ- ing the organization of the proposed school, the in- structors and the students, the curriculum, and the ends to be kept steadily in view. These ends were two in number. The pupils were to study and recite whatever they were afterwards to teach, partly for the purpose of acquiring a more perfect knowledge of these subjects, and partly for learning how to teach from the methods pursued and recommended by the principal. Ample instruction was also to be given by the principal in school organization and govern- ment. This scheme did not look beyond provid- ing teachers for common schools. It will be seen that it formally recognizes professional instruction; in the previous plan this element is recognized only by implication. But for the time nothing practical came of Olmstead's ideas. ^ The year 1823 was a fruitful one, both in thought and experiment. Professor J. L. Kingsley, of Yale College, contributed to the April number of The North American Review an article on the " Connecticut School Fund," in which he subjected the education actually furnished in the common schools to thorough exami- nation and severe criticism, and urged that something should be done for the better preparation of teachers. 1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 367- 372 ; Gordy, The Rise and Gro.wJh of the Normal School Idea, pp. 10, 11. HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 49 He recommended the establishment of a superior school in every county of the State, intermediate between the common schools and the university, where those who aspired to teach in the common schools might themselves be first thoroughly instructed. In August of the same year, Mr. William Russell, then princi- pal of an academy in Kew Haven, put forth a pam- phlet entitled Suggestions on Education, in which he pointed out the great defects of the schools, teachers, and instruction, and joined with Olmstead and Kings- ley in urging the provision of instruction expressly for the purpose of preparing teachers for their work.^ The practical experiment that the year 1823 wit- nessed was tried at Concord, Vermont, by Eev. Sam- uel R. Hall. Mr. Hall was sent to Concord as a missionary by the Domestic Missionary Society, and when urged to remain among the people as a minister, lie consented to do so only on the condition that he should be permitted to open a school for the benefit of intending teachers. He was wholly without pro- fessional helps of any kind, and was obliged to rely upon his own resources and to pioneer his own way. He brought into his school a class of young pupils, that he might practically illustrate to his intending teachers his ideas of teaching and government. In the course of a few years the oral instruction that he was accustomed to give in this school grew into a book on teaching.^ In his preface Mr. Hall speaks 1 Barnard, Normal ScJiools, p. 9; Gordy, The Rise and Groioth of the Normal School Idea, p. 11. 2 The first edition of this work bore the title-page, Lectures on Schoolkeeping . By Samuel R. Hall. Boston : Published by Richard- 60 HORACE MANN of the very imperfect preparation of teachers for their work, and says institutions could be established for educating teachers where they should not only be taught the necessary branches of literature, but be made acquainted with the science of teaching and the mode of governing a school. The book contains no pedagogical science, as we understand the phrase, but is devoted throughout to the most elementary practical instruction in the art of teaching. The author lays much stress on teaching "objects, and there is evidence that he had a slight acquaintance with the work of Pestalozzi. He quotes a short passage from Madame de Stael, showing how the Swiss reformer managed his school through interest and pleasure. In its numerous editions this work had a wide cir- culation. The State of New York purchased ten thousand copies, with the view of supplying a copy to every school district in the State. The revised edi- tion contained a new lecture on schoolhouses, in which may be found some humorous descriptions of houses that were in actual use. One master says the temple of learning in which he taught afforded a fine oppor- tunity to winnow grain, for strong currents of wind constantly passed through it in all directions; twenty panes of glass were broken or gone, and a man might thrust his head through the holes; the few crazy desks and rickety seats furnished fine accommodations for writing; the fireplace was about as large as a vol- son, Lord, and Holbrook. The fourth edition, 1833, is entitled, Lectures to Schoolmasters on Teaching. In the mean time the book had been revised and enlarged. It was published by Carter and Hendee, Boston. HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 51 canons crater, and when it was filled with wood, well ignited, an ox might be roasted before it with little inconvenience. In 1830 Mr. Hall removed to Andover, Massachu- setts, and still later to Plymouth, New Hampshire, in both of which places he conducted schools for the preparation of teachers. He deserves this somewhat extended notice because in his own field he was a pioneer.^ In 1825 Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet published, in a Hartford newspaper, a series of educational essays that were soon gathered into a pamphlet of forty pages, entitled Plari of a Seminary for the Instruc- tion of Youth. He proposed that an institution should be established in every State for the express purpose of training candidates for the work of teach- ing the common branches of an English education. These essays attracted much attention at the time, and were afterwards republished, more or less abridged, in leading educational journals. Mr. Gallaudet said the professors of the institution should devote them- selves to the theory and practice of education, and should prepare, deliver, and publish lectures on the subject. An experimental school was an integral part of the plan.^ We have now reached a time when it is no longer necessary to pass over a series of years to find matter pertinent to our purpose. From this time forward 1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 373-385 ; Vol. XVI., p. 146. 2 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. I., p. 417; Vol. X., p. 16; Gordy, The Rise and Growth of the Normal School Idea, p. 14. 52 HORACE MANN almost every year adds something of interest and value to the story. We shall, therefore, be obliged to proceed more summarily than heretofore in deal- ing with the matter that crowds upon our attention. First, however, the one man who did more to cast up a highway for Horace Mann than any other must receive a somewhat extended notice. T.his is Mr. James G. Carter, to whom Dr. Barnard says, " More than to any other one person belongs the credit of having first attracted the attention of the leading minds of Massachusetts to the necessity of imme- diate and thorough improvement in the system of free or public schools, and having clearly pointed out the most direct and thorough mode of procuring that im- provement by providing for the training of competent teachers for these schools." Mr. Carter was born at Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1795, and was bred up a farmer's son. He worked his own way through the academy and college, gradu- ating from Harvard in 1820. He was a fellow-stu- dent and personal friend of Warren Colburn,^ whose well-known text-books gave such an impetus to the study of arithmetic, and through arithmetic to the 1 An extended biographical sketch of AVarren Colburn will be found in Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. II., pp. 294r-316. Colburn's book entitled Intellectual Arithmetic upon the Inductive Method of Instruction, known also as The First Lessons, was published in the year 1821. Professor Cajori calls this book the first American fruit of Pestalozzian ideas in teaching arithmetic. The same writer says the blackboard was introduced into this country early in this century by Frenchmen. — The His- tory and Teaching of Mathematics, pp. 106, 117. A reference to the early use of the blackboard will be found in Rev. S. J. May's ad- dress entitled, " The Revival of Education," pp. 15, 16. HORACE MANN'S EORERUNNERS 53 common schools. He continued to teach for a num- ber of years after his graduation, and soon began to write for newspapers on educational subjects. To ability, scholarship, character, and interest in the subject he added as qualifications for such work, a thorough practical knowledge of the elementary and secondary schools of New England. In 1824 there appeared from his pen a pamphlet that is incompa- rably the best existing mirror of education in New England in the first quarter of this century.^ Carter contends that the two principal causes which have operated against the free schools are bad teachers and bad text-books. He does not think that the in- competency of teachers is due to the negligence or indifference of the public so much as to the competi- tion of business and professional life, which tends to prevent young men from becoming professional teach- ers. The men teachers may be divided into three classes : (1) Those who think teaching is easier and possibly a little more remunerative than common labor. (2) Those who are acquiring, or have acquired, a good education, and who take up teaching as a tem- porary employment, either to earn money for pressing necessities or to give themselves time to choose de- liberately a regular profession. (3) Those who, con- scious of weakness, despair of distinction or even the means of subsistence by other means. ^ 1 Letters to the Honorable William Prescott, LL.D., on the Free Schools of New England, loith Remarks upon the Principles of In- struction. Boston: Published by Cummings, Hilliard & Co., 1824, p. 123. 2Eev. S. J. May, a school examiner in a Connecticut town in 1822 and the years following, writes as follows : " I well remember 64 HORACE MANN But Mr. Carter did not stop here. A few months later he contributed to a Boston journal a series of essays that dealt very largely, with the same topics, and these essays were soon gathered up into a small volume.^ Attention is again drawn to the incompe- tency of teachers, and the method of certificating them is particularly examined. The law of 1789, which committed the examination of teachers to the ministers in connection with the selectmen of the towns, worked very well while there was but one religious denomi- nation and one minister in a town; but now, owing to the multiplication of ministers growing out of the division of parishes, the growth of sects, and the low- ering of the average standard of ministerial educa- tion, it works very unsatisfactorily. For example, if there are six ministers in the same town of dif- ferent characters, denominations, and qualifications, some of them perhaps hardly qualified to teach a common school themselves, how shall the matter be managed? A minister of one denomination may cer- tify to the qualifications of a teacher whose constitu- ency are of another denomination; while a minister in one corner of the town may certificate a teacher that one winter, for the nine schools in the small town where I lived, we rejected six out of fifteen applicants, because they did not under- stand notation and numeration, could not write correctly simple sentences of good English, and knew no more of the geography of the earth than of the ' Mecanique Celeste ' ; and yet they had come to us well recommended as having taught schools acceptably in other towns one, two, and three winters." — The Revival of Education. Syracuse, 1855. 1 Essays upon Popular Education, containing a Particular Ex- amination of the Schools of Massachusetts and an Outline of an Institution for the Education of Teachers. By James G. Carter. Boston : Bowles and Deerman, 1826. HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 55 in another corner. Then the ministers sometimes stand in awe of candidates or of the families to which they belong, fearing to offend them; strife and bitterness are thus introduced into the churches, so that the existing system works mischief in the eccle- siastical sphere, as well as in the educational sphere. But the essay that gives character to this publica- tion is the last one, entitled " Outlines of an Institu- tion for the Education of Teachers." It is distinctly creative in character. In nothing that had appeared from the press thus far had this subject been so care- fully thought out and presented, so far as the United States are concerned, as in this celebrated essay. It justifies the title that George B. Emerson be- stowed upon the author, "Father of Normal Schools." Mr. Carter contends that insufficient stress has been laid upon the professional preparation of teachers. A teacher must know how to impart knowledge. Edu- cation is a science and must be taught as such. To do this work, the State should found and support an institution that would be free to all its pupils. This institution should embrace (1) an appropriate library and philosophical apparatus; (2) a principal and as- sistant-professors in the different departments; (3) a school for children of different ages, embracing both those desiring a general education and those fitting for teachers ; (4) a board of commissioners represent- ing the interests and the wishes of the public. The proposed institution would set the standard of quali- fications for teachers, and would give stability, influ- ence, and dignity to the teaching profession. The proposed school bears no distinctive name ; the words 56 HORACE MANN " normal " and " normal school " do not occtir in the essay, nor is there any recognition whatever of simi- lar schools that have been founded in Europe. In a footnote to one of the letters to Prescott, Mr. Car- ter gives sop-ie account of Pestalozzi, drawing his in- formation from The Edinburgh Revieio and a work on Switzerland. The philosophers whom he mentions are Stewart, Locke, and Dr. Watts. We shall meet Carter again. A bill that he prepared embodying his ideas was introduced into the legislature in 1827, and failed of passing only by a single vote in the senate.^ Mr. Carter's two pamphlets attracted immediate attention. Professor George Ticknor reviewed the Letters to Prescott, in The North American Review, and Dr. Orville Dewey the Essays upon Popular Education, in the same periodical. Theophilus Par- sons reviewed the Letters in The Literary Gazette. These reviews were all highly commendatory. The United States Review also contained an article on Mr. Carter's institution for the education of teachers, the writer of which says that the country schools are everywhere degraded, and that they stand so low in the estimation of their warmest friends that it is thought a mean thing for any man but the me- chanic, the artisan, or the laborer, to send his chil- dren to them for an education. The revival of education was not confined to the region east of Hudson Eiver. In 1825 Mr. Walter R. Johnson, of Germantown, Pennsylvania, published a pamphlet called Observations on the Improvement 1 Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. X., p. 212, et seq. I HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 57 of Seminaries of Learning in the United States, ivith Suggestions for its Accomplishment. Mr. Johnson urged the establishment of State schools for teachers, in which they might receive such academical and pro- fessional instruction as would properly prepare them for their important work. The same year also Presi- dent Junkin, of Lafayette College, in a letter to the joint educational committee of the legislature, strongly urged the establishment in the existing colleges of Pennsylvania, of model schools and teachers' courses. The trustees of Lafayette, following the president's ideas, did found such a school, but being in advance of the time the effort soon failed.^ In the West also the waters were beginning to move. In 1825 Dr. Philip Lindsley, on assuming the presidency of Cum- berland College, soon after called the University of Nashville, Tennessee, delivered an address on the cause of education in that State, in which he strongly advocated the establishment of a State seminary for the education of teachers.^ ISTor were professional educators the only persons who were awakening to the need of educational re- form. Statesmen participated in the movement. De Witt Clinton, the enlightened governor of ISTew York, who missed no opportunity to promote popular edu- cation, in 1826 submitted to the State legislature views that are singularly descriptive of the situation in most of our States to-day. He ranked teaching 1 J. P. Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, pp. 608, 609, 612 ; Gordy, The Rise and Growth of the Normal School Idea, p. 16. 2 Barnard, Normal Schools, pp. 9, 10 ; James Phelan, History of Tennessee, pp. 238, 239. 68 HOKACE MANN among the learned professions, spoke of the insuffi- cient number of properly prepared teachers, and urged the establishment and maintenance by the State of a seminary for the education of teachers in the methods of the monitorial system and in the elementary branches of instruction. He argued that this recom- mendation, if carried out, would have a most benign influence on individual happiness and social prosper- it}^ He also recommended that provision be made for the gratuitous education, in the superior semi- naries of the State, of indigent, talented, and merito- rious youths. Unfortunately Governor Clinton's views proved to be in advance of public sentiment, and for the time no practical steps were taken to carry them out. The governors of many other States also urged the subject of education upon the State legislatures. With the opening of the present century foreign influence on American education became more pro- nounced, and also assumed a new character. Erench influence, which had been exclusive since close afiili- ations with France were established in the days of the Eevolutionary war, now waned to the vanishing point. In fact, it had never extended to elementary instruction. As French influence fell off, first Eng- lish influence and then German began to be felt. The great educational revival of the early part of this cen- tury touched with more or less power all the progres- sive countries of the world. Eirst to be mentioned is the effort to popularize instruction set in motion by Dr. Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, which for a time promised to HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 59 overspread all civilized countries. These two dis- tinguished educationists differed on minor points, but they agreed on the one feature that gave the movement its most significant names, viz., mutual and monitorial instruction. By means of monitors they expected to cheapen and so to popularize ele- mentary teaching. Bell was a Churchman and Tory, Lancaster a Dissenter and Liberal; and these facts, together with strong differences of character and spirit, outside of Church and Tory circles tended to associate the name of Lancaster with the system much more closely than that of his rival. The system was not long in crossing the ocean. A representative of the Public School Society of New York City visited Lancaster's school in the Borough Eoad, London, in 1805, and his favorable report led to the opening of a school on the new plan in 'New York in 1809, the first of its kind in America. The idea spread, and for many years teaching by monitors was the vogue in large schools in the older parts of the country. Still it does not appear to have taken such deep root in New England as in the Middle States, no doubt because other methods of instruction were there more firmly rooted. In 1818 the New York Society, preparatory to widening its work, brought over a teacher from London. Lan- caster himself soon followed, and at once began to lecture on his system in the Eastern cities. A promi- nent feature of the system was model schools and normal colleges for the preparation of teachers, and Lancaster served for some years as Principal of the Model School at Philadelphia. He was received with 60 HORACE MANN the greatest enthusiasm. Statesmen vied with teach- ers in extolling him and his supposed invention. But Lancaster's career in America was as brief as it had previously been in England. The downfall of mutual instruction was as complete as its rise had been rapid and brilliant. At this distance it is not easy to ex- plain its brief popularity. In principle it involved nothing that was really new. Eor centuries edu- cators had resorted to monitors as a makeshift, and discerning men should have seen that more than a makeshift they could never be. The vogue of the system was due to the invincible faith of men in machinery, combined with the promise of cheapness in education. But in this instance men soon discovered, what men- tal science and educational experience both teach, that good education can neither be mechanized nor be made cheap. ^ Still, in America and in England alike, this short-lived system left behind it lasting results. In both countries it awakened great interest in the cause of popular education. In both it turned the attention of men to the necessity of properly pre- paring teachers for their work. But in America, most fortunately, it did not leave behind it the sys- 1 Lancaster visited also South America and Canada — the first on the invitation of General Boliver. Returning to the United States, he strove in vain to resuscitate his system. It was practi- cally extinct before his own death, which occurred in New York in 1828. On Lancaster in the United States, see the following writers : S. S. Randall, History of the Common School System of the State of New York, New York and Chicago, 1871 ; J. P. Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1886; W. O. Bourne, History of the Public School Society of the City of JSTeiv York, New York, 1870; T. B. Stockwell, Pw6/ic ^dw- cation in Rhode Island, Providence, 1876. HOE ACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 61 tern of pnpil-teacliing, wliich. has been such a drag on educational progress in the Mother Country. But it is Germany that, in this century, has exerted upon our country the most protracted, the deepest, and the most salutary educational influence. The limits imposed by this chapter will permit but the merest glance at its origin and early progress; on a future page a single phase of the subject will receive fuller consideration. The introduction of Pestalozzian ideas and methods to the American people was the work of Mr. Maclure, a Scotchman, who had made his home in Philadel- phia. While carrying on his geological studies in Switzerland, he formed the acquaintance of Pestalozzi and Eellenberg, and became greatly interested in their schools. In June, 1806, a communication from his pen, explaining Pestalozzi's system, appeared in The National Intelligencer, Washington, District of Colum- bia. Later issues of the same journal contained still fuller expositions of the system, based on Cha- vannes' treatise, published in Paris in 1805. Mr. Ma- clure induced Mr. Joseph ]S"eef, who was especially recommended by Pestalozzi, to come to Philadelphia and open a school at the Falls of the Schuylkill. But, owing to his failure to adapt himself to the changed conditions, Mr. Neef's undertaking did not prove to be permanently successful. The two smail books that he brought out in 1808 and 1813 were probably the first Pestalozzian books published in the United States.^ Mr. Neef^s sympathy with the 1 The title-page of the Trell-worn copy of the first of these books lying before me reads as follows : Sketch of a Plan and Method of 62 HORACE MANN spirit of his master is well shown by his remark, that to teach a country school was his highest ambition. In 1818, 1819 Professor John Griscom, of New York City, made a careful study of the schools, colleges, and charitable institutions of G-reat Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland, and on his return home embodied the fruits of his investigations in a work of two volumes, to which he gave the name, A Year in Europe^ "No one volume in the first half of the nineteenth century," says Dr. Barnard, "had so wide an influence on the development of our educa- tional, reformatory, and preventive measures, directly and indirectly, as this." Ex-President Jefferson pro- nounced the view that the book gave of the literary and public institutions of the countries that the au- thor visited the best that he had ever read. He said he found in it useful hints for the University of Vir- ginia, which he was then engaged in establishing. Education, founded on an Analysis of the Human Faculties and Natural Reason, suitable for the Offspring of a Free People and, for all Rational Beings. By Joseph Neef, formerly a coadjutor of Pestalozzi at his school near Berne, Swisserland. Philadelphia: Printed for the author, pp. 168. The title of the second work was Method of Teaching Children to read and lointe. The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XLV. (1894), pp. 373-375, contains a brief but interesting sketch of Joseph Neef . His school at Schuylkill Falls was established in 1809. Here he is said to have had a,bout one hundred pupils, who were taught physiology, botany, geology, natu- ral history, languages, mathematics, and other branches, without the aid of a single text-book, a purely natural method being followed. In 1813 he taught a school at Village Green, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. In 1826 Mr. Neef assumed charge of the educational department of New Harmony, Indiana, — Kobert Owen's commu- nistic experiment. Afterwards he lived at Cincinnati and Steuben- ville, Ohio, and died at New Harmony in 1853. 1 The second edition appeared in New York in 1824. HOKACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 63 Griscom also paid due lieed to the work of the great Swiss reformer.^ M. Guizot propounds the thesis that the ideas and institutions born in other countries than France that have benefited the common stock of European civiliza- tion, have all been obliged to pass through France as a condition of their general acceptance.^ If living, the distinguished doctrinaire would perhaps find con- firmation of his view in the fact that intellectual Germany was first laid open to the world by French writers. In 1813 John Murray, of London, published an English translation of Madame de Stael's Germany ; the first French edition had previously been destroyed by order of Napoleon. It would not be easy at this distance to measure the immediate influence of this book upon the American mind; suffice it to say, the disclosure that it made of the schools, and particu- larly of the universities, of Germany was the principal cause that sent George Ticknor to the University of Gottingen to study in 1815.^ How it was with his distinguished compeers, George Bancroft and Edward 1 For a fuller history of the subject, see the following : N. A. Calkins, "The History of Object Teaching," Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. XII., p. 633; Henry Barnard, " Pesta- lozzianism in the United States," The American Jowmal of Edu- cation, Vol. XXX., p. 561; John H. Griscom, Memoirs of John Griscom, LL.D., etc., compiled from an Autobiography and Other Sources. New York, 1885, pp. 230-246. In 1832 George Ripley wrote an article in The Christian Examiner on Pestalozzi, laying stress on the moral elements of his system. Dr. Frothingham says Pesta- lozzi's experiment at Neuhof may have been an incentive to Brook Farm. — George Ripley, pp. 94, 95. 2 History of Civilization, Lect. I. 3 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, Chaps. I., II. 64 HORACE MANN Everett, we are not informed. But however that may have been, it was in the person of these distin- guished students and scholars that the direct contact between American education and the German univer- sities, which has proved to be so quickening and con- stant, was first established. The infiuence of Ticknor, Bancroft, and Everett, and the great army of Ameri- can students that followed them to the German uni- versities, no man who understands it would attempt to estimate. First, this influence touched the insti- tutions of higher learning, but in the end it reached the lower levels of instruction with equal power, especially when re-enforced by the writings of other Americans who went to Germany to study the subject of public education. It was in 1831 that M. Victor Cousin, by direction of the French Minister of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs, visited Prussia and made his celebrated Eeport on the State of Public Instruction in that kingdom. This Eeport proved to be one of the most quickening educational documents ever written.^ Sir William Hamilton made it the subject of a notable contribution to Tlie Edinburgh Review in 1834, and Mrs. Sarah Austin, the translator of so many French and German books, made a translation of it that was 1 Cousin had previously visited Saxony, Weimar, and the city of Frankfort on a similar errand. His several communications to the French minister together constituted the original French edition of his Report. Mrs. Austin confined her translation to the Report on Prussia, partly, she said, because she wished to make a small and cheap volume, and partly because this Report was confined to ele- mentary instruction. She wished to hold the attention of her countrymen exclusively to that subject. HORACE MANN'S rORERUNNERS 65 published in London the following year. Moreover, Mrs. Austin's translation was published in New York in 1835, Mr. J. Orville Taylor, a distinguished edu- cationist of the day, furnishing an original preface devoted to observations on the existing state of edu- cation in the United States.^ In 1836 the trustees of Girard College for Orphans,, preparatory to organizing that institution, sent their newly elected President, Alexander D. Bache, to Eu- rope, to visit and report on the similar educational establishments of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and the States of Germany. Bache's elaborate Beport, which appeared in 1839, included a comprehensive view of primary and elementary schools in several of the countries that he visited, including Prussia, Sax- ony, and Bavaria, and exerted no little influence on educational development.^ A much more influential document, partly because it was small and inexpensive, was Professor C. B. Stowe's Report on Elementary Instruction in Europe, made to the Thirty-sixth General Assembly of the State of Ohio. Stowe received his commission from the Gov- ernor of the State, as he was on the point of embark- 1 Report on the State of Pitblic Instruction in Prussia, addressed to the Count de Montalivet, Peer of France, Minister of Public In- struction and Ecclesiastical Affairs. By M. Victor Cousin, Peer of France, Comicillor of State, Professor of Philosopliy, Member of the Institute and of the Royal Council of Puhlic Instruction. With plans of schoolhouses. Translated by Sarah Austin. New York: Wiley and Long, 1835. 2 Report on Education in Europe to the Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans. Philadelphia: Printed by Lydia B. Bailey, 1839, 26 N. Fifth Street. 66 HORACE MANN ing for Europe in March, 1836, but liis Eeport did not appear until 1839. It related to Great Britain, France, and other States, including those of Germany. Stowe drew attention, among other things, to the wonderful change which had taken place in the pol- icy of monarchical governments in respect to the edu- cation of the people — a fact that had been strongly impressed upon his mind during the progress of his visit. He spoke at length of the internal arrange- ment and instruction of the Prussian schools, gave a catalogue of Prussian school laws, and answered vari- ous questions relating to moral and religious training. This Eeport was frequently republished and widely circulated and read. Nor was this all; Mr. Stowe, who was then a professor in Lane Theological Semi- nary, Cincinnati, was for several years a frequent speaker on the educational platform, and generally on German aspects of the subject. Prom the beginning of the Kevival, teachers and other educators have sought strength and mutual im- provement in association and co-operation. It is said that a teacher's association was in existence in the city of ISTew York as early as 1798, holding its weekly meetings on Saturday evening at Federal Hall. But our indefatigable historian. Dr. Henry Barnard, found no such organization back of the Mid- dlesex County Association for the Improvement of Common Schools, formed at Middletown, Connecti- cut, in 1799.^ This, and all such similar organiza- tions as followed down to 1830, soon perished. 1 Henry Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. H., p. 19, " The American Institute of Instruction." HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 67 The American Institute of Instruction, our oldest existing society of the kind, was formally organized in a convention of teachers, and others interested, that was held in Boston in August, 1830. The Institute was a development of the growing interest in educa- tion and schools, and appears to have had some special relation to the lyceum movement which was then active in ISTew England. President Francis Wayland, of Brown University, delivered the intro- ductory discourse, and was chosen the first president. The object of the Institute, the constitution declared to be the diffusion of useful knowledge in regard to education. Men alone were admitted to membership; but the constitution graciously said, ladies engaged in the business of instruction should be invited to hear the annual address, lectures, and reports of commit- tees. It was first proposed to call the society The New England Association of Teachers ; but owing to the wide representation, and the desire of others than teachers to become members, the more catholic name was adopted. This action, however, did not prevent the Institute from becoming, in the long run, what was first proposed, a New England association. From 1830 to 1897 the Institute has not failed to hold an annual meeting; the series of volumes of proceedings and papers that it has published, now nearly seventy in number, is by far the longest series of the kind known to our educational annals. The most important Western movement of the time is associated with the city of Cincinnati. Here was established, in 1829, the Academic Institute, under the auspices of which the first General Convention of 68 HORACE MANN Teachers of the Western Country was held in June, 1831. This convention soon grew into the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teach- ers, of which a somewhat full account will not be out of place. The preamble to the constitution declares that the members are "deeply impressed with the importance of organizing their profession in the valley of the Mississippi by a permanent association in order to promote the sacred interests of education, so far as they may be confided to their care, by collecting the distant members, advancing their mutual improve- ment, and elevating the profession to its just intel- lectual and moral influence on the community ; " while Article I. defines the object of the college to be, " to promote by every laudable means the diffusion of knowledge in regard to education, and especially by aiming at the elevation of the character of teachers who shall have adopted instruction as their regular profession." The College of Professional Teachers drew to itself a numerous and influential membership. The able historian of early culture in the Ohio Valley may be quoted: "The far-reaching influence of the body is indicated by the fact that delegates came to its meet- ings from the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mich- igan, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Plorida, and the Territories of Iowa and Wisconsin. People crowded to its daily sessions, which were held in the largest churches, and listened to the essays and addresses with breathless attention HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 69 and semi-religions enthusiasm.^' The same writer says the College was the mother of the teachers' institute system in the West. The meetings of the College, which occurred in the month of October and continued a whole week, afforded ample opportunity for discussing education under all of its current as- pects. This College, so widely useful in its time, lived on till 1845, and then peacefully expired. Its dissolu- tion has never been satisfactorily explained. In a few years the territory that it had embraced was more or less covered by smaller and less ambitious associa- tions. The College had affiliated local organizations, and it promoted the holding of educational conven- tions in several of the Western States. Albert Pickett was the permanent president, and he is said to have originated the idea out of which the College grew.^ The educators of the Eevival were quick to lay hold of that great power of the new era — the Press. In 1818 Albert Pickett and John W. Pickett, father and 1 The proceedings of the convention of 1831 were published in The Academic Pioneer and Guardian of Education. In 1834 regu- lar Transactions began to appear, and were continued until six vol- umes had been published. In 1837, 1838 John W. Pickett brought out the single volume of The Western Academician and Journal of Education and Science, which contains the proceedings of the Col- lege of Teachers for the current year. The Picketts came from New York to Cincinnati, where they carried on a flourishing private school for girls. For secondary sources, see the following: W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley, pp. 317, 420, 421, 425 ; W. T. Coggeshall, Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. VI., p. 85 ; E. D. Mansfield, Memoirs of the Life and Services of Daniel Drake, etc. Cincinnati, 1855, pp. 230-246 ; same, Personal Memoirs, Social, Political, and Literary, etc., 1803- 1843. Cincinnati, 1849. 70 HORACE MANN son, brought out in New York The Academician, the first American essay in educational journalism — some say the first in the English language. Only a single volume appeared. The Latin quotations with which the pages are liberally sprinkled savor of the pedan- try of the times ; but for a first venture, The Acade- mician was every way creditable to its conductors and to the country, and a worthy pioneer of the great army of educational journals that have followed it. One article is devoted to Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl; one to Pestalozzi's method of teaching chil- dren religion and morals; one to a comparison of Bell, Lancaster, and Pestalozzi; three are given to Lancaster, and, what is most significant, seven to Pestalozzi. The writer of the last-named series, who signs himself a native of Clinton County, says he has in his possession one work in French, one in Spanish, and more than thirty in German that deal with the subject. His articles, however, dwell far more upon the mechanics of the system than its genius. In 1826 there appeared at Boston, under the editor- ship of Mr. William Eussell, the first number of The American Journal of Education, the leading objects of which were to furnish a record of facts regarding the past and present state of education in the United States and foreign countries; to aid in diffusing en- larged and liberal ideas of education; to forward the education of the female sex, but chiefly to promote elementary education. At first The Journal appeared in monthly numbers of sixty-four pages each, but afterwards the size was enlarged, and the interval between the numbers lengthened. In all five volumes HOKACE MANN'S FORERUNNEKS 71 appeared. The Journal was immediately succeeded by Tlie American Annals of Education and Instruction, edited by William C. Woodbridge, of which eight vol- umes were published, also at Boston. In his opening address the editor estimated that a thousand new schools with a thousand new teachers were required to keep things as they were, to say nothing of improvements. Mr. Woodbridge's preparation for his work embraced a collection of materials derived from personal observa- tion at foreign institutions, and personal interviews with some of the most distinguished foreign educators ; collections of the recent valuable books on education, and a series of foreign periodicals devoted to it, and the correspondence of many friends abroad. Both of these journals devoted much space to foreign educa- tors, particularly Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and they are to-day valuable sources of contemporary educa- tional thought and intelligence. One group of forerunners that are not ordinarily put in the educational succession at all, remains to be mentioned. Illustrating the influence of science and invention upon opinion, Mr. Lecky says, "It is impossible to lay down a railway without creating an intellectual influence." The same may be said of education. Discoverers and inventors call into being new needs, create new ideals, furnish new teaching material, compel the invention of new methods and systems. Whitney with his cotton-gin, Cartwright and Arkwright with their weaving and spinning ma- chines. Watt with his steam-engine, Fulton with his steamboat, Stephenson with his locomotive, Morse with his telegraph, have exerted an educational influ- 72 HORACE MANN ence that is incalculable. For one thing they have made the suburban population of to-day possible. In 1790 the United States contained six cities of eight thousand inhabitants and upwards; in 1810 the num- ber had increased to eleven ; in 1830 it was twenty- six; ten years later, forty-four; and in 1890 it had become four hundred and forty -three. In 1790 the urban population was one in thirty of the total popula- tion ; in 1840 one in twelve ; in 1890 nearly one in three. Accordingly, down to the opening of the Revival, com- mon school education in the United States had been carried on under rural conditions, and the typical school was the rural school. Moreover, it was in Massachusetts that the new forces of civilization had declared themselves with greatest power; in 1840 her population was the most distinctly urban of any State in the Union, save perhaps Ehode Island. Horace Mann appeared on the scene just at this interesting juncture — ^when new material and social conditions made it possible to give elementary education a new shaping. He stands in history as the representative of the urban school.^ It must not be supposed that the educational revival with which we are dealing was a single or unrelated phenomenon in respect to time, country, or other social interests. History is continuous and cannot be cut up into arbitrary periods; still education as- sumed such prominence early in this century, in all the most progressive countries, that we may justly 1 "Horace Mann," an address by Dr. W. T. Harris, in Proceed- ings and Addresses of the National Educational Association^ 1896, pp. 52-63. HORACE MANN'S FORERUNNERS 73 speak of it as an educational era or epoch. Tlie United States, Germany, France, England, all shared in it. Besides, it was only one of many parallel movements that were going on at the same time, and that were all marked by a certain unity of nature and causation. It is common to characterize the present century from an intellectual point of view : it is marked by a prodigious growth of knowledge. Still there is reason to think that the new birth of feeling is even more remarkable than the new birth of intellect. Speaking of the time when this history opened, Mr. John Mor- ley has very justly said : "It was the day of ideals in every camp. The general restlessness was as intense among reflecting Conservatives as among reflecting Liberals ; and those who looked to the past agreed with those who looked to the future in energetic dissatisfaction with a sterile present. We need only look around to recognize the unity of the original impulse which animated men who dreaded or hated one another, and inspired books that were as far apart as a hum or is tic novel and a treatise on the Sacraments. A great wave of human- ity, of benevolence, of desire for improvement, — a great wave of social sentiment, in short, — poured itself among all who had the faculty of large and dis- interested thinking. The political spirit was abroad in its most comprehensive sense, the desire of strength- ening society by adapting it to better intellectual ideals and enriching it from new resources of moral power." ^ Mr. Morley illustrates his remarks by referring to 1 The Life of Richard Cobden. Boston, 1881, p. 61. 74 HORACE MANN the various divergent movements in society with which the names of Dr. Pusey, Dr. Newman, John Stuart Mill, Dr. Thomas Arnold, Eev. F. D. Maurice, Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, John Bright and Richard Cobden, are associated. His illustra- tions are all drawn from English life; but in other countries the disquiet of the time was also marked, and was directed to a quarter equally unmistakable. In the United States it was the era of abolition- ism, non-resistance, transcendentalism, comeouterism, Brook Farm, Fourierite phalanxes, and last, but by no means least, of the revival of popular education. Mr. Emerson, speaking for Boston and the neighbor- hood, said: "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform; not a leading man but has a draft of a new community in his waist- coat pocket." It is distinctly to be observed that, much as these movements may have differed in the objects to which they were directed, they were all outcroppings of the general awakening of moral sen- timent. Dr. Frothingham is particular to remark that the Transcendental Club and the Massachusetts Board of Education originated at about the same time.^ The two organizations had no formal connection; for the most part, they were the work of different persons, but they both came out of the yeasty condition of the times. Before the middle of this century was reached, the enthusiasm of humanity was beginning to shake the world as never before. 1 George Ripley. Boston, 1882, p. 55. CHAPTEE III HORACE MANN'S SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS The great educational work that Mr. Mann accom- plislied was so completely an outgrowtli of his per- sonal history and character, that it is necessary to give a fuller account of his education, and of the man himself when he entered upon that work, than would otherwise be required. Horace Mann was born in the town of Pranklin, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796. He was the sixth in descent from William Mann, who came to Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth cen- tury. Samuel Mann, son of William, graduated at Harvard College in 1665, and afterward preached and taught in the ancient towns of Dedham and Wren- tham. His descendants belonged to the plain people of the Commonwealth. This description applies to Thomas Mann, father of Horace, who cultivated a small farm as a means of livelihood. He was a man of feeble health, and died of consumption when his distinguished son was but thirteen years of age. He left in his family a strong impression of intellectual and moral worth, which, with the training that he gave them in the home and in the district school, was his principal legacy to his children. Horace's mother, whose maiden name was Stanley, was a 75 76 HORACE MANN woman of superior intellect, if not of education, in- tuitive rather than logical in her mental habit, pos- sessed of rare force of character, and thoroughly devoted to her children. If she did not contribute much to their didactic instruction, she did what was more valuable — start them on right lines of devel- opment. Horace continued to live with her on the farm until he was sixteen years of age. The town of Franklin stood second among the towns of the vicinity for intelligence, morality, and worth, and the Manns had a good standing in the town. Thomas Mann possessed more than ordinary talents, intelligence, and moral worth; he neither did or spoke evil, and if his children pitied and relieved the oppressed, and devoted themselves to love and good works, it was because they had profited by his instruction and example. One who was in a position to know^ maintained that the source of every good work which Horace Mann did, in its causes, could be traced back to the parental home — his devotion to education, his pleading for the slave, his temper- ance principles and practice, and his sympathy with the wretched and miserable. The Mann family regimen was marked by the stern- ness of the olden time, when the new spirit had not yet turned the heart of parents to the children, and the heart of children to the parents. Although the mother and son were devotedly attached to one an- other, there was still such a distance and reserve maintained between them that he never told her his 1 An unpublished letter written by Miss Lydia B. Mann to Horace Mann. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 77 physical sufferings until tliey revealed themselves to her, while his feelings he ke|)t studiously to himself. Such severe repression was the more trying to him because he was of a sensitive nature, demonstrative, and full of spirit, and, while maintaining the reserve that always marks the self-respecting soul, was yet disposed to seek close communion with congenial minds. But that old discipline could not have been as cold and heartless as it sometimes seems. In the present case this is fully proved by the manner in which Mr. Mann, in later life, spoke of his mother's deep influence upon him. For himself he could truly say that the strongest and most abiding incentives to excellence by which he was ever animated sprang from that look of solicitude and hope, that heavenly expression of maternal tenderness, when, without the utterance of a single word, his mother looked into his face and silently told him that his life was freighted with a twofold being, for it bore her destiny as well as his own. The straitened circumstances of the family, as well as the demands of the old discipline itself, com- mended the boy to the rugged nursing of Toil. She nursed him too much, he tells us. In the winter he was kept at indoor sedentary occupations that con- fined him too closely, while the summer labor of the farm was too severe for his strength, and often en- croached upon the hours of sleep. He could never remember when he began to work. Play-days he never had, and play-hours were earned by extra ef- forts. When he came to write, in a letter to a friend, the story of his early life, he found in his experience 78 HORACE MANN one compensation; industry or diligence became his second nature, and he thought it would puzzle any psychologist to tell where it was joined on to the first one. Work became to him what water is to the fish. In adult life he wondered a thousand times to hear people say, "I don't like this business/' "I wish I could exchange it for that " ; for no matter what he had to do, he never demurred, but set about it like a fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun was to rise. It was in this severe discipline that he formed the habits of industry and application which carried him through the great labors of later years. Mr. Mann's early education, so called, was such as Massachusetts gave her sons a century ago. His pict- ure of the school that he attended may well be re- produced in its essential features, because he drew it, because he was a part of it, and because it represents in some measure the state of things that he gave the best work of his life to reform. What was called love of knowledge was cramped into a love of books ; there was no oral instruction in the school. Books designed for children were few in number, and their contents were meagre and miserable; his teachers were good people, but bad teachers. The memory was the only mental faculty especially appealed to; the most comprehensive generalizations were given to the children instead of the facts upon which they were based; all ideas that did not come from the book were contraband, to be confiscated or thrown overboard by the teacher; with the infinite universe all around the children, ready to be daguerrotyped SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 79 upon their souls, they were never placed at the right focus to receive its glorious images. iSTo doubt this description is literally true, but it may prove to be very misleading. The child, know- ledge, and the teacher are the three estates of the educational realm; the child knows, knowledge is known, and the teacher brings the two into proper relations. But the three estates are not of equal or constant value. iSTothing could repress young Mann's love of knowledge. Her inward voice raised its plaint forever in his heart; and if his parents could not give him knowledge, they intensified his love of it, because they always spoke of learning and learned men with reverence and enthusiasm. He was taught to take care of the few books that the family had, as if they were sacred things. The habit followed him; he never dog-eared books, or profanely scribbled on their title- pages, margins, or fly-leaves; and would have stuck a pin through his flesh as soon as through the pages of a book. Books were no doubt the more sacred to him because, when a child, he earned his own school books by braiding straw. To the same purpose is the story that, when he was very young, a young lady who had studied Latin came to the house; he looked upon her as a sort of goddess, and years after the idea that he could ever study Latin broke upon his mind with the wonder and bewilderment of a revelation. Mann never mentions the studies that he pursued in school, but they were merely the limited course of the time. With all the rest, until he reached the age of sixteen, he had never been to school more than eight or ten weeks in a year. 80 HORACE MANN One of Mr. Ma,iiii's bitterest complaints in after life was that, as a child, he had never enjoyed the free intercourse with is^ature that his ardent mind craved. Speaking of himself and the children with whom he mingled, he says that, although their faculties were growing and receptive, they were taught very little ; on the other hand, much obstruction was thrown be- tween them and Nature's teachings. Their eyes were never trained to distinguish forms and colors. Their ears were strangers to music. So far from being taught the art of drawing, he well remembered that, when the impulse to express in pictures what he could not express in words was so strong that it tingled down to his fingers, then his knuckles were rapped with the teacher's heavy ruler, or cut with his rod, so that an artificial tingling soon drove away the natural one. He thougkt an amateur poet, if not an artist, had been lost in him. While he had no doubt good cause for thinking as he did about these things, there is still reason to believe that he over- drew the picture. His parents and teachers plainly did nothiug to lead him in the way of Nature's les- sons and inspirations, but they could not sear his soul to the sweet if silent influences of Nature her- self. As to color and form, what better lessons could he have desired than those that were spread before him in the course of the revolving New England year? He learned things or realities in real life, and not under the artificial tuition of the schools. He bears testimony to the truth himself. Often when a boy he would stop, like Akensides' hind, to gaze at the glorious sunset, or lie down on his back at night SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 81 on the earth to look at the heavens. He profited largely both by the scientific spirit and by the poetic inspiration that Nature breathes. His later fondness for science-teaching and Nature studies in the schools — in both of which respects he was a generation in advance of his time — could not have proceeded from a mind whose intense love of natural truth and beauty had been left wholly unsatisfied. It was in admiration of the genius of their distin- guished countryman that the people of Franklin gave their town at its incorporation the name it bore. They proposed to Dr. Franklin that they would build a steeple to their meeting-house, if he would give them a bell to hang in it. He characteristically ad- vised them to spare themselves the expense of the steeple, and offered them a gift of books instead of a bell, since sense was preferable to sound. His proffer being accepted, he requested his friend, Dr. Richard Price, of London, to select a list of books to the value of £25, such as were most proper to inculcate the principles of sound religion and the best government. They should be such books as would ma.ke a suitable beginning of a little parochial library for the use of a society of intelligent, respectable farmers. Dr. Price complied with this request, and in due time the books reached their destination. This little library was one of Mann's schools. According to his report, it con- sisted mainly of old histories and theologies well suited, perhaps, to the conscript fathers, but ill suited to the postscript children. Still, he wasted his youth- ful ardor upon its martial pages and learned to glory in war — a lesson that he afterwards unlearned so 82 HORACE MANN effectually that lie counted war almost a crime. This library, no doubt, was the germ of his later thought, that, had he the power, he would scatter libraries over the land as the farmer sows his wheat field with seed — a thought that was largely realized in the school libraries which we shall have occasion to con- sider hereafter.^ The last of Mr. Mann's youthful schools to be men- tioned is the parish church. Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, celebrated in New England annals, not only preached to the Franklin flock, but ruled it also for more than fifty years. The old New England family regimen and church regimen were cast in the same mould. Obedience, for- titude, rectitude, faith, and authority were cultivated rather than the gentler virtues. A stern logician, as well as a hyper-Calvinist, Dr. Emmons expounded the orthodox doctrines of sin and grace, dwelling more, says Mr. Mann, upon the sin than upon the grace. He reports that the veteran theologian expounded all the severe doctrines of the creed unflinchingly, while he rarely descanted upon the joys of heaven, and never upon the essential and necessary happiness of a virt- uous life. The fact is the Doctor did not believe any such thing, at least in Mr. Mann's sense of the language. Church-going was an ordinance in the Mann family, and by the time that he was ten years old Horace had learned the whole creed and the dia- 1 Franklin's letter to Price and Price's reply are found in The Complete Works of Benjamin Fi^ayiTclin. By John Bigelow, Vol. IX., pp. 89, 90, 121, 122. The library dates from 1785. When the books reached their destination from London, Dr. Emmons, the pastor, preached a sermon commemorating the gift, which was afterwards published and dedicated to the giver. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 83 lectics by whicli it was maintained. Being at once realistic and imaginative in his turn of mind, he was strongly impressed by the teachings that he heard from the pulpit and made very unhappy. He suf- fered often on going to bed at night; the objects of the day and the faces of friends gave place to visions of the awful throne, the inexorable judge, and the hax^less myriads among whom he often seemed to see those whom he loved best; and he wept and sobbed until Nature found that counterfeit repose in exhaus- tion whose genuine reality she should have found in freedom from care and the spontaneous happiness of childhood. When Horace was twelve years old a brother, to whom he was strongly attached, was drowned; and when at the funeral he listened to Dr. Emmons discoursing to the young people present on the danger of dying unconverted, and heard his mother groan, his soul rose up in rebellion^ and there immediately ensued a crisis in his life. In manhood he remembered the day, the hour, the place, the cir- cumstances, as though the event had occurred but a day before, when in an agony of desperation he broke the spell that had bound him and asserted his liberty. From that day he began to construct the theory of Christian ethics and doctrine respecting virtue and vice, rewards and penalties, time and eter- nity, God and His providence, which, with such modi- fications as advancing age and wider vision imparted, he retained to the close of his life. He came around again finally to a belief in the eternity of rewards and punishments as a fact necessarily resulting from the constitution of our nature, but he regarded the effects 84 HORACE MANN of this belief upon conduct, character, and happiness as something very different from the belief which Dr. Emmons inculcated in his childhood. When at col- lege, under the influence of the classic authors, he accepted the d.eism of Cicero. Ultimately he em- braced Unitarianism as the best expression of his religious thought, feeling, and life. To him Chris- tianity was rather a system of exalted ethics than an evangelical message or gospel; he built more upon Nature than upon Eevelation ; he held that the power of natural religion had scarcely begun to be under- stood or appreciated, and looked forward to a time when its light would be to that of revealed religion as the rising sun is to the day star that precedes it. While he wholly threw off the theological system under which he was reared, he continued to regard it with increasing aversion to the end of life, and com- plained bitterly that it had done his own nature irrep- arable harm. Not long before his death, he said if it did not succeed in making him that horrible thing, a Calvinist, it did deprive him of that filial love for God, that tenderness, that sweetness, that intimacy, which a child should feel towards a Father who com- bines all excellence. He saw Him to be so logically, intellectually, demonstratively; but when he would embrace Him and breathe out unspeakable love and adoration, then the grim old spectre would thrust itself before him again. We are told that Horace Mann's childhood was an unhappy one; but the picture of his childhood, as drawn by himself, does not strike the reader who is familiar with the annals of New England as a new SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 85 or strange one. In its general features the picture is familiar enough. While sombre and, to a degree, depressing, the typical New England child-life was not without great compensations. It was rich in the rugged virtues that constitute the strength of character. The hard soil inured those that cultivated it to indus- try and frugality. The natural scenery and the preva- lent theology gave to life a serious character. The firm family discipline inculcated authority and obedi- ence, and fortified the will. The common schools put the tools of education into the pupil's hands, and showed him how to use them. The Latin schools, academies, and colleges opened the door that led to the higher learning. The civic life was a good politi- cal education. The preaching from the pulpit was a strong discipline of the logical faculties, and thor- oughly subordinated the moral nature of the hearer to the conceptions of God and the higher law. Mann's own statement, that at ten years of age he already knew the dialectics by which Dr. Emmons maintained the creed, as well as the creed itself, speaks elo- quently for the powerful intellectual stimulus that the old New England pastors brought to bear upon their congregations. The firm basis of conviction that they laid down, although conviction in ideas that we may deem repellent, was nevertheless almost always a ground-work for moral earnestness and often for burning moral enthusiasm. There was of course much repression of the feelings, and a woful poverty in the aesthetic elements of life. But when all is said, it would be a great undertaking to attempt to tell what New England owes, and the country owes. 86 HORACE MANN to men who were trained in all essential respects like Horace Mann, and whose childhood was quite as unhappy as his own. In his twentieth year young Mann fell in with a fine college preparatory teacher, and, having first obtained the reluctant consent of his guardian, he began at once to study for college. In six months he fitted himself for admission to the Sophomore class of Brown University, which he entered in September, 1816. It would, perhaps, be hard to say whether this achievement is the more striking testimony to the ability and zeal of master and pupil on the one hand, or to the low standard of the college on the other. There can, however, be no question that the ability and zeal of master and pupil were very great. The range of study during those six months embraced, besides Latin and Greek grammar, Corderius, ^sop's Fables, the ^neid, parts of the Georgics and Buco- lics, Cicero's Select Orations, the Four Gospels and part of the Epistles in Greek, and parts of the Oroeca Majora and Minora. Mann soon took the first place in his own class and in the college. A college friend testifies to the excellence of his preparation, and to his great ability as a student. He translated the Greek and Roman authors with great facility, accu- racy, and elegance; he excelled also in the mathe- matical and modern sciences, and showed unusual ability as a writer, debater, and orator. The Horace Mann tradition lived long in the college. On com- mencement day he took the highest honor, choosing as the subject of his oration, " The Gradual Advance- ment of the Human Species in Dignity and Happi- SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 87 ness." Anotlier college theme that has come down to us suggests still more decisively the trend of his mind: "The Duty of Every American to Posterity." The long and painful religious conflict that he had passed through only strengthened the moral bent of his nature, which had been pronounced from the beginning. Speaking once of his youthful longing for education, he said he knew not how it was, but the motive of his longing was never power, wealth, or fame; it was rather an instinct that impelled him towards knowledge, as the instinct of migratory birds impels them northward in springtime. All his boyish air-castles had reference to doing something for man- kind. The early precepts of benevolence inculcated by his parents flowed out in that direction, and he believed that knowledge was his needed instrument to accomplish his object. Strangely enough, none of Mr. Mann's biographers give any account of his private studies after he left college. His works, however, show a good range of reading in those branches of literature and general knowledge that lie proximate to the life of an edu- cated man who is actively engaged in professional and public business. On his graduation in 1819 Mr. Mann entered a law- yer's office at Wrentham, to fit himself for the profession of the law. He was soon called back to the Univer- sity, where he served as tutor in the Latin and Greek languages, and as librarian for two years. He won an excellent reputation as a teacher; he was marked by ability and thoroughness and the moral stimulus that he imparted to his pupils. He improved the 88 HORACE MANN opportunity to review and extend his classical stud- ies. At the same time lie now came to the conclu- sion that the classics were far inferior to the modern sciences, both as information and as mental disci- plines. The heathen mythology was the product of human imagination; Nature was the handiwork of God. His valuation of scientific studies was far in advance of the time, and he longed to pursue them farther, but was restrained by the meagre facilities for such work that were accessible, as well as by the necessity of hastening his preparation for his chosen profession. On leaving Providence the second time, in 1821, Mr. Mann entered the celebrated law school conducted by Judge Gould, at Litchfield, Connecticut. Here he made a fine record for talents and attainments. One of his fellow-students at Litchfield says that he parted with Mann in the full conviction that he would become one of the great men of the time. His only drawback was lack of physical vigor, combined with a great de- velopment of the nervous system. This fellow-stu- dent also reports that Mann, at this period, was deeply interested in metaphysics. Brown being his favorite author. But in respect to this subject His mind was soon to take a new bend. In 1823 Mr. Mann was admitted to the bar, and entered at once upon the practice of the law. He continued in the practice of this profession until he entered upon his educational career in 1837, a period of fourteen years. At first he made his residence at Dedham, but in 1833 he removed to Boston. At the bar he was so successful that he is said to have won SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEKS 89 four out of every five contested cases in which, he was engaged as counsel. This extraordinary success was due to two causes — the ability with which he pre- pared his cases and tried them^ and the scrupulous care with which he undertook them. He made it an inflexible rule of his professional life never to under- take a cause that he did not believe to be right. About the time that he established himself at Ded- ham, Mr. Mann began to take an active interest in pub- lic affairs. In 1824 he delivered a Fourth of July oration that attracted the attention of John Quincy AdamS; who predicted a distinguished career for its author. In 1826 he delivered, also at Dedham, a eulogy on Adams and Jefferson that the same high authority characterized as "of splendid composition and lofty eloquence." A man who acts upon Mann's rule in respect to accepting cases at law as a counsel is not likely to take up public causes inconsiderately, but is likely to command a great measure of the public confidence. He was elected to the State House of Eepresentatives in 1827, and was re-elected each year until he was transferred to the Senate in 1833. Here he served four years, the last two as President of the body. He was a laborious and influential member of the legislature. His first speech was in defence of religious liberty, which he thought was endangered by some measure that was pending. He also made one of the first speeches on railroads ever printed in the country. He took, however, slight interest in partisan politics, but a deep interest in the larger public questions, — ■ charities, benevolent institutions, education, temperance, civil, political, and religious 90 HORACE MANN liberty^ and good morals. He was deeply interested in the welfare of the insane, and it was owing to his efforts that the Worcester Hospital for the insane, one of the early institutions of the kind in the country, was founded in the face of much indifference and some opposition and obloquy. He afterwards served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and took a most active interest in the administration of the institution. He was also influential in securing the new legislation concerning education that he was soon after called upon to administer. While in the legis- lature Mr. Mann assisted in carrying through a measure for revising the State laws, and he was afterward a member of the commission that made the revision. Men are known by the company they keep, says the adage. While Mr. Mann highly prized inter- course with cultivated minds, he was not greatly attracted to men who had no deep interest in amel- iorating the evils of society. He was ethical in everything. His heart went only where his head recognized benevolence. When Dr. Channing, Father Taylor of the Sailors' Bethel, George Combe, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and Charles Sumner are named as among the foremost of his friends, more has been done to characterize him than a chapter of descrip- tion or analysis could accomplish. While at Brown University Mr. Mann became acquainted with the daughter of Dr. Messer, the president. She was then a child. All his ideas of excellence and all his hopes of future happiness be- came identified with her image, and after carrying her in his heart ten years he married her. He post- SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 91 poned his marriage until tie had paid his college debts, acquired a small competence, and won a recog- nized position in his profession and in public life. The two years of happy married life that he passed with her were to him the first perfect proof of the goodness and benignity of God, and its sudden termi- nation, for a time, seemed to furnish proof of just the opposite. Mr. Mann was given to the use of impas- sioned language, but perhaps he was never more impassioned than in speaking afterwards of this happy period, when for him there was a light upon the earth brighter than the light of the sun, and a voice sweeter than the harmonies of Nature. He thought that the happiness, which was boundless in present enjoyment, would be perpetual in duration. His life went out of itself. One after another the feelings that had been before fastened upon other objects loos- ened their strong grasp and went to dwell and rejoice in the sanctuary of her holy and beautiful nature. Ambition forgot the applause of the world for the more precious gratulation of that approving voice. Joy ceased its quests abroad, for at home there was an exhaustless fountain to slake its renewing thirst. There imagination built her palaces and garnered her choicest treasures. His wife ennobled his life, sup- plying new strength for toil and new^ motives for excellence. The sudden close of such a life as this plunged him into the deepest grief, and brought back again the thick clouds of the old spiritual con- flict, which for a time threatened to darken the re- mainder of his days. She died suddenly while he was watching at night alone by her bedside, no per- 92 HORACE MANN son within call. The terrors of that dreadful night spent alone with the dead, where he was found nearly insensible in the morning, revisited him with fearful power for many years at each recurring anniversary, and were never wholly dispelled. It was the sad event just narrated that led to the removal from Dedham to Boston. Priends who loved Horace Mann, and feared that he would be practically lost to the world if left to himself, intervened to effect this removal, hoping thus to break up in part old associ- ations, to surround him with new scenes and objects of interest, and to re-energize him for continued use- fulness. The new experiment was only partially suc- cessful. Misfortune continued to follow him. In lending assistance to a brother, he had become finan- cially involved to such a degree that the brother's failure not only swept away the hard-earned accumu- lations of his professional life, but even compelled him to undergo positive privation. In boyhood, he re- lates, the habit of depending upon himself for the gratification of all his wants became so fixed that, to the end of his life, a pecuniary favor was a painful burden to be eased only by a full requital. This old habit, as well as his moral sense, would not permit the withholding of anything that was necessary to satisfy the obligations that he had assumed. With all the rest, the death of dear friends, as of his mother and Dr. Messer, followed and deepened his grief. But by degrees, owing largely to the minis- trations of kind friends, he was won back to useful- ness and happiness. When he returned to the world, we read in The Life, it was rather as a spectator than SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 93 a participator in its ordinary pleasures ; but, baptized in the divine flame which sorrow lights in the soul, he was ready to do all he could to supply its needs, and it seemed to others that the period had passed when an unworthy thought or motive could influence him. In these severe trials, his habit of indefati- gable labor rendered him excellent service. These periods of sorrow in Mr. Mann's early life awaken in the minds of the reflecting the question, w^hether it was morally necessary that he should thus suffer in order to become fitted to perform the great work that lay before him. Perhaps what has been said, left to stand alone, would create a false impression. Mr. Mann was by no means simply a sombre moralist. A friend who knew him and his wife at Dedham says he was brill- iant in conversation, with sparkling repartee, gush- ing wit, and a merry laugh, given to droll sayings, but free from nonsense. He was original, refreshing, and exciting, because he treated even trifling subjects in a manner peculiar to himself. He had great power to draw out other minds; even the timid would rise from conversation with him, wondering at the talent, thought, and feeling that he had opened up in them. He had exquisite tenderness and care for the feelings of others, and a delicate appreciation of woman's nature, and a high estimation of her capabilities, although shrinking from the assumption on her part of any place in the social world for which she was unfitted. He had a keen love for the beautiful, and was quick to recognize the qualities that give eleva- tion to character. He was a radiant man, then, at 94 HORACE MANN Dedliam; perhaps more so in the sprightliness and genuine mirthfulness of his nature than after the blight of sorrow fell so heavily upon him. The senior Mann had died of consumption when his son was thirteen years old. Horace inherited weak lungs, and it has been said of him that be- tween his twentieth and thirtieth years he just skirted the fatal shores of that disease on which his father had been wrecked. His forced efforts to prepare for college, and his unremitting application after his admission, broke down his health completely at the close of his Sophomore year. He was for some time completely prostrated, and he never recovered even his own wonted health. The writer just referred to says that from this time on his strength was only the salvage from a wreck. He said himself, in his last years, that he had lost his health before he knew how to care for it. To the end of life he continued capable of working with great intensity and effective- ness for protracted periods of time; but when the work was done and the tension relaxed, he paid a fearful compensation in the sufferings that he under- went. His high nervous temperament, sensitive or- ganization, and keen sensibility both gave him power and made him suffer. Only one of Mr. Mann's schools remains to be noticed. Just as he was about to take the public schools of Massachusetts for his province, he was converted to phrenology by reading George Combe's Constitution of Man. A few years later Mr. Combe visited the United States, remaining in the country two years, which time he devoted to travel, to study. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 95 to writing, and particularly to lecturing on his favorite subjects. Mr. Mann became liis interested auditor, firm disciple, and devoted friend. The correspond- ence between the two men that began in America continued, with some slackening towards the end, until closed by the Scotch philosopher's death. All things considered, the most interesting series of let- ters that Mrs. Mann has inserted in The Life are her husband's letters to Combe. Combe wrote of Mann: "He is a delightful companion and friend, and among all the excellent men whom we met in Boston, none entwined themselves more deeply and closely with our affections than Horace Mann." Late in life Mr. Mann wrote to Combe: "There is no man of whom I think so often; there is no man of whom I write so often; there is no man who has done me so much good as you have. I see many of the most valuable truths as I never should have seen them but for you, and all truths better than I should otherwise have done." Personal qualities aside, what inter- ested Mann most in Combe was the philosophy of human nature and human development that he found in his writings, lectures, and conversation; and what interested Combe most in Mann was the practical experiment that Mann was making to carry out some of his own favorite educational ideas. Mann avowed the opinion that George Combe would work a revolu- tion in mental science equal to that which Lord Bacon had worked in natural science. Still he did not follow his master to all lengths. Essentially prosaic and destitute of imagination, although gifted with great logical powers, Combe could believe in nothing that 96 HORACE MANN he did not see and understand; while Mann, on the other hand, with his mental endowment, was able to transcend the empirical sphere and believe firmly in a future life of endless progress. The two men always found an inseparable bond in their common belief in the improvability of the race. The acknowledged ability of the early phrenolo- gists, the high character of many of their adherents, and the undeniable fact that they had laid hold of some important truths have not prevented the so- called science from falling into universal contempt. In the minds of students it means unscientific method and false results; in the common mind it is associ- ated with the quackery of the showman ; while it has no place whatever in the history of thought as con- ceived and written by orthodox writers on the history of philosophy. In fact, phrenology long ago fell into such complete discredit that the man who mentions it to-day expects to see on the faces of his auditors either a smile or a blank stare. It is now difiicult even to create in imagination the state of mind that led many able men, both in Europe and America, to look confidently to phrenology as the harbinger of great mental and moral ameliorations — to find in the Constitution of Man a manual of universal train- ing and cultivation; in a word, a sort of Bible. To recreate that state of mind is far from the present purpose. Still Mr. Mann's enthusiastic adhesion to the gwasi-science, and its extraordinary influence upon his mind and work, compel a brief view of the subject. As a science phrenology was built on two funda- mental ideas. One is the idea that the faculties of SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTEES 97 the Imman mind can be localized in the human brain. The other is the idea that the localization of these faculties can be effected by observing the protuber- ances of the human skull. The phrenologists differed in many points, but in these two they all agreed. The first idea is now fully accepted by all accredited authorities; the second is just as thoroughly rejected. But this was not the only fatal mistake that Gall and his followers committed. They formed wrong ideas of what mental faculties are, conceiving them as things or forces, rather than as modes or forms in which the one energy that we call the mind asserts or manifests itself. Another fatal mistake was the defective observation and analysis- that led to the elaborate but crude and even fantastical scheme or chart of "faculties" that they made out. And, thirdly, they were largely discredited by their false localizations. The portions of the brain lying under the labels that the phrenologists X-)asted on the human skull do not, in general, correspond with the func- tions that the labels name. Surely, such blunders as these are sufficient to discredit any scheme of phil- osophy, and especially a new one. But the breakdown of phrenology as a science should not blind us to the fact that its cultivators started with a sound postulate, and that their general method was right. Their postulate was the doctrine of localization; their method, observation and experi- ment. They were the experimental psychologists of their time. If they had cultivated interior as well as external observation, they might have been saved from some of their great blunders; but they broke 98 HORACE MANN wholly with the introspective tradition, and, it can hardly be doubted, gave the objective method of men- tal study a considerable impulse. They did stimulate a certain kind of mental observation and create much independent study of human nature. What is more, if little can be told about a man by feeling of his "bumps," something can be told by studying the size and form of his head, his face, manner, and tempera- ment — to which last the phrenologists attached great importance. The phrenologists built upon the basis of their science an extensive system of education. Combe, in fact, regarded his best known book only as an introduction to an educational treatise. This system embraced the whole human being — his physical, mental, and moral nature. Some of the favorite ideas of the phrenologists were these: The body must receive careful attention as well as the soul; physical health is essential to efficiency, usefulness, happiness; food and clothing are moral factors as well as books, studies, schools, and sermons; man must be considered in his environment, and not merely in himself. In fact, the full title of Combe's best known book is The Constitution of Man Con- sidered in Relation to External Objects. The funda- mental postulate in this educational system was that man is governed by definite laws, and that wisdom consists in observing them. "The laws God has impressed on man," says Combe, "are the keys to the right understanding of His rule." No doubt " observing the laws " often became mere cant in the mouths of phrenologists; but the conception of law SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 99 as dominating the human world, at the opening of this century, greatly needed to be preached. Another most important principle was that the faculties, and so the whole mind, can be developed through appro- priate exercise or activity. The tendency was strong to individualize the constituent elements of character as they were understood, and so to effect the appli- cation of stimulus or its withdrawal as might be thought necessary. If the doctrine of environment tended to make man the creature of circumstances, the doctrine of growth through activity tended to put his mind and character, so to speak, in his own hands, and thus to give education a powerful im- pulse. Possibly the phrenologists conceived the law of activity more mechanically than Frobel and Her- bart, but they certainly put upon it an equal stress.^ But the phrenologists did much more than to en- courage education. Holding law to be universal, as they did, they strove to free teaching from its empiricism and to render it scientific. They said education should be practical. They emphasized the sciences among studies, and particularly physiology and the sciences of the mind. They entered most enthusiastically into practical educational work, both in England and in America. The fact seems to be little known, but it is a fact that George Combe 1 We have the authority of Charles Gibbon, The Life of George Cornhe, London, 1878, Vol. II., p. 9, for the statement that Combe was offered the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy in the University of Michigan. Some of the prominent adherents of phrenology in the United States, beside Mann, were Dr. S. G. Howe, George B. Emerson, and Cyrus Pierce, all distinguished educators. lOa HORACE MANN was almost as active in the cause of popular edu- cation in England as Horace Mann was in the United States.^ The reader must not suppose that these paragraphs are an attempt to rehabilitate the phrenologists. The aim is merely to discover and, if possible, to explain why they attracted Mr. Mann, and whether, and in what way, they influenced educational progress. And there can be little question that in a day when mental science was to a great degree abstract and barren; when the doctrine of individualism and the current theory of the government of the world excluded the conception of universal law from the minds of most men; when opinion was chaotic, and practice empiri- cal, and when education was deeply marked by the characteristics of the time — the phrenologists did set before men certain definite educational ends, and did point them to a method that they promised would lead to those ends. In other words, phrenology gave her devotees, as they thought, an insight into human nature, a vision of human perfectibility, and a prac- tical work to be accomplished. Undoubtedly, in its day, phrenology energized for the work of life some very influential men who would never have been ener- gized, or at least not fully so, by the old metaphysics 1 George Combe was one of the most tireless writers on education of his time. He produced no great work that is distinctly educa- tional, but dealt with many phases of the subject in numerous pub- lications. Mr. William Jolly, H.M. Inspector of Schools, collected and edited his educational writings, in a work that bears the follow- ing title : Education, Its Principles and Pixictice, as Developed by George Comhe, Author of the ^^Constitution of Man." London: Macmillan & Co., 1879, 8vo., pp. 772. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 101 or the old theology.^ In a sense, the impression that phrenology made on men's minds may be likened to that created on its first appearance by the Sensational philosophy. But there was a great difference. Whatever may be the value of the foregoing specu- lations, Mr. Mann accepted at the hands of Gall and his disciples his whole philosophy of human nature. He built all his theories of intellectual and moral improvement upon the ideas with which they fur- nished him. Their teachings strongly reinforced his belief in the improvability of men, thus making him still more optimistic. His aim, as a practical re- former, became more definite and certain under their 1 After remarking that no teacher of the day was so inspiring to Richard Cobden as George Combe, Mr. Morley declares that few emphatically second-rate men have done better work. "That memorable book \_The Constitution of Man'\" he says, "whose principles have now, in some shape or other, become the accepted commonplaces of all rational persons, was a startling revelation when it was first published in 1828, showing men that their bodily systems are related to the rest of the universe, and are subject to general and inexorable conditions ; that health of mind and char- acter are connected with states of body ; that the old ignorant or ascetical disregard of the body is hostile both to happiness and mental power, and that health is a true department of morality. We cannot wonder that zealous men were found to bequeath fort- unes for the dissemination of that wholesome gospel ; that it was circulated by scores of thousands of copies, and that it was seen on shelves where there was nothing else save the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress." " To show, as Combe showed," Mr. Morley continues, "that the character and motives of men are connected with phys- ical predispositions, was to bring character and motive within the sphere of action, because we may, in that case, modify them by attending to the requirements of the bodily organization. A bound- less field is thus opened for the influence of social institutions, and the opportunities of beneficence are without limit," — Life of Richard Cobden. Boston, 1881, pp. 64, 65. 102 HOEACE MANN influence. He sometimes wrote his letters in their jargon. He even believed that it was his " causality " which saved him from utter wreck in the two great crises of his life, viz., those growing out of his early theological training and of his great bereavement. Phrenology doubtless led him, as in the Sixth Report, to overvalue the study of physiology and to commit other blunders. Still it is difficult for one who looks over the whole ground to resist the conviction that the measure of truth found in the pseudo-scienGe did much more to fit him for his great educational work than his earlier readings of Brown and the other metaphysicians. This sketch of Horace Mann's life, from his birth to the age of forty-one, and of his mental and moral character, completes the general introduction to the present work. The sketch serves the additional purpose of showing that he was admirably equipped for this work, so far as equipment could be deter- mined without actual trial and testing. Apart from his natural abilities he had been reared on a Massa- chusetts farm, and was thus familiar with the brief and simple annals of the poor. He had achieved, by dint of great exertion, a good college education, and had some practice in the teaching art. He had gained the knowledge and the discipline that the study and the practice of the law confers upon the student and practitioner. He had had ten years of active experi- ence in public life, and was in sympathy with all the better public movements of the time. He was the master of a copious eloquence, with both tongue and pen, which sometimes tended to the verbose and SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 103 heavy, but again was nervous and shot through with vivid imagination and impassioned feeling. His cast of character was distinctly ethical. The master forces of his life may be thus presented: Faith in God as infinitely wise, true, and good; Faith in men as in- definitely improvable, both in the life that now is and in the life that is to come; Faith in knowledge and teaching as conducing directly and powerfully to man's improvability ; Faith in his own duty to glorify God by ministering to the improvability of men. Language could hardly exaggerate the intensity of his belief in every one of these articles of faith. Save in a single particular, this creed, if creed it may be called, will not be made the subject of criti- cism in this place. It would not be difficult to show that Mr. Mann, like all men of his habit of mind, overestimated the efiicacy of knowledge and teaching, and so of schools and education, as leading to the amelioration of man's estate.^ He no doubt failed to appreciate how much still remains to be done when a man has been taught the way of life more perfectly: 1 Rev. E. E. Hale has some interesting remarks concerning cer- tain ideas that were afloat in his boyhood. " It will be hard," he says, "to make boys and girls of the present day understand how much was then expected from reforms in education." He mentions Dr. Channing, the Swiss Reformers, the Round Hill School, Lord Brougham and his " march of intellect," the Society for the Promo- tion of Useful Knowledge, etc. " In America," he says, " the reign of lyceums and mechanics' institutes had begun. Briefly, there was the real impression that the Kingdom of Heaven was to be brought in by teaching people what were the relations of acids to alkalies, and what was the derivation of the word 'cordwainer.' If we only knew enough, it was thought we should be wise enough to keep out of the fire and should not be burned." — A New Eng- land Boyhood, pp. 25, 26. 104 HORACE MANN | lie must be induced or moved to walk in that way. Mr. Mann did not justly measure those elements of charac- ter and life that transcend the understanding. He did not make sufficient allowance for the power of he- redity, conservative habit, inertia, custom, or for the i play of feeling and will. He therefore expected re- j suits to flow from rational causes that human expe- rience has never justified. Still, we need not regret | his mistake. The prophets and apostles of great | causes are men of faith and enthusiasm, and if i they did not magnify their work they could never | accomplish it. CHAPTER IV SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF EDUCATION Near the close of his legislative term, Mr. Mann signed, as President of the Senate, a bill upon which his whole after life, and so this history, turns. It bore the date April 20, 1837, carried the title "An Act Relating to Common Schools," and contained the following provisions : (1) His Excellency the Governor, with the advice and consent of the council, should appoint eight persons, who, together with the governor and lieu- tenant-governor ex offidis, should constitute and be denominated the Board of Education; the persons so appointed should hold their offices for the term of eight years, provided that the first person named should go out of office at the end of one year, the person next named at the end of two years, etc., till the whole Board be changed; and the governor, with the advice and consent of the council as before, should fill all vacancies, which occurred from death, resignation, or otherwise. (2) The Board of Educa- tion should prepare and lay before the legislature, in a printed form, on or before the second Wednesday of January, annually, an abstract of the school re- turns received by the Secretary of the Common- 105 106 HORACE MANN wealth; it might appoint its own secretary, who should receive a reasonable compensation for his ser- vices, and who should, under the direction of the Board, collect information of the actual condition and efficiency of the common schools, and other means of popular education, and diffuse as widely as possible throughout every part of the Commonwealth, infor- mation of the most approved and successful methods of arranging the studies and conducting the education of the young, to the end that all children who de- pended upon the common schools for instruction, might have the best education which those schools could be made to impart. (3) The Board of Education, annu- ally, should make a detailed report to the legislature of all its doings, with such observations as its experi- ence and reflection might suggest, on the condition and efficiency of the system of popular education, and the most practicable means of improving and extend- ing it. At the session of the legislature for 1836-1837 the Directors of the American Institute of Instruction had memorialized that body to consider the expediency of appointing, for a term of years, a Superintendent of the Common Schools of the Commonwealth, urging the usual arguments in favor of the measure. Be- sides, Governor Everett, in his opening address, recommended the creation of a State Board of Educa- tion. The whole subject was accordingly referred to the joint committee of the two houses on education. The committee reported the text of the act summar- ized above, which was drawn by Mr. James G. Carter of the House of Kepresentatives. At first, the meas- SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 107 ure was lost in the House by a vote of nearly two to one, but, owing to Mr. Carter^ s wise management and advocacy, was finally carried. It was the culmination of the agitation that he had first aided thirteen years before, and that he had continued to promote to the utmost until the end finally crowned the work. The step that the legislature took was in no sense a revolutionary one. The law imposed some duties upon the Board that it had created, but conferred upon it no real powers. The Board was nothing more than an organ of information. The duties im- posed upon it would mean much or mean little accord- ing as the law should be interpreted by positive action. The duties of the Board, if performed in a feeble and perfunctory way, would be useless, or worse than use- less ; but if they were performed with intelligence and vigor, they might become great instruments of power — how great we shall soon have occasion to see. Manifestly everything would depend first upon the character of the Board that the governor should ap- point, but ultimately upon the character of the Secre- tary that the Board should select. In no sense could the law be self -executing. The wisdom of creating a board at all for such a purpose may be questioned. Why not provide at once for the executive officer who must give the law its efiiciency, and dispense with the board altogether? Why not adopt the recommendation of the Directors of the American Institute of Instruction rather than that of Governor Everett? Many of the States that followed Massachusetts in educational effort have not created such boards, and few of the States that have 108 HORACE MANN done so have intrusted tliem with the appointment of the State educational executive. The general ques- tion need not be canvassed in this place ; it suffices to remark that the Massachusetts Board of Education at least was not a piece of mistaken judgment. It is not at all probable that a State education department, under the direction of one man, could have been cre- ated in 1837, or for years thereafter, if indeed at all. That would have savored of centralization. At the time it was, no doubt, a plural department or nothing. But this is not all; the Board, made up as it was, gave to the department a respectability and dignity, and so a place in the public confidence, that no single executive could have commanded. It has always stood for safety, at least, if not for brilliant initia- tive. Still further, it has no doubt provided, all things considered, a better State educational adminis- tration than the people would have directly provided for themselves, voting at the popular election. The Board has also proved a very competent authority to manage, with the help of its Secretary, the State Normal schools. The first Board was made up with peculiar care. It was necessary to avoid arousing opposition as far as possible. Years afterward, in the midst of the great religious controversy that we shall have occasion to sketch on future pages, Mr. Mann explained the criteria that were followed in selecting the members. All the great parties into which the State was divided were regarded. First of all religious views were con- sidered, then political considerations. Preferences for men that the public had expressed by elevating SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 109 them to official positions, were thought important. And the element of locality, although considered among the weakest motives, was not wholly disre- garded. Besides the ex offioiis members, the list, when it appeared, carried the names of these dis- tinguished citizens : James G. Carter, Emerson Davis, Edmund Dwight, Horace Mann, Edward A. Newton, Robert Eantoul, Jr., Thomas Eobbins, and Jared Sparks. Carter and Eantoul, one a Whig and the other a Democrat, were taken from the House of Eepresentatives ; Mann, a Whig, came from the Sen- ate. Dwight was a Unitarian, Newton an Episco- palian, both business men, while Davis and Eobbins were orthodox clergymen. Sparks had formerly been a Unitarian minister, and was at the time President of Harvard College. The educators of the State generally expected that Mr. Carter would be made the Secretary of the Board, and the appointment of another was the source of much surprise and disappointment. This was not without reason. If any man could be said to have deserved the office, Mr. Carter was the man. His labors as a teacher and writer on popular education were univer- sally appreciated, and the governor very properly placed his name at the head of the list of appointive Board members. But Mr. Carter was passed by and Horace Mann chosen. Mann had done what he could to promote the bill in the Senate, and was well known to be an ardent friend of public education; he had served as a tutor at Providence, and as member of the school committee at Dedham; but he had no record that could be compared with Mr. Carter's. It 110 HORACE MANN was not strange, therefore, that his preferment should create surprise. The selection of Mr. Mann and his ac- ceptance were brought about by Mr. Edmund Dwight, a gentleman whom we shall soon have occasion to notice more at length. Mr. Dwight, no doubt, appre- ciated the peculiar nature of the work to be done by the Secretary, and discerned in Mr. Mann peculiar fitness for this work. A business man himself of great capacity and large enterprises, he knew that a man might be a scholar, a teacher, and an able writer on education, and yet not possess the peculiar combi- nation of qualities that would be necessary to crown the creation of the Secretaryship and of the Board of Edu- cation with success. Mr. Carter might have made an admirable Secretary ; but it cannot be claimed, at this distance, that he had ever shown the necessary capa- city for the work to be done. Mr. George B. Emerson, in the able contribution ^ that he made to the contro- versy growing out of Mr. Mann's Seventh Eeport, answered in the negative the question, whether it would not have been better for the Board to choose a Secretary who was engaged in the practical work of teaching, basing his answer on general principles as well as on special facts. No teacher could, have been found so deeply versed as Mr. Mann in the ex- ternals of the schools, as the application of the laws and the duties of committee men. More than this, a teacher would be wedded to his own modes of instruction and discipline, and not be likely to possess the necessary impartiality. It was one of the great 1 Observations on a Pamphlet entitled ^^ Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace 3fann." Boston, 1844. SECKETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 111 lessons of history that reforms in society come almost uniformly from abroad. The Board of Education was a reform ; and the Board wisely chose for its execu- tive of&cer a member of a profession so foreign to teaching that he would be able to consider every ques- tion from a new point of view. Furthermore, Mr. Mann held a prominent place in the State, and his mental and moral endowments were pre-eminent. Mr. Emerson also found decisive proof of the wisdom of the Board in the selection that it made, in Mr. Mann's profound and intimate acquaintance with the laws and institutions of Massachusetts, acquired espe- cially in the preparation of the Eevised Statutes, and in his strong humanitarian faith, feeling, and practice. Mr. Mann had not for a moment dreamed that he would be thought of in connection with the secretary- ship, or even thought of himself in such a connection. The proposition to elect him Secretary therefore struck him with surprise. However, he treated it seriously from the beginning. " A most responsible and important oflB.ce, " he wrote, " bearing more effect- ually, if well executed, upon the coming welfare of the State than any other oflfi.ce in it." Two or three extracts from his diary and letters will show how his mind worked on the subject, revealing his misgivings and moral reflections. He wrote, a few days after the election was proposed to him: " Ought I to think of filling this high and respon- sible office? Can I adequately perform its duties? Will my greater zeal in the cause than that of others supply the deficiency in point of talent and informa- tion? Whoever shall undertake that task must en- 112 HORACE MANN counter privation, labor, and an infinite annoyance from an infinite number of schemers, etc. , . . But should he succeed; should he bring forth the germs of greatness and of happiness which Nature has scattered abroad, and expand them into maturity, and enrich them with fruit; should he be able to teach, to even a few of this generation, how mind is a god over matter; how, in arranging objects of desire, a subordination of the less valuable to the more is the great secret of individual happiness ; how the whole of life depends upon the scale which we form of its relative values, — could he do this, what diffusion, what intensity, what perpetuity of blessings he would confer ! How would his beneficial influence upon mankind widen and deepen as it descended forever ! " The day that he accepted the office and handed his resignation of his membership in the Board to the governor, he wrote: "Henceforth so long as I hold this office I devote myself to the supremest welfare of mankind upon earth. An inconceivably greater labor is undertaken. With the highest degree of prosperity, results will manifest themselves but slowly. The harvest is far distant from the seedtime. Faith is the only sus- tainer. I have faith in the improvability of the race, — in their accelerating improvability. This effort may do, apparently, but little. But mere be- ginning a good cause is never little. If we can get this vast wheel into any perceptible motion, we shall have accomplished much. And more and higher qualities than mere labor and perseverance will be SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOARD 113 requisite. . . . Men can resist the influence of tal- ent; they will deny demonstration, if need be: but few will combat goodness for any length of time. A spirit mildly demoting itself to a good cause is a cer- tain conqueror. Love is a universal solvent. Wilful- ness will maintain itself against persecution, torture, death, but will be fused and dissipated by kindness, forbearance, sympathy. Here is a clew given by God to lead us through the labyrinth of the world." That Horace Mann, at the age of forty-one, should be willing to abandon his profession and retire from politics for the purpose of accepting the secretaryship of the nascent Board of Education, naturally excited much surprise. Naturally, also, it has continued to excite surprise. The riddle is easy to read. First, there is reason to think that he was not enthusiasti- cally attached to the legal profession. There is no doubt that the law interested him, or that he practised it with much success ; but his tone, when he has occa- sion to refer to the profession, is never colored by that warm devotion which has ever characterized the great lawyers. Then the inducement that drew him to the new cause was strong, and its nature must not be mistaken. It was not scientific interest, or the love of knowledge and instruction for their own sake. It was rather his abiding faith in the improvability of the race, in their accelerating improvability, and his faith in education as conducing to that end. He was moved by the power of moral ideas; as Mr. Martin puts it, " All subjects for him were shadowed by the eternities." In accepting the office of Secretary he was merely devoting himself to the supremest welfare I 114 HORACE MANN of mankind upon earth. So, as soon as practicable, he closed up his law office without a pang, and turned to his new mission, saying as he did so, "The inter- ests of a client are small compared with the interests of the next generation. Let the next generation, then, be my client." There is still another view to be taken of the sub- ject. What struck Mr. Mann as most extraordinary in relation to the office was, that every man who approached him on the subject, with the exception of Dr. Channing, asked about the salary that he was to receive, or raised the question of honor; while no man seemed to recognize the possible usefulness of the office, or the dignity and elevation which is in- wrought into beneficent action. Many of his friends thought his course distinctly foolish. But he went on his way unmoved. " If the title is not sufficiently honorable now," he wrote, "then it is clearly left for me to elevate it; and I had rather be creditor than debtor to the title." He wrote to his sister: "If I can be the means of ascertaining what is the best construction of houses, what are the best books, what is the best arrangement of studies, what are the best modes of instruction ; if I can discover by what appli- ance of means a non-thinking, non-reflecting, non- speaking child can most surely be trained into a noble citizen ready to contend for the right and to die for the right, — if I can only obtain and diffuse through- out this State a few good ideas on these and similar objects, may I not flatter myself that my ministry has not been wholly in vain?" CHAPTEE V THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE Mr. Mann served as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education twelve years. It is proposed in this chapter to give a general account of his admin- istration of the ofi&ce, and then in succeeding chapters to present fuller accounts of two or three of its more important features. First, however, it will be well to describe the more important w^ork that Mr. Mann's forerunners had left undone; or, in other words, to state the principal questions that immediately con- fronted him, growing out of the existing state of affairs. 1. The whole State needed to be thoroughly aroused to the importance and value of public instructiou . 2. The public schools needed to be democratized; that is, the time had more than come when they should be restored to the people of the State, high as well as low, in the good old sense of the name. 3. The public necessities demanded an expansion of public education in respect to kinds of schools and range of instruction. 4. The legal school organization and machinery, as existing, were not in harmony with the new social conditions. Moreover, current methods of adminis- tration were loose and unbusinesslike. 115 116 HORACE MANN 5. The available school funds were quite insuffi- cient for maintaining good schools, and called loudly for augmentation. 6. The schools were, to a great extent, antiquated and outgrown in respect to the quantity and quality of the instruction that they furnished, as well as in methods of teaching, management, discipline, and supervision.^ These are comprehensive propositions, flowing into one another. No attempt has been made to state them in the order of their ultimate importance, but rather in the order of their urgency, and in the order of Mr. Mann's fitness to deal with them and of the success that crowned his efforts. While he accom- plished much for the schools of Massachusetts and the country as schools, that is, as places where youth are prepared for life, his most obvious and effective 1 On tine side of supervision this was the situation in 1837, as Mr. Maun afterwards described it, drawing his facts from the town reports: (1) " In two-thirds of all the towns in the State teachers were allowed to commence school without being previously examined and approved by the committee as required by law. (2) In many cases teachers obtained their wages from the treasurer without lodging any duplicate certificate with him, as the law requires. (3) The law required committees to prescribe text-books. In one hundred towns — a third part in the Commonwealth — this duty was neglected, and all the evils incident to a confusion of books suffered. (4) The law required committees to furnish books to scholars whose parents were unable or had neglected to provide them. In forty towns this was omitted, and poor children went to school without books. (5) The law required committees to visit the schools a cer- tain number of times. From their own statements it appeared that out of three hundred towns about two hundred and fifty did not com- ply with the law. (6) On an average one-third of all the children of the State between the ages of four and sixteen were absent from school in the winter, and two-fifths of them in the summer." THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 117 work as an educational reformer was directed to their external features and to the system. He must be blind indeed who does not see the distinction between two classes of men; between such educators as Stein and Pestalozzi, Guizot and Frobel. The relative rank of the two classes is but a speculative question. If Pestalozzij Erobel, and their like, give the world new ideaSj it is Stein, Guizot, and their like, who make these ideas fruitful in the fullest sense by organizing them into institutions. Indeed, the Greeks did not differentiate as we do. Plato and Aristotle put much of their pedagogical thought in politi- cal treatises. Furthermore, the class in which Mr. Mann stands necessarily determines the character of any work that deals adequately with him. Such a work must be the story of practical activities, not the exposition of a philosophical or pedagogical system. Within a week of his acceptance of the office the new Secretary began a course of reading bearing upon his new duties. He reflected that no man could apply himself to any worthy subject, either of thought or of action, but that he would forthwith find it develop into dimensions and qualities of which before he had no conception. His first book was James Simpson's Necessity of Popular Education, his second one Miss Edgeworth's Practical Education. He found his new reading thoroughly delightful ; nothing, he said, could be more congenial to his taste, feelings, and principles. He also began to study school apparatus, writing at the time in his Journal that, on the point of bringing apparatus into common use, and thus 118 HORACE MANN substituting real for verbal knowledge, lie must en- deavor to effect a lodgement in the public mind. Immediately on liis acceptance, Mr. Mann began to work out a plan of operations that, when completed, was in perfect accord with the spirit of the law that created his office. He laid out a campaign that was educational in a double sense : it looked ultimately to the children and youth of the State, but immediately, though in a somewhat different sense, to the people of the State. Obviously, the first thing to be done was to awaken the public mind from its deep sleep. First on his programme, therefore, stood a circuit of visits extending through the State, inviting conven- tions of instructors, school committees, and all others interested in the cause of education, to be held in the different counties, and at such time availing himself of the opportunity to recommend some improvements, and generally to apply a flesh brush to the back of the public. His undertaking embraced much more than at first appears. There was in Massachusetts, as he believed, a great amount of scepticism as to the fundamental principles of American government and society. Some thought it futile, and some undesir- able, to attempt to elevate the masses. As one objector put it, the British government was the best in the world; classes were essential to society; some should be cultivated and refined, but others would meet their ends in toil and suffering, in living and dying in vulgarity. Such views as these were thor- oughly abhorrent to Horace Mann. His political principles were in complete accord with his moral sentiments. He was a democrat in the best sense of THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 119 that term. He believed that the separation of the children of the State in the period of education, — some attending the vulgar public schools while others go to the select private schools, — was a kind of trea- son to American principles; and one of the grand features of the educational reform to be wrought, as it shaped itself to his imagination, was the restora- tion of the common schools to their former honorable estate. His wish was to restore the good old custom of having the rich and the poor educated together; and for that end he desired to make the public schools as good as schools could be made, so that the line dividing the rich and the poor might not necessarily be coincident with that dividing the educated and the ignorant. In August the Secretary sent out his circulars announcing the times and places for holding the county conventions, and in October, armed with an address entitled " The Means and Objects of Common School Education, " — the first of a noble series, — he began his circuit. His reports of the conventions, while interesting in the extreme, must be taken with some allowance. His own glowing ardor led him to exaggerate the cold indifference that he encountered. He complains that a Barnstable newspaper gave less than a square to the educational convention, while devoting a full column to a county political conven- tion. At Salem no preparations had been made in advance; everything dragged, and the convention was one of the poorest of the series. One gentleman made the sapient suggestion that the Secretary, as he was entering upon his new duties, would do well to spend 120 HOE ACE MANN a day in every one of tlie public schools of the State. None spoke for what Mann considered the American side of the question. He returned to Boston in November, and on reaching it wrote in his Journal : "My great circuit is now completed. The point to which, three months ago, I looked forward with so much anxiety, is reached. The labor is done. With much weariness, with almost unbounded anxiety, with some thwartings, but, on the whole, with unexpected and extraordinary encouragement, the work is done. That, however, is but the beginning. I confess life begins to assume a value which I have not felt for five years before." On his return from his first missionary tour the Secretary prepared, for publication, his first abstract of the school returns from the State, and made ready his first annual report, which, on the first day of the new year, he presented to the Board with fear and trembling. Next came his special Report on School- houses. Mr. Mann's annual Reports were a most effec- tive instrument in reaching and influencing the public mind, and they will come before us for separate treat- ment. In February, 1838, he undertook to inaugurate a series of meetings for the teachers of Boston, where lectures should be delivered and discussions be held with interchanges of experience on educational sub- jects. He also continued his popular addresses to the public. Next in order came the incipient stage of the scheme to which the friends of better schools had from the first been looking with longing eyes. On THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 121 Marcli 13, 1838, Mr. Mann sent to the legislature an official communication, announcing that private munificence had placed at his disposal ten thousand dollars to promote common school education in Mas- sachusetts. The conditions of the gift Avere, that the legislature should vote an equal sum, both amounts to be used as needed under the direction of the Board of Education in qualifying teachers for the common schools. The name of the munificent giver was with- held. In what way the money should be applied to accomplish the end in view, was not even hinted. The legislature closed with the proposition, and the disposition to be made of the money became at once the subject of serious consideration. We find the Secretary in conference with committees representing various parts of the State in relation to founding schools for teachers. "If we get teachers' semina- ries," he wrote, "it will not be because they are of spontaneous growth." The discussion culminated in the establishment of the first Massachusetts Kormal schools. These schools rank among Mr. Mann's fore- most educational services to the State and country, and they richly merit the prominence that only a separate chapter can give them. At the opening of the autumn season, Mr. Mann began his second grand educational tour of the State. The address that he delivered at the various conven- tions was entitled " Special Preparation a Prerequisite to Teaching."^ It became clearer and clearer as he 1 The five other addresses of this series, published in The Life and Works of Horace Mann, bear the following titles : " The Neces- sity of Education in a Republican Government ; " " What God Does 122 . HORACE MANN went on liis way that his first great object, the awaken- ing of the public mind, was in course of accomplish- ment. Others thought his progress a triumphal procession, and his own comments are, perhaps, more encouraging than they had been the year before. At Hanover, where Mr. Eantoul, Mr. Putnam, ex-Presi- dent Adams, and Daniel Webster spoke, as well as himself, he wrote, "A great day for common schools." At Springfield the meeting was miserable, at once dis- couraging and repulsive. At Pittsfield the meeting was not numerous, but two or three individuals who attended were of themselves equal to a meeting. A little dent was made in Worcester. At Topsfield it was poor in point of numbers, but very good in point of respectability. The Taunton convention was a grand one. He closed up the circuit with the remark: "When I undertook the arduous labor of effecting improvements in our common school system up to a reasonable and practicable degree, I did so with a full conviction that it would require twenty or twenty- five years of the continued exertions of some one, ac- companied with good fortune, to accomplish the work ; and I think I took hold of it with a cordiality and resolution which would not be worn out in less than a quarter of a century. I am now of the opinion that one-twentieth part of the work has been done." It has seemed well to give a somewhat particular account of the first year of Mr. Mann's secretaryship. and What He Leaves for Man to Do in the Work of Education ; " " An Historical View of Education, Showing its Dignity and its Degradation ; " "On District School Libraries ; " "On School Pun- ishments." THE SECEETAKYSHIP IN OUTLINE 123 Henceforth we shall be able to move more rapidly. Still it is worth observing, before we begin to hasten our steps, that the incidents of Mr. Mann's annual circuits, in connection with his comments, are among the most interesting things in the history of his work. To make an impression in Berkshire, he said, was like trying to batter down Gibraltar with one's fist. After a meeting at Northampton he wrote: "Ah, me! I have hold of so large a mountain that there is much danger that I shall break my own back in trying to lift it." He said of Barnstable: "I will work in this moral, as well as physical, sandbank of a county till I can get some new things to grow out of it." At Dedham, his former home, the convention was a meagre, spiritless, discouraging affair. If the school- master was abroad in the county, he said he should like to meet him. At Wellfleet the convention was miserable, contemptible, deplorable. On a second visit to Pittsfield he found that no arrangements had been made to prepare the schoolhouse for the meeting; so Mr. Mann and Governor Briggs provided themselves with brooms, swept out the building, and set things in order. These incidents are culled from the records of several years. Mr. Mann was annoyed that, while as a lawyer or politician he was considered a popular speaker, he should awaken so little interest in the incomparably greater theme of education. Once he said that he queried whether, in regard to two or three counties in Massachusetts, it would not be advisable to alter the law for quelling riots and mobs, and instead of summoning the sheriff and j)osse comitatus for their dispersion, to put them to flight 124 HORACE MANN by making proclamation of a discourse on common schools. But of course similar lamentations have been heard since the days of Plutarch. In November, 1838, Mr. Mann brought out the first issue of The Common School Journal, which, as he said ten years afterwards, " came to the public rather as their fate than as a consequence of their free wilL It was born, not because it was wanted, but because it was needed." It was published semi-monthly, in octavo form, each number containing sixteen pages, making an annual volume of three hundred and eighty- four pages. The subscription price was one dollar a year. The prospectus of The Journal declared its great object to be, the improvement of the common schools and other means of education. More definitely, the prospectus announced that it would contain the laws of the State in relation to education, and the reports, proceedings, etc., of the State Board of Education. It would explain and enforce upon parents, guar- dians, teachers, and school officers their duty towards the rising generation. It would urge upon children and youth obedience to the laws of health, the culti- vation of good behavior, the development and enrich- ment of their intellectual faculties, and the control of the animal and selfish propensities through the exal- tation of the moral and religious sentiments. It would shun partisanship in politics, and sectarianism in religion, but would vindicate and commend the practice of the great and fundamental truths of civil and social obligation, of moral and religious duty. Its aim would be not so much the discovery of know- THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 125 ledge as its diffusion. Tlie trouble with the country was less that few things were known on the subject of education than that they were known to but few persons. It should, therefore, be the first effort of all the friends of education to make known the acces- sible body of truth to the largest possible number of persons, Tlie Journal was pledged to do what it could towards accomplishing this object.^ The Common Scliool Journal was more than a worthy successor to the educational journals that preceded it. The ten annual volumes published under Mr. Mann's editorship fully redeemed the generous promises of the prospectus. Besides his Reports, he contributed scores of valuable articles to its pages. Volume Y. of the Life and Worlcs contains more than three hun- dred pages of choice "extracts" from The Journal. He also laid other able pens under contribution. The intelligence published in the successive numbers is an important part of the educational history of the times, and files of it are eagerly sought for by libra- ries and by students of education. Looking back to 1837 through sixty years of his- tory, we can see that the educational revival in Mas- sachusetts, particularly as represented by the State Board of Education and its Secretary, was fated to encounter violent opposition. Indeed, no great power of divination could have been necessary to discover at the outset that such opposition would appear and 1 The first volumes of The Journal were published by Marsh, Capen, Lyon, & "Webb ; afterwards the publication passed into the hands of "Wm. B. Fowle, who continued it as editor and publisher after Mr. Mann's retirement from the Secretaryship. 126 HORACE MANN would assume three forms: one political, one pro- fessional, one religious. Very naturally, tlie elements of opposition tended strongly to coalesce; still, they were so distinct in their sources and history that they can be separately treated. The controversies that Mr. Mann waged with the Boston schoolmasters and religious sectaries demand each a separate chapter; the political controversy can be adequately treated in this place. The act creating the Board of Education was not passed without much difficulty. Only Mr. Carter's eloquent persuasion and tactful management carried it through the House of Eepresentatives. The act passed and the Board organized, the opposition waited to see what was going to happen. It did not have long to wait, because slight provocation answered its purpose. Although we have reserved the religious controversy for a separate chapter, it is not possible wholly to exclude the topic from this place. The first murmur of opposition to the Board was awakened by the innocent conduct of the Secretary. When on his first circuit of the State, Mr. Mann found himself one Sunday morning at Edgartown, and as there were only orthodox churches in town, which he did not care to attend, he went to Chapoquiddic to see the Indians, availing himself of the opportunity to show an interest in their welfare and to encourage them in well-doing. This conduct drew down upon him local criticism, one minister, who came into town the next day to attend the convention, going so far as to say, when he heard that Mr. Mann had not been to church, that he would as lief not hear him as hear him, and THE SECRETAKYSHIP IN OUTLINE 127 that Mann, if he did not wish to show a preference among the three churches, should have attended them all in succession. This is a sorry story, and not worth the telling, but it illustrates the temper of the times, and suggests the quarter from which the first attack was made upon the Board of Education. Denominational feelings were strong in those days ; and in Massachusetts they were accentuated by the bitter controversy that had attended the disruption of the Historical Church of the Commonwealth. The loss of so many churches, and especially the loss of Har- vard College, the fruit of the labors and prayers of the Puritans, had embittered the ecclesiastical body that now represented the ancient orthodoxy, and made its leaders distrustful of any movement that might tend still farther to weaken its hold upon society. Anxious to avoid sectarian or party prejudice, Mr. Mann was always judicious in his public addresses and published writings; but it is not impossible that, in private conversation, he uttered some of those caustic things about the '• godly " and the " orthodox " that we find in his diary and letters. At all events, it was well known that he was a stanch Unitarian, and his early speech in the legislature against reli- gious intolerance was probably not forgotten. Educa- tion lies proximate to religion — the school to the church. It was therefore certain in the beginning that keen eyes would closely scrutinize the acts of the Board and the Secretary, to discover whether they did not in reality constitute an engine of hereti- cal propagandism. Within a year of the time that the Secretary actually 128 HOEACE MANN entered upon liis work, the religions press opened the attack. It was charged that the Board had refused to assist in introducing into the common schools the American Sunday School Library. The charge was also made that the Board held it to be illegal to allow books that treated on religious subjects to be put on the desks of the schoolrooms. These were sins of omission. On the other hand, some religious people were extremely jealous of the Board's recommending books at all ; while some citizens charged that it was the design of the Board to introduce formal religious instruction into the schools. Then there were fears that the Normal schools would be filled with Unita- rian teachers, and that the district libraries would contain books of a baneful influence. The plain facts will be stated in another place. It is quite clear, however, that the Board and its Secretary were called upon to walk before the people with much circum- spection. Still, the opposition did not become dangerous until it assumed a political form. It continued to grow, however, and declared itself with force in the legislature in January, 1840. The new governor had come into office on a wave of political revolution. In his address he " cut " the Board, to use Mr. Mann's word, but suggested that the management of the schools should be left to the local authorities. Act- ing on this hint, a Committee on Eetrenchment, raised in the House of Representatives, recommended the abolition of the Board. The matter went to the Committee on Education, which recommended the abolition of the Board and the Normal schools, and THE SECKETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 129 the refunding to Mr. Dwight of the money that he had given to found these schools. The cry of ex- pense was raised so loud that, the Secretary said, if Englishmen should hear it they would think the Board were trying to surpass the British national debt. The Board was denounced as a measure of centralization, and the name " Prussian " was applied to it. Its purpose, so it was declared, was to substi- tute despotic principles for democratic principles. The Normal schools were useless, because the acade- mies and high schools could prepare all the teachers, and the district libraries were harmful because they contained no books of religion. The religious sec- taries did their utmost to assist the politicians who were resolved on revoking the recent legislation. The moment was a most anxious one. However, the attack was repelled with vigor, and when the division came "the bigots and vandals," as Mann called them, received only 182 votes to 245 cast on the other side. The result gave the friends of progress the liveliest satisfaction. Apparently, Mr. Mann had not expected the onslaught to succeed; but he anticipated that it would end in alienating a part of the public from the cause, which it would cost him another year of labor to reclaim.^ The legislative leader in the attack upon the Board in 1840 was dropped by his constituency at the next election. Still, the opposition did not at once sub- 1 The documentary history of the struggle of 1840 is found in The Common School Journal, Vol. II., pp. 224-248: the reports, both majority and minority, of the Committee on Education, the two leading speeches pro and con, and a selection of letters from leading educators. 130 HOEACE MANN side. The governor was not satisfied with the way things were going. So, at the next session, a bill was brought in that proposed to transfer the powers and duties of the Board to the governor and council, and of the Secretary to the Secretary of State. Again religious bigotry was at the bottom of the movement. One can hardly blame Mr. Mann for writing in his diary : " Thus another blow is aimed at our existence, and by men who would prefer that good should not be done rather than that it should be done by men whose views on religious subjects differ from their own. The validity of their claim to Christianity is in the inverse ratio to the claim itself; they claim the whole, but possess nothing." Eetrenchment of ex- penses was the political hobby of the year, and both parties, Mann said, ran a race for the laurel of econ- omy, and were willing to sacrifice all the laurels of the State to win it. The attack was strongly repelled, like the previous one; and, although the final vote was taken at an inopportune time for the Board and Secretary, the bill received only 114 votes to 151 cast against it. This was the end of practical opposition. It was most fortunate not only for the educational interests of Massachusetts, but for the educational interests of the country as a whole, that the victory rested where it did. In some other States, about the same time, reactionary measures prevailed, and the cause of edu- cation received a severe backset. Schools and education in the technical sense of the words by no means fully measured the movement for democratizing knowledge that set in early in the THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 131 present century. Cheap books, cheap periodicals, cheap postage, and circulating libraries were impor- tant parts of the moyement. For example, the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge was organized in Eng- land in 1837, Lord Brougham contributing the first book on the list. The Pleasures and Advantages oj Science. The district school library of the United States proposed to unite the school with the wider means of cultivation. To Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, that enlightened friend of popular intelligence, is due the credit of first recommending such libraries, which he did in his annual message to the legislature in 1827.^ Still it was not until 1835 that the legislature of IsTew York authorized the taxable inhabitants of the several school districts to impose a tax of not exceed- ing twenty dollars a year for the first year, or ten dollars a year thereafter, for the purchase of a dis- trict library, consisting of such books as they should in their district meeting direct. This was the real beginning of a movement that, in fifteen years, placed 1,600,000 books within the reach of the school chil- dren of the State of New York. Almost at once other States began to emulate the Empire State, and district school libraries soon overspread the land. Horace Mann's vivid remembrance of the advantages that he had received from the small library which Dr. Franklin gave to Mann's native town, not to 1 The following are Goyernor Clinton's words: "The scale of instruction must be elevated ; . . . small and suitable collections of books and maps attached to our common schools, and periodical examinations to test the proficiency of the scholars and the merits of the teachers are worthy of attention." 132 HORACE MANN speak of other causes, would naturally predispose him to look with favor upon the proposition. He espoused it with enthusiasm and adhered to it with persistence. The same legislature that created the Massachusetts Board of Education authorized the school districts to tax themselves for the purchase of apparatus and com- mon school libraries, the amount of the tax not to exceed thirty dollars for the first year and ten dollars for any succeeding year. Eeferring to this action in his first convention address, the Secretary said, although the provision made seemed trifling, yet he regarded the law as hardly second in importance to any that had been passed since the Act of 1647 created the common schools of the State. But the authority conferred by the law was permis- sive only, and the people were slow to act. Thinking that this was largely due to popular fear that the books purchased would be channels for propagating partisan and sectarian views, Mr. Mann proposed, in March, 1838, to the Board of Education that it should itself take measures for the preparation of a suitable common school library. This proposition was re- ceived with favor, and steps were immediately taken to carry it into effect.^ The Secretary now set himself to ascertain, by careful investigation, the number of public libraries in the State, the number of vol- umes that each contained, their estimated value, and the number of persons who had the right of access to them. Space cannot be found here for the reproduc- 1 The Board did not, however, attempt to print the books ; it selected them, and left the rest to private enterprise. THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 133 tion of the statistics that were gathered. Sufhce it to say, the results surpassed in all respects his worst apprehensions. He contrasted the existing libraries and the proposed common school libraries much to the disadvantage of the former. The existing libra- ries were owned and controlled by the rich and well- to-do; the new ones would reach the poor. The first were prepared for adult and educated minds; the sec- ond would instruct young and unenlightened minds. "By the former," he said, "books are collected in great numbers at a few places having broad deserts between; by the latter a few good books are to be sent into every school district in the State, so that not a child shall be born in our beloved Common- wealth who shall not have a collection of good books accessible to him at all times, and free of expense, within half an hour's walk of his home wherever he may reside." The Secretary continued to press the subject with vigor. He devoted to it, in its various aspects, the major part of his Keport for the year 1839. He saw clearly the fact that has been so much insisted upon in recent years, — that the common schools have only begun their work when they have taught the children of the land the- art of reading, and that it is equally their duty to give them a taste for good reading and some critical capacity for discovering what is worth reading and what is not. Mr. Mann deprecated the reading of history by children, at least as history has been generally written. After enumerating some of the best works of this class, then current, he ex- claimed: "And how little do these books contain 134 HORACE MANN which is suitable for children ! How little do they record but the destruction of human life and the activity of those misguided energies of men which have hitherto almost baffled the beneficent intentions of Nature for human happiness ! " Those persons who think the popular literary taste is all the time declining may pluck up courage from the perusal of Mr. Mann's description of the literature that was most sought after at the libraries in his time. " Fic- tion," "light reading," "trashy works," "bubble lit- erature," etc., are the names that he bestows upon the books that were most in demand. Such books had increased immeasurably within twenty years, and he was satisfied that the larger part of the unprofes- sional reading of the community was of this class of works. Verily, the deterioration of the human race in strength and virtue does go back to the days of Nestor ! The legislature in 1842 offered to every school district in the State a premium of fifteen dol- lars for the founding or extension of a district library, provided it would raise, by a district tax, an equal sum for the same object. At this time, it is said, one-fourth of the towns formed libraries, and the next year the privilege of the act was extended to cities and towns not cut up into school districts. Mr. Mann eulogized this legislation warmly in The Common School Journal. It must, however, be said that the district school library in the end fell far short of his glowing expectations. Applications for the State bounty reached their maximum in 1843, and continued to decline until 1850, when the law was repealed. The subject now assumed a new form : THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 135 the school libraries were superseded by the free town libraries, which have proved so eminently suc- cessful. The district school library, upon the whole, did not meet expectations. In some States it was more suc- cessful than in others. It has now generally passed away. To discover the reasons for its comparative failure is an inquiry lying beyond the range of this work. But the truth of history requires that two or three things shall be said. In their time, these libra- ries supplied a great number of people — children, youth, and adults — with a store of excellent reading matter that, otherwise, they could not have enjoyed. They were an anticipation, no doubt vague and unsat- isfactory, of the idea now so well defined, that the library is an invaluable auxiliary to the school. They prepared the way for the free public library, which has come to be an inseparable adjunct of a good school system, and a necessity to every progressive American community that is large enough to support it. Horace Mann therefore made no mistake when he pleaded for the children's library with an elo- quence equal to that with which he pleaded for the teachers' Normal school.^ Mr. Mann's promptness to adopt ideas and appli- ances that others originated is illustrated by his in- 1 On school district libraries, see The Life and Works of Horace Mann, Vol. XL, pp. 61, 297, 378, Vol. III., pp. 45, 374, Vol V., pp. 202, 215; Kiddle and Schem, The Cyclopsedia of Education, article " Libraries " ; S. S. Randall, History of the Common School System, of the State of Neio York, passim ; Public Libraries in the United States of America, etc., Washington, 1876, Chap. II. ; Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1895, 1896, Chaps. VIIL, IX. 136 HORACE MANN troduction into Massachusetts of a new instrument of educational power that was invented over the border in Connecticut. In this field there is no such thing as plagiarism. On his election as Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education, Dr. Henry Barnard made an immediate attempt to found a jSTormal school, and failed. Defeated but not disma-yed, conscious also of the gross incapacity of a majority of teachers in the schools of the State, he cast about him to see if anything could be done, and, if so, what, to furnish some immediate, if partial and temporary, relief. He undertook, at his own expense, " to show the practica- bility of making some provision for the better qualifi- cation of common school teachers, by giving them an opportunity to revise and extend their knowledge of the studies usually pursued in district schools, and of the best methods of school arrangements, instruc- tion, and government under the recitations and lect- ures of experienced and well-known teachers and educators." He called together such of the male teachers of Hartford County as saw fit to respond to his circular, twenty-six in number, in what he called a "convention," and together with his helpers pro- ceeded to give them the instruction that they needed. This was in 1839 ; the next year Mr. Barnard held a similar convention for lady teachers. Such was the origin of the teachers' institute, long one of the characteristic features of our American system of schools. Apparently Mr. Barnard thought only of a temporary expedient, but he builded better than he knew. His example was quickly followed. The first THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 137 institute in Kew York, and the first to bear the name in the country, was held in 1843 ; the first in Massa- chusetts and Ohio in 1845 ; the first in Michigan in 1846. Dr. Barnard did more than simply to call the institute into being — he determined practically its form and object as now carried on.^ In 1844 Mr. Mann drew the attention of the Board of Education to the subject of institutes. He had been particularly impressed by the nascent institute organization of New York, as he had been by the whole school system of that State. ^' We have borrowed her system of school libraries," " she has borrowed our sys- tem of Normal schools," he said ; ''let us now adopt the system of teachers' institutes which she has pro- jected, and thus maintain that noble rivalry of bene- factions which is born of philanthropy ; that cares more for the good that is done than it does who are the devisers, the agents, or the recipients of it." The next year the same generous citizen who had contributed to founding the Normal schools put at the Secretary's disposal $1000 to be used in making an experiment, and with this money four institutes were held in as many counties in the autumn of 1845, the first one at Pittsfield. In 1846 the legislature appropriated $2500 for the expenses of institutes, putting the money at the disposal of the State Board. Afterwards this 1 On teachers' institutes, see the following: Henry Barnard, Normal Schools and Other Institutions, Agencies, and Means de- signed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers, Hartford, 1851 ; The American Journal of Education, Vol. VIII., p. 673, Vol. XIV., p. 25.3, Vol. XV., pp. 276, 405, Vol. XXII., p. 557 ; J. H. Smart, Teachers' Institutes ; A Circular of Information of the Bureau of Education. Washington, 1885. 138 HORACE MANN sum was increased, and the conditions governing its use made more liberal. Mr. Mann was an efficient institute lecturer and instructor himself. Nor did he ever lose faith in this means of instructing and inspiring teachers. In an address delivered at Cincinnati, in 1854, he said, all persons who wished well to colleges must wish well to common schools, and do all that lay in their power to elevate their character. Because he felt the weight of this obligation, he had spent, he said, the greater part of the long summer vacation attending institutes in Ohio and other States teaching teachers how to teach. In May, 1843, Mr. Mann was married to Miss Mary Peabody, and immediately sailed for Europe. He was moved to pay this visit to the Old World partly by his belief that he could do most for education at home by studying education abroad, and partly by the miserable state of his health. He had now carried on his great work six years. ISTor was this all. He had continued to take a lively interest in the measures of social reform that interested him. It is not strange, there- fore, that his "whole capital of health" was ex- hausted, or that his brain, as Dr. Howe described it, had come "to go alone." Unfortunately, the physical benefits that he derived from his visit abroad did not meet his own or his friends' expectations, for he soon discovered that absorption in European schools was almost as exhausting as absorption in American schools. The better to accomplish his purpose, many of the great thoroughfares of travel, and most of the attrac- tive objects that ordinary travellers sought out, were THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 139 left untrodden or unseen. He was always heedful of Ms mission, keeping his mind in perpetual contact with the great interests of mankind, and seeing the institutions out of which human characters arise as vegetation grows out of the soil. He visited England, Ireland, and Scotland; Germany, Holland, and France. In respect to education, he ranked the countries that he visited in this order: Prussia, Saxony, and the western and southwestern States of Germany; Hol- land and Scotland; Ireland, France, and Belgium, with England at the foot of the list. On his return home, at the end of six months, he embodied his observations and reflections in his Seventh Eeport, which circumstances at least, if not merit, conspired to render the most celebrated of all his Reports. Mr. Mann's indefatigable labors at home did not prevent his visiting other States, both to study the progress that they were making in education and to lend the friends of the cause a helping hand. He was called upon to deliver addresses from far and near, and his not unfrequent responses were much appreci- ated. Thus Professor Griscom reports meeting him in a convention of superintendents and teachers held at Utica, New York, in the spring of 1842. Griscom wrote in his autobiography that Mann had then "acquired a reputation for a philanthropic devotion to the great cause of education and for a profound skill in all the practical details of instruction, unri- valled by any other person in the United States. He pursued the subject co7i amove. His speeches in the convention, as well as the written lecture delivered in the church, furnished the most decisive evidences of a 140 HOEACE MANN mind affluent in bright and just conceptions, eloquent, racy, and commanding, yet modest and restrained in manner. No man, perhaps, has viewed the subject of schools under more varied aspects, or is better quali- fied to give an opinion best adapted to our country." ^ With a single exception we have now described, or at least referred to, Mr. Mann's principal labors in the Secretary's office, viz., the annual circuits of the State, the annual abstracts of statistics and the Reports, the occasional addresses and lectures, the conferences with the Board and members of the legislature, the over- sight of the Normal schools and of the district libraries, the defence of the Board and its Secretary against con- troversial attacks, and The Common School Journal. The exception referred to is the correspondence, official and personal, that the office entailed upon him, which was by no means confined to the State of Massachu- setts. Somewhere in the documents the average cor- respondence of the office is stated as being from thirty to forty letters a day. Surely here was work for an able man of vigorous health, supported by adequate clerical help. But, first, Mr. Mann was not in vigorous health. Mr. Fowle, his friend and publisher, testifies that Mann's labors were so excessive that he had known him to be unable to sleep for weeks at a time. Then he was not supported by any clerical help what- ever, save such as he procured at his own expense. Sixteen hours was a common day's work for him. Only a man of great native and acquired power of accomplishment could have turned off so much work, 1 Memoir of John Griscom, LL.D., etc. New York, 1859, pp. 295, 296. THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 141 of such, a higli quality, during the twelve years that he held the office. Still another source of surprise remains to be men- tioned. This is the miserable allowance that the State of Massachusetts made for his services. The Act of 1837, creating the Board of Education, authorized no expenditure of money beyond a reasonable compensa- tion for the services of the secretary to be elected, not exceeding $1000 per annum. Mr. Mann expected that his salary would be made $2500 for the first year, and after that $3000. The legislature finally fixed the salary at $1500, but made no provision whatever for contingent expenses, not even for office rent. Mann estimated that the salary would leave for his ordinary expenses and services, after defraying his extraordinary expenses, about $500 a year. His com- ment was, '^Well, one thing is certain, I will be revenged on them ; I will do them more than $1500 worth of good." But this is only the beginning of the story. When the time came for the legislature to provide for sta- tionery and postage, Mr. Mann did not charge to the State one-half of the real cost, lest a large expense account should raise up enemies to the office. Such books as he needed to carry on his work, he purchased and paid for himself. Five years passed before any allowance was made for his travelling expenses over the State, although he was thus employed four months in the year. Still more, he was a constant contributor out of his own pocket to the cause that lay so near his heart. He actually paid his own money, several hun- dred dollars at a time, to complete, repair, or furnish 142 HORACE MANN the buildings of every one of the three Normal schools when the public funds proved to be insufficient. On one occasion he sold his law library at much less than its value to enable him to make the gift. He pro- vided all these schools with needed maps at his own expense. He paid the State printers for such extra copies of his own Keports as he wished to circulate outside of the regular channels. The Common ScJiool Journal, which he would never have undertaken had not such a channel of communication with the public been necessary, was a constant drain upon him to the close of the fourth volume, although he gave away single numbers, and even whole sets, with the greatest liberality. He visited Europe in the public interest, but at his own charges ; and on his return refused the proposition of a competent publisher to print his notes in book form for the market, saying that he was a public officer, and that the public was entitled to these notes free of charge ; and so he threw the matter into his Seventh Eeport. His custom was to hold four or five conventions where the State met the expenses of only one, and the same with the institutes when their time came. This story of self-sacrifice becomes pathetic when taken in connection with Mr. Mann's financial condi- tion at the time when he entered upon the duties of his office, growing out of the financial responsibilities that he had assumed on account of his unfortunate brother. All his savings were swept away, and he was left as necessitous as the unfortunate brother himself. He gave up his boarding house, put a bed in a room adjoining his office, took care of the room THE SECRETARYSHIP IN OUTLINE 143 Mmselfj and picked up his living, apparently, here and there. Thus he lived three full years. For six months, he says, he was unable to buy a dinner on half the days. Suffering from hunger and exhaustion and overworked, he fell ill, and so continued for two months ; his best friends did not expect his recovery, and some of them, as he believed, deprecated it as the infliction of further suffering. His privations and ill- ness still further weakened a constitution that had been broken down while he was preparing for college. It is indeed to be said that the generous friend who brought about his appointment as Secretary, and who contrib- uted so generously to the Normal schools and teachers' institutes, added f 500 a year to his meagre resources. It is not strange therefore that, on Mr. Mann's retirement from the office in 1848, some friends in the legislature proposed that the State should repay him some part of the outlay that he had incurred in its interest. He replied that he could not ]3i^esent himself in the form of a petitioner, asking for a return of what was voluntarily given. He must take care of his honor. The State was the proper judge of its own. If the State chose to consider any part of the sums he had paid as paid on its account, it would be gratefully received, both as a token of its approbation and as the refunding of money he must otherwise lose; ^^but let what will come," he closed with saying, "no poverty and no estimate of my ser- vices, however low, can ever make me repine that I have sought with all the means and the talents at my command to lay broader and deeper the foundation of the prosperity of our Commonwealth, and to ele- 144 HORACE MANN vate its social and moral character among its confed- erate States and in the eyes of the world.'^ The legislature accordingly voted him, without a single dissenting voice in either House, a part of the money that he had spent for the public good. The com- mittee that reported the resolution said it was not proposed to pay him off, or to rob him of the well- earned conviction that he was a benefactor of the State; the amount was made small because the com- mittee believed that a small amount would be more agreeable to his feelings than a larger one. It is easy for the carping critic at this day to say that Horace Mann was not called upon thus to sacri- fice himself for the public good of Massachusetts ; thatj in the long run, he would only injure the cause, and the State by encouraging it in small ideas and little ways. We must remember, however, that the cause of popular education was feeble in 1837-1848 as compared with the closing years of the century. We must remember, also, the circumspection with which both the Board and the Secretary were com- pelled to acquit themselves in their official capacities. There is no telling what plans and prospects of future good might have been overturned in those precarious times if a few hundred dollars more had been charged up to the State in the Secretary's expense account.. Still, this is only an economical view of the subject. Sacrifices like these are incident to the life of any man who takes the next generation for his client. Such a man, like the Great Apostle, will not count his life dear unto himself, so that he may finish with joy the ministry that he has received. CHAPTER VI THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS Normal school is the unfortunate name that is given in the United States and some other countries to a school intended for the professional preparatiom of teachers. The word '^ normal" is derived fromi norm, noima, meaning rule, pattern, model, or stand- ard, and signifies, in general, serving to fix a rule or standard. A ISTormal school, therefore, has to do with fixing the norm or rule of teaching ; but whether the name was given because the school was expected formally to teach the norm, to exemplify it in prac- tice, or to do both of these things, histor}- does not inform us. It will perhaps answer the purpose of all but the curious to state, that the Xormal school devotes itself, in part at least, to teaching the prin- ciples and the rules of teaching. We borrowed the name, but not the thing, from France, where it came into vogue at the time of the E, evolution.-^ In view of the obvious advantages of such a school, 1 Edward Everett said : " The name was adopted to designate the schools for teachers established in Massachusetts, because it is already in use to denote similar institutions in Europe; because it applies exclusively to schools of this kind, and prevents their being confounded with any others ; and because it is short and of conven- ient use. It has been already adopted in England and in our sister States in writing and speaking of institutions for the education of teachers." — Address on Normal Schools. L 145 146 HORACE MANN it is strange that we meet with it for the first time at such a late date in educational history. Demia, of Lyons^ appears to have established in that city a sort of seminary for teaching teachers about the year 1675. But the credit of establishing the first Normal school is commonly ascribed to the Abbe de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Christian Brethren. In 1685 this noble priest and educator opened at Eheims an in- stitution that he called a seminary for schoolmasters, and at a later day a second one at Paris. Still the sys- tem of Normal schools now existing in France does not date from the close of the seventeenth century; the idea never took a real hold of the French mind until the Eevolution set in motion the forces that have democratized education. But it is to Germany that we must look for the historical antecedents of our American Normal schools. The German system of such schools became well es- tablished in Prussia in the reign of Frederick the Great, and went forth from that country to subdue the world. Even France, in a sense, is indebted to Germany for her Normal schools. In Germany the school is known, however, as the teachers' seminary, and in England and Scotland as the teachers' train- ing school or training college. Perhaps there is a suggestion of the French mind in the use, in this connection, of the word "normal." The second chapter of this work shows that the qualifications of teachers had a stronger hold on Horace Mann's forerunners than any other educational idea. From Ticknor to Carter it was the burden of their cry. But down to 1835 there is no direct evidence showing THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 147 that American educators were acquainted with what had been done in tliis line in Europe. There is no reference to it in the several writings that have been referred to in Chapter II. The German teachers' seminary was introduced to the American public in a very simple, and yet in a very interesting, way. Rev. Charles Brooks, pastor of a church at Hing- ham, Massachusetts, while on his outward voyage to Europe, in the autumn of 1834, had for a companion Dr. H. Julius, then returning from a mission to study the prison systems of the United States on which he had been sent by the Prussian government, and from him he learned the details of the Prussian educa- tional system. When in Germany Mr. Brooks im- proved the opportunity to extend his knowledge of a subject that had interested him deeply, and on his return home he entered upon an extended educa- tional mission, having for its object the improvement of common schools. In 1835-1837 he addressed many meetings in different parts of Massachusetts, in which he gave an account of the Prussian system of public instrucdon, and advocated the establishment of a State Xormal school. Nor w^ere Mr. Brooks' labors confined to his own State : he extended his mission to New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Ehode Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. To few men do the American Normal schools owe so much as to Charles Brooks. The Normal school idea had gained such headway in Massachusetts in 1838 that Mr. Edmund Dwight's ^ 1 Mr. Edmund Dwight, graduated at Yale College, was one of the merchant prmces of Boston. He was destined for the bar, but took 148 HORACE MANN generous offer to give the State $10,000 to promote the preparation of teachers for the common schools, provided the legislature would appropriate an equal amount for the same object, was immediately accepted by an almost unanimous vote of both houses. Gov- ernor Everett signed the resolution April 19, 1838 — the anniversary of the battle of Lexington. But this was not the only suggestion of that battle that the his- tory furnishes, as we shall soon see. The manner of using the money given by Mr. Dwight and voted by the legislature was committed wholly to the discretion of the Board of Education. Several questions of impor- tance at once presented themselves. Should the Board concentrate its efforts upon a single central Normal school ? Should it establish two or more schools ? Should it do what had been done in New York, sup- port normal instruction, or normal departments in dif- ferent academies of the State ? There were argu- ments pro and con on all of these plans of proceeding. To the single school it could be objected that it would be hidden away from the sight of a majority of the people of the State ; while the New York plan was rather to business. He was a man of broad ideas and great gener- osity, and became deeply interested in the common schools. After reading Mrs. Austin's translation of M. Victor Cousin's Report on the Schools ofPrusdu, to promote education became a leading object of his life. His house in Boston was a centre for meetings and con- sultations relating to the subject, and for many years hardly an important step was taken relating to it without his advice. He se- cured Mr. Mann's election to the Secretaryship, as already related. In all his contributions for enlarging and improving the State system of common schools were not less than $35,000. Memoir of Edmund Dwight, by Frances Bowen. — Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. IV., pp. 5-22. THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 149 open to the serious criticism that the normal depart- ments would almost of necessity be called secondary features of the academies in which they should be placed. So the Board, after due deliberation, wisely decided to establish three Normal schools — one in the northeastern, one in the southeastern, and one in the western part of the State, to be conducted as an ex- periment for three years. To supplement the slender funds, the Board called for local co-operation, and many towns made responses more or less generous, some of them even offering to provide all the means necessary for establishing and carrying on the schools, save alone the salaries of the teachers. The Board soon voted to open a school for ladies only at Lex- ington, and another school for both sexes at Barre. The Lexington school was twice removed before it found an abiding resting place, first to West New- ton and then to Framingham. The Barre school was subsequently transferred to Westfield. The third of the Horace Mann Normal schools, more fortunate, was established at Bridgewater and never removed. Here our narrative may well halt long enough to permit the mention of the splendid services to public education rendered by private generosity in the days of the Common School Eevival. The rich gifts of Mr. Dwight, already mentioned, are good examples. They were by no means exceptional ; other liberal-minded men, both in and out of Massachusetts, vied with him in his noble generosity. New York furnished a conspicuous example in the person of Gen. James Wadsworth, of Geneseo, who gave large sums to pro- 150 HORACE MANN mote popular education iu that State.^ These facts were typical of the time. If, in recent years, such examples have been less frequent, it is doubtless due to the firm hold that the public school system has gained on society, thereby enabling the generosity of private benefactors to turn in other directions, rather than to the decay of public spirit and private liber- ality. To follow the ups and downs of these schools to the close of Mr. Mann's secretaryship would trench too heavily upon our space. ISTor is it at all necessary. To present the salient features of their history is all that is here called for. The schools raised up enemies. Some people op- posed them because they would draw candidates for teaching away from the academies. Some because they were new and untried. Some, and these princi- pally teachers, because they had never attended such schools themselves. Some because the schools did not teach religion. Some because they were under Uni- tarian influence. Some because they did not approve of the demeanor of the lady students. Some because the schools were unnecessary and a needless ex- pense. Naturally the close of the three years' experi- ment was looked forward to by Mr. Mann and his 1 General Wadsworth was graduated at Yale College, and, taking to business, became the proprietor of a great landed estate in west- ern New York. His educational activities assumed various forms. He is called the author of the New York system of district school libraries. He contributed liberally to the circulation of educational literature, often paying for whole editions of books or periodicals out of his own pocket, in order that they might be widely circu- lated. His gifts to popular education reached $90,000. — Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. V., pp. 389-406. THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 151 friends with much anxiety. It was perfectly clear thatj if the schools were to be permanently continued, the State must fully adopt them as a part of its sys- tem of public instruction, for private support, indi- vidual or communal, would soon be withdrawn. The enemies of the schools were quick to take advantage of such of the old opposition to the Board of Educa- tion as had not died out, and the issue was far from clear. But, as before, the cause of progress triumphed. E/ebounding from the depression of spirits that the period of anxiety enforced upon him, Mr. Mann wrote on March 3, 1842 : " The brightest days which have ever shone upon our cause were yesterday and to-day. Yesterday resolves passed the House for granting $6000 per year for three years to the Normal schools, and $15 to each district for a school library, on condi- tion of its raising $15 for the same purpose." And again March 8 : " The joy I feel on account of the success of our plans for the schools has not begun to be exhausted. It keeps welling up into my mind, fresh and exhilarating as it was the first hour of its occurrence. I have no doubt it will have an effect on my health as well as my spirits. The wearisome, de- pressing labor of watchfulness which I have under- gone for years has been a vampire to suck the blood out of my heart and the marrow out of my bones. I should, however, have held on until death, for I felt my grasp all the time tightening, not loosening. I hope I may now have the power of performing more and better labor." There was further opposition to the Normal schools, but with the renewal of the State appropriation in 1845 152 HORACE MANI? it practically died out. The legislature was not swerved from the path that Mr. Dwight's wise liberality had induced it to enter. In 1846 Mr. Mann saw, with feelings of lively satisfaction, every one of the three schools occup3dng its own house, — neat, commodious, and well adapted to its wants, — and the principals relieved of the annoyance, as he said, of carrying on Normal schools in a6-normal houses. At this time he wrote his friend, Kev. S. J. May, that the normal cause was so vv^ell anchored that no storm which its enemies could conjure up, would drive it from its moorings. Mr. Mann also expressed the belief that, at the time, Massachusetts was the only State in the Union where Normal schools could have been established, or where, if established, they would have been allowed to remain. Mr. Mann was naturally solicitous about the selec- tion of the Normal school teachers, and especially those for Lexington. The Board left the matter wholly in his hands. The choice made would be a factor in future history. Writing to George Combe, he calls the amount of anxiety that the selection of the two first principals caused him incredible. He went over all the men in New England by tale before he found those who would take the schools with a fair prospect of success in managing them. The problem was to do right and not offend the ultra-orthodox. For Lexing- ton, he made choice of Rev. Cyrus Pierce, finding him among the sands of Nantucket. The choice was a very happy one. A competent judge, who knew Pierce on the South Shore, said he could always tell his scholars wherever he met them by their mental habits and mode of life. He excelled in training both the THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 153 mental and moral nature. Mann himself said of Pierce's power of winning the confidence of his pupils, that it surpassed what he had before seen in any school. " The exercises were conducted," he said, "in the most thorough manner: the principle being stated and then applied to various combinations of facts, so that the pupils were not only led to a clearer apprehension of the principle itself, but taught to look through combinations of facts, however different, to find the principle which underlies them all ; and they were taught, too, that it is not the form of the fact which determines the principle, but the principle which gives character to the fact." Pierce was an ardent phrenologist. ''The book to which, after the Bible, I owe most," he said, '4s that incomparable work of George Combe, On the Constitution of 3Ian. It was to me a most suggestive book, and I regard it as the best treatise on education and the philosophy of man which I ever met with." ^ Pierce's motto was, " Live to the truth." The Massachusetts Normal schools certainly came without observation. The Lexington school opened July 3, 1839, in the midst of a heavy downpour of rain, with only three persons present for examination. The prospect was in no way encouraging. The first 1 Cyrus Pierce was born at Waltham, Massachusetts, 1790, gradu- ated from Harvard College in 1810, died 1859. He was bred to the ministry, but followed teaching as a life-work. He taught fifty years — eight years as a teacher of teachers. See a careful memoir by Rev. S. J. May; Barnard, The American Journal of Education, Vol. IV., pp. 275-308, The establishment of the Normal schools is discussed in The Common School Journal, Vol. I., pp. 33-38. There the full course of study will be found. 154 HORACE MANN quarter closed with, only twelve pupils, and the num- ber was never more than thirty-one for the first three years of the school's history. At the close of the first quarter the principal wrote in his journal, that the number of scholars had been fewer than he antici- pated, but most of those who had attended had made a good beginning. A model school was established the second term. The other schools began with a larger attendance than Lexington ; but all were small and grew slowly, at least, according to our present standard of measurement. At first the principal of the school was the only teacher. Still, the man who has a firm hold of cause and effect would hardly call that the day of small things. The responsibility that rested upon Cyrus Pierce dur- ing the few years that he was at the head of the first Massachusetts Normal school was very great. It is not at all likely that he felt its full weight. It was, above all, important that the school should commend itself to the public favor from the very beginning. He, indeed, could not have wrecked the school and the cause at once, but another man in the same place could easily have done so. Dr. Barnard put on record the opinion, that had it not been for Cyrus Pierce the cause of Normal schools would have failed or have been postponed for an indefinite period. After three years of service, Mr. Pierce retired for a time, because his excessive labors had broken down his health. The cause was also fortunate in his suc- cessor for the interval, the Rev. Samuel J. May. Mr. May's spirit is well illustrated in a bit of history that he himself relates of an occurrence at a convention of THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 155 teachers held in Essex County^ Massachusetts, where he made an address on the management of schools, using as a motto the words, " Love the unlovely, and they will put their unloveliness away." " Several persons arose in quick succession, and declared this to be the most important suggestion they had yet received. Father G. said, mirahile clictu, that this was entirely new to him 5 that he had never before heard this method proposed ; that he felt deeply that there was a great truth in it; and that he would go home and try to act in accordance with it. So said several others, and ' love the unlovely ^ was heard from vari- ous quarters as we were going out of the house along the road and after we had reached the hotel. I was really a little disconcerted to find that it was a new discovery to so many, that evil might be overcome with good in schools no less than elsewhere." ^ To the pedagogist the toi^ic that has been reserved for the last is the most interesting of all — the studies of the Normal schools. The norm was now to be established. What should it be ? A review and an extension of the common branches ? The principles and methods of teaching and of school organization and government ? The union of the two elements of study just mentioned? A narrow course or a broad one ? Unfortunately, we have few transcripts of the thoughts of the men Avho met and answered these ques- tions ; but we know perfectly well Avhat their answer was. That the influence of the Normal schools " might be wholly concentrated upon the preparation of teach- ers for our common schools," said Mr. Mann in one 1 Life of Samuel J. May, pp. 181, 182. 156 HORACE MANN of his annual addresses, "the ahnost doubtful provi- sion that the learned languages should not be included in the list of studies taught therein was inserted in the regulations for their government; not because there was any hostility or indifference towards those languages, but because it is desirable to prepare teach- ers for our common schools rather than to furnish facilities for those who are striving to become teach- ers of select schools, high schools, and academies." Governor Everett, in his address on Normal schools, delivered at the opening of the school at Barre, Sep- tember 5, 1839, speaking for the Board of Education, of which he was ex officio president, explained the plan adopted more fully. There were no funds applicable, he said, to the expense of an extensive establishment ; " and our young men and women could not generally afford the time requisite for a very long course of preparation, because the majority of our districts do not require, and would not support, teachers who, having been at great expense of time and money in fitting themselves for their calling, would need a pro- portionate compensation. We suppose that many of those who resort to these institutions will, at present, be able only to pass but a part of one year in the enjoyment of their advantages ; but while provision is made for the shortest period for which any indi- vidual could reasonably wish to be received, a thorough course of instruction will also be arranged for those who desire to devote a longer time to their preparation as teachers.'^ The governor proceeded to sketch out the course of instruction that had been agreed u]3on. Only his leading propositions need to be quoted. THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 157 (1) " A careful review of the brandies of knowledge required to be taught in our common schools, it being, of course, the first requisite of a teacher that he should himself know well that which he is to aid others in learning." "The teacher must know things in a mas- terly way, curiously, nicely, and in their reasons." (2) "The second part of instruction in a Normal school is the art of teaching. To know the matter to be taught, and to know it thoroughly, are of themselves, though essential, not all that is required. There is a peculiar art of teaching. The details of this branch are inexhaustible, but it is hoped that the most impor- tant principles may be brought within such a compass as to afford material benefit to those who pass even the shortest time at these institutions." (3) "The third branch of instruction to be imparted in an in- stitution concerns the important subject of the govern- ment of the school, and might perhaps more justly have been named the first. The best method of gov- erning a school — that is, of exercising such a moral influence in it as is most favorable to the improvement of the pupil — will form a very important part of the course of instruction designed to qualify teachers for their calling." (4) "In the last place, it is to be observed, that in aid of all the instruction and exer- cises within the limits of the Normal school properly so called, there is to be established a common or dis- trict school as a school of practice, in which, under the direction of the principal of the school, the young teacher may have the benefit of actual exercise in the business of instruction." The governor added: "Among the fundamental 158 HORACE MANN principles laid clown by the Board of Education for the government of the Normal schools, it has been provided that a portion of Scripture shall be daily read ; and it is their devout hope that a fervent spirit of prayer, pervading the hearts of both principal and pupils, may draw down the divine blessing on their pursuits." ^ With a single exception this programme is the pro- gramme to which our Normal schools conform to-day. No mention is made of the history of education. Nothing is said indeed of the science of teaching, but Governor Everett means . by the term " art," as here used, theory as well as practice. The plan agrees in essential features with the one that experi- ence had already sanctioned in Prussia; but it is im- possible to say how far it was shaped by a knowledge of this fact. Mr. Brooks, no doubt, had caused the plan of the Prussian Normal schools to be well under- stood by many persons in Massachusetts before the year 1839. Again, the plan was in perfect conformity with the dictates of practical wisdom under existing conditions. It was also in accord with the lessons of theory. The pupil's method of attacking a lesson or subject differs materially from the teacher's method of attack. The terms '^academical" and "profes- sional" suggest to our minds two very different points of view. The Normal school should not con- cern itself with the rudiments of the subjects taught in common schools ; it is their business, as a distin- guished thinker has said, to lead the student " to re- 1 Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions. Boston, 1870^ Vol. II., pp. 335-362. THE MASSACHUSETTS NOEMAL SCHOOLS 159 examine all liis elementary branches in their relations to all human learning." "The Normal school/' he continues, "therefore took up just this work at the beginning, and performed it well. It induced in the young men and women, preparing for the work of teaching, the habit of taking up the lower branches in their relations to the higher — taking them up constructively, as it were. For to study arithmetic in the light of algebra and geometry is to study it constructively. Its rules are derived from algebraic formulae, and are to be demonstrated by algebraic processes. So the details of geography have their explanation in the formative processes of land and water as treated in physical geography and the sci- ences of which it is a compend. Of course this de- mands a high standard of preparation in those who enter the Normal school. The higher the better, for they should be able to review the lower branches in the light of all human learning.''^ The ideal here set up is a high one; but the principle is correctly stated. Indeed, the nature of a successful Normal school is determined by the work that it has to do. The most important question that the logic of the school does not answer is that of the relative meas- ure of concrete and abstract teaching in its class and lecture rooms. The amplitude of the curriculum is a secondary question. To assign or distribute the credit for establishing the norm fixed upon in 1839, would be a fruitless endeavor. When it appeared it had the sanction of 1 Dr. W. T. Harris. See his oration delivered at Framingham, Massachusetts, July 2, 1889. 160 HORACE MANN the Massachusetts Board of Education, and was prob- ably the combined work of many minds. How far Mr. Pierce contributed to its formulation, we have no means of telling. He certainly was the first to give it practical effect, for he exemplified it in his own teaching. Once introduced, this norm tended to become a tradition running to the halls of every Normal school founded in the land ; but this is quite as much due to the nature of the case, or the logic of the situation, as it was to the fact that this pattern had been shown in Lexington with the approval of Horace Mann. It was Mr. Mann's habit to present every educa- tional interest of the State as though, for the time, he thought it the great interest. Still it is not diffi- cult to see that the Normal schools, after all, were the apple of his eye. He said at Bridgewater, in 1846, that the young ladies who attended that school were the only human beings whom he envied. The chapter may well close with this confession of faith, quoted from the same address : *^ I believe Normal schools to be a new instrumen- tality in the advancement of the race. I believe that without them free schools themselves would be shorn of their strength and their healing power, and would at length become mere charity schools, and thus die out in fact and in form. Neither the art of printing, nor the trial by jury, nor a free press, nor free suf- frage, can long exist to any beneficial and salutary purpose without schools for the training of teachers : for if the character and qualifications of teachers be allowed to degenerate, the free schools will become THE MASSACHUSETTS NORMAL SCHOOLS 161 pauper schoolSj and the pauper schools will produce pauper souls, and the free press will become a false and licentious press, and ignorant voters will become venal voters, and through the medium and guise of republican forms an oligarchy of profligate and flagi- tious men will govern the land; nay, the universal diffusion and ultimate triumph of all-glorious Christi- anity itself must await the time when knowledge shall be diffused among men through the instrumentality of good schools. Coiled up in this institution, as in a spring, there is a vigor whose uncoiling may wheel the spheres." CHAPTER VII THE REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION Mr. Mann's services were so great in several dif- ferent departments of Ms work that it would be dif- ficult to say of any one of them, "In this he was greatest of all." But among his_ numerous educational writings we cannot hesitate to select his annual Re- ports as the most valuable and lasting. They are twelve in number, one for every year that he held the of&ce. They were made nominally to the State Board of Education, but really to the people of Massachusetts and of the country at large. They were widely pub- lished, in whole or in part, and still more widely read. Mr. George B. Emerson said of the great truths that the Eeports contained : " They have already reached far beyond the limits of our narrow State. They are echoing in the woods of Maine and along the St. Law- rence and the Lakes. They are heard throughout New York and throughout all the West and the South- west. A conviction of their importance has sent a Massachusetts man to take charge of the schools of New Orleans : they are at this moment regenerating those of Ehode Island. In the remotest corner of Ohio forty men, not children and women, but men meet together to read aloud a single copy of the Sec- retary's Eeports which one of them receives; thou- 162 EEPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 163 sands of the best friends of humanity of all sects, parties, and creeds in every State of the Union are familiar with the name of Horace Mann," ^ etc. The general character of the Eeports was determined by the law creating the Board of Education, which has been summarized in a previous chapter. They were devoted partly to reporting the existing state of things, including the progress that was made from year to year, but especially to the discussion of present and coming questions with a view to creating public opinion and guiding public action. Since they were written many hundreds of similar reports have been made, most of which are now found only in libraries and in lumber rooms ; but these have a perennial life. This is due especially to the great ability with which Mr. Mann treated his subjects, but partly to his fortu- nate position in the great column of common school reform. He dealt with the fundamental questions of this reform before they had lost any of the interest that grows out of novelty. He was a pioneer, and his work was the more interesting because a part of it consisted in creating interest. It is proposed in this chapter to pass Mr. Mann's Eeports in review, and when it is said that together they fill a thousand pages of the authorized edition of his Life and WorTis, the reason is given why the review must necessarily be a very hasty and imperfect one, comprising little more than a table of contents.^ 1 Ohsei^vations on " Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace Mann." Boston, 1844, p. 15. 2 It should be said that, in their original form as published in the Annual Reports of the Board of Education and The Coimnon School Journal, the Reports are considerably more voluminous than 164 HORACE MANN The First Report, 1837, written when he had been but five months in office, gives an account of the work that the Secretary has entered upon and describes the general condition of the schools in the State. He dis- closes the defects of the system as it exists, but avows the belief that the excellencies vastly preponderate over the defects. His discussion is limited to four principal topics. The first one, Schoolhouses, he dis- misses with few words, because he promises a spe- cial report on that subject. Secondly, he finds that the character of the school committees and the man- ner in which they discharge their duties are open to criticism. The law in regard to the examination of teachers and the visitation of schools is very gen- erally disregarded. The multiplicity and diversity of books in the schools is a great evil. Of the children who are wholly dependent upon the common schools for instruction, one-third absent themselves from school in the winter and two-fifths in the summer. The average length of the school year is six months and twenty-five days. Thirdly, the apathy of the people themselves to common schools produces serious evils. "It cannot be overlooked," he says, "that the ten- dency of the private school system is to assimilate our modes of education to those of England, where Church- men and Dissenters, each sect according to its own creed, maintain separate schools in which children are taught from their tenderest years to wield the sword when reproduced in The Life and Works of Horace Manri. Much of the most valuable matter for the purposes of the historian, as many statistics, is omitted by the editor as not having present interest. REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 165 of polemics with, fatal dexterity; and where the Gospel, instead of being a temple of peace, is converted into an armory of deadly weapons for social, interminable warfare." The rich and populous towns raise less money for common schools proportionately than the State as a whole. Fourthly, the teachers are as good as public opinion demands. The average wages of men teachers, including board, is $25.44 a month, and of women teachers $11.38. Outside of Boston there are but two hundred teachers in the common schools of the State who follow teaching regularly. Moral instruction is much neglected. Often no regis- ters are kept in the schools, and illustrative apparatus is very small in quantity and poor in quality. The Supplementary Report on Schoolhouses, which soon followed, deals with that subject in a very comprehen- sive and intelligent manner. Mr. Mann anticipates in part ideas that are only now becoming generally current with regard to the concentration of pupils in country schools. The two documents together occupy one hundred and five pages, and are a valuable source of materials for the student of contemporary educational history. The Second Eeport, 1838, first touches the condition of the schools. Here occurs the statement, ^^ That the common school system of Massachusetts had fallen into a state of general unsoundness and debility," which gave some persons much offence. Some evi- dences of progress in various parts of the State are presented, and especially the arrangements that had been made in various counties and towns for courses of lectures dealing with teaching and other educa- 166 HORACE MANN tional subjects. A law for the compensation of school committeemen has been passed, and registers have been introduced into most of the schools that had lacked them. However, the great subject of the Keport is Methods of Teaching Spelling, Reading, and Composition. The a-b-c method of teaching reading is condemned, and the word method is rec- ommended. Great stress is laid upon the mental ele- ment in reading in contradistinction to the purely mechanical element. The evils attending the use of the "extract" school readers are exposed, and valuable suggestions looking to something better are offered. Whole pages could be cut from this Report that are fully abreast of the best thought of to-day. There is a clear perception throughout of the place that use and wont hold in teaching the language-arts. The Report fills sixty-eight pages. In the Third Report, 1839, Mr. Mann felicitates the Board upon the progress of the good cause, and emphasizes the fact that all improvements in the school system depend upon the people and school ofBlcers. He shows his humanitarian interest by remarking upon some efforts that have been made to reach, with the benefits of education, the children of persons employed upon the public works, and by drawing attention, as he had done once before, to the recently enacted law to protect, educationally speaking, children under the age of fifteen years employed in manufacturing establishments. Some remarks upon Massachusetts as a manufacturing State show that Mr. Mann had thoroughly grasped the influence of changing social elements upon public KEPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 167 education. He then takes up the most important subject that he has investigated during the year, that of libraries ; but this subject is considered in a pre- vious chapter and need not here detain us. A refer- ence to Dr. Thomas Dick suggests the reflection that Mr. Mann had much in common with that philosopher and writer. His remark that if when scholars came to the name of Socrates, Luther, or Howard, they could turn to a biographical dictionary, etc., it would give a sense of reality to the business of the school and acquaint them with important facts, shows that he had thought of the relation which should exist between the library and the school. He did not, however, at all grasp our modern conception of teach- ing literature in the schools. This Eeport contains fifty-two pages. The Fourth Eeport, 1840, portrays the evils, and particularly the physical evils, attending the multipli- cation of districts and the bringing of all grades of pupils together in the same schoolroom. A section of a road a mile and a half in length on which he had counted six such schoolhouses, furnishes him his text. A remedy is sought "in the establishment of Union schools wherever the combined circumstances of terri- tory and population will allow ; consolidation of two or more districts into one, where the Union system is impracticable ; and, when the population is so sparse as to prevent either of these courses, then to break in upon the routine of the school, either by confining the young children for a less number of hours, or by giv- ing them two recesses each half day." " The Union school is found to improve all the schools in the con- 168 HORACE MANN stitueiit districts." For tlie rest, the Secretary con- siders the qualifications of teachers, constant and punctual attendance of pupils, the manifestation of parental interest in the schools, and the number and combination of pupils necessary to make a good school. To M. Victor Cousin's aphorism, " As is the teacher, so is the school," he proposes the addition, " As is the parent, so are both teacher and school." The general introduction of registers into the schoolhouses had revealed an unexpected amount of absenteeism and irregularity of attendance. The Eeport fills tv/enty- nine pages. The Fifth Eeport, 1841, thirty-five pages, enters a new field. It is addressed, Mr. Mann says in one of his letters, to the faculty of acquisitiveness, or, as he says in the Eeport, he " shows the effect of education upon the worldly fortunes and estates of men — its influence upon property, upon human comfort and com- petence, upon the outward, visible, material interest or well-being of individuals and communities." This he holds to be the lowest view that can be taken of the benevolent influences of education ; yet he had under- taken an investigation of the subject for the purpose of placing the truth upon a firm foundation, and so of gaining a point of advantage for making an appeal in behalf of education to those members of the com- munity who were beyond the reach of a higher class of arguments. He reaches the conclusion to which all such inquiries have led, no matter where they have been made, that education is a great economical and moral factor in society. The replies that a number of competent business men had made to his circular REPORTS TO THE BOARD OE EDUCATION 169 of inquiries add value to the Report. There is, how- ever, one element in all such reasoning that escapes measurement, if not detection. The educated persons who figure in the tests, as a class, are superior in many other respects to the uninstructed who figure in the same tests, in natural ability, character, mode of living, and social surroundings. It is true that these other points of difference depend partly upon educa- tion ; so the study is an excellent example of plurality of causes and of mutuality of cause and effect. Still, high as is his estimate of knowledge and teaching, Mr. Mann knows that they are not directly converti- ble into virtue and character. In a previous Eeport he says it had been ascertained, after an examination of great extent and minuteness, that in France most crimes were perpetrated in those provinces where most of the inhabitants could read and write ; " their morals had been neglected, and the cultivated intel- lect presented to the uncultivated feeling not only a larger circle of temptations, but better instruments for their gratification." The Sixth Eeport, 1842, containing one hundred and one pages, is just what the editor of TJie Life and Works calls it, a Dissertation on the Study of Physi- ology in the Schools. This is one of Mr. Mann's great themes. The Eeport furnishes a good example of his habit of seeking mental discipline and culture in prac- tical utility. He presents statistics, showing the num- ber of pupils in the schools pursuing studies above the elementary level, ranging from Greek to the history of the United States. He raises the very pertinent question whether the numerical order in which the 170 HORACE MANN studies stand in tlie table corresponds to the natural order. The bent of his own mind, as well as interesting facts, are presented in the questions : " Can any satis- factory ground be assigned why algebra, a branch which not one man in a thousand ever has occasion to use in the business of life, should be studied by more than twenty-three hundred pupils, and bookkeeping, which every man, even the day laborer, should understand, should be attended to by only a little more than half that number ? Among farmers and road-makers, why should geometry take precedence of surveying; and among seekers after intellectual and moral truth, why should rhetoric have double the followers of logic?" His thesis is that physiology should have priority among the studies that lie above the elementary level. He is not content simply to maintain this thesis, but writes what is little less than a practical treatise upon the applications of physiology. Such a sentence as this reminds one of Herbert Spencer's celebrated essay written years afterward : " Graduates of colleges and of theological seminaries, who would be ashamed if they did not know that Alexander's horse was named Bucephalus, or had not read Mid- dleton's octavo volume upon the Greek article, are often profoundly ignorant of the great laws which God has impressed upon their physical frame, and which, under penalty of forfeiting life and usefulness, He has commanded them to know and obey." The Seventh Keport, 1843. This occupies one hun- dred and eighty-eight pages of The Life and Works of Horace Mann. After devoting a few pages to Massa- chusetts, the Secretary passes at once to his European REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 171 tour. His itinerary was England, Ireland, and Scot- land; Hamburg and Magdeburg; Berlin, Potsdam, Halle, and Weissenfels ; Leipsic and Dresden ; Erfurt, Weimar, and Eisenach; Erankfort, Nassau, Hesse- Darmstadt, and Baden; tlie Ehenish. Provinces of Prussia; Holland, Belgium, and Paris. His progress was rapid, but lie compressed a great amount of ob- servation into the time at his disposal. As a rule, what pleased him most was what he saw in Germany. Describing his work here, he said : " Perhaps I saw as fair a proportion of the Prussian and Saxon schools as one Avould see of the schools in Massachusetts who should visit those of Boston, Newburyport, l^ew Bed- ford, Worcester, Northampton, and Springfield." He gave close attention in visiting the schools to studies, discipline, methods of teaching, teachers, and the prep- aration of teachers. -Eead a half century after it was written, the Seventh Keport impresses the reader as being the work of an open-minded man, who is making a hur- ried examination of educational institutions that were before known to him only at second hand. The mat- ter is copious ; facts and ideas fairly crowd the pages. The logical arrangement is imperfect, the style is sometimes incorrect, but is always animated and often fervid. The writer is evidently intensely anxious to discover and report the exact truth. He wants to show his countrymen the schools just as he sees them. He has no prejudice against things that are foreign. "A generous and impartial mind," he says, "does not ask whence the thing comes, but Avhat it is." The writer not only has a first-hand interest in the sub- 172 HORACE MANN ject, but is also conscious that lie is writing things new and strange to his audience. We must not, therefore, apply our common standards of judgment, and call much of the matter old and commonplace, but rather recreate the educational condition of the country at the time when the Keport was written, and study its adaptation to the existing state of affairs. We are so familiar now with the word method of teaching reading, oral instruction, real instruction, elementary science in elementary schools, teaching that flows from the full mind of the teacher rather than from the pages of a book, object lessons, lan- guage exercises, geography built upon the basis of the child's environment, music and drawing, and teaching arithmetic by analysis rather than by rule — we are so familiar with these things that we may wonder at Mr. Mann's enthusiasm over them ; but we must remember that a half century has wrought great changes in American schools, changes that in some measure have grown out of the very document that we are reading. The Eeport is interesting be- cause it points out to us the origin and source of some of the most familiar features of our best schools. More than this, there are still thousands of schools where the " German methods," if introduced, would be quite as novel as they were in Massachusetts fifty years ago. He finds abundant confirmation of some of his favorite ideas. He is never more interested than when describing the oral instruction, the enthusiasm and kindness of teachers, the absence of corporal punishment, and the discredit cast upon emulation, KEPOKTS TO THE BOAKD OF EDUCATION 173 that he saw in the schools of Germany. When deal- ing with the Normal schools, and the preparation and character of teachers in the same country, his admi- ration becomes unbounded. England gives him a new opportunity to present an old idea. The lack of a national system of education, in which the whole people participated, he declares to be full of admoni- tion to the people of Massachusetts, for it was the state of things towards which they themselves, only eight years before, had been rapidly tending. In re- spect to the comparative merits of education at home and abroad, these two short paragraphs strike the keynote of the Eeport : "On the one hand, I am certain that the evils to which our own system is exposed, or under which it now labors, exist in some foreign countries in a far more aggravated degree than among ourselves; and if we are wise enough to learn from the experience of others, rather than await the infliction consequent upon our own errors, we may yet escape the magni- tude and formidableness of those calamities under which some other communities are now suffering. " On the other hand, I do not hesitate to say that there are many things abroad which we at home would do well to imitate ; things some of which are here as yet mere matters of speculation and theory, but which there have long been in operation, and are now pro- ducing a harvest of rich and abundant blessings." Mr. Mann did not confine his studies to schools, in the accepted sense of that term. Some of his most in- teresting pages relate to such topics as Prisons, Ee- f ormatory Institutions, Asylums, Hospitals, and Schools 174 HORACE MANN for the Defective Classes. On these points he was quite as well qualified to pass judgment as he was on methods of primary teaching. His habit of making moral "improvements" never for a moment forsook him. Nothing that he saw in the German schools offended him more than the manner in which they were made to support the State religious establish- ments. Mr. Mann was never happier than when, be- fore an audience or at a writing table, he set himself to deal with some great human question, — a question that involved politics, education, morality, and re- ligion ; and in the impressive review of the Old and New Worlds, with which the Seventh Eeport closes, he is seen at his best. The Seventh Eeport was not so much an important contribution to pedagogical science or criticism as an important contribution to pedagogical dynamics. It was so in more ways than one. It moved the schools of Massachusetts, and also of the country, while it brought on a controversy with the Boston schoolmas- ters that had much to do with fixing Horace Mann's place in the educational firmament. The Eighth Eeport, 1844, first congratulates the Board of Education upon the growing excellence of the reports that are received from the local school committees. These reports exhibit abundant evidence that the prevailing views of what the common schools should be are far in advance of what the schools actually are. He finds much pleasure in the fact " that more and more of the children of the Common- wealth are educated in a purely republican manner — educated together under the same roof, on the same REPORTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 175 seats, with, the same encouragement, rewards, punish- ments, and to the exclusion of adventitious and arti- ficial distinctions." Much, to his satisfaction, too, th.e number of women teachers, both, relatively and abso- lutely, is rapidly increasing. He sees in this fact the improvement of the schools and the elevation of women's estate in society. He comments upon teach- ers' institutes, the use of tbe Bible in schools, and vocal music. In connection with the legal power of towns to raise money for school purposes, he offers some remarks on the value of certain of the higher studies. He closes with one of his frequent eulogies upon education as contributing to the amelioration of the race. The E-eport contains fifty-eight pages. The Ninth Report, 1845, one hundred and five pages, is one of the most interesting and valuable of the whole series. The writer begins with remarking upon the manner in which school moneys are apportioned among the districts, and lays down the sound principle of " equality of school privileges for all the children of the town, whether they belong to a poor district or a rich one, a large district or a small one." He com- ments upon the rapid growth of common schools in different parts of the country, commending especially the enterprise of New York. The great theme of the Report, however, is School Motives and Some Means for avoiding and extirpating School Vices. The elabo- rate discussion of this topic embraces, for the most part, matter that is oftener found in professional books than in State Reports. It reminds the reader of the old-fashioned treatise on the Theory and Prac- tice of Teaching. The same may be said of other por- 176 HORACE MANN tions of the Eeports ; reprinted in appropriate form, mucli of the matter would form useful manuals for the teacher's table. The observation that the idea of an offence is not unfrequently suggested by its pro- hibition, and that the law sometimes leads to its own infraction, is illustrated by the story of a priest and a hostler. At the close of his customary questions in the confessional, the i)i'iest one day asked the hostler if he had ever greased the teeth of his customers' horses to prevent them from eating their oats. The man replied that he never had, and had never heard of such a thing ; but the next time he was confessed, the first offence that he had to mention was that of greasing the teeth of his customers' horses. The E,eport closes with an exposition of the Pestalozzian or inductive method of teaching. The Tenth Ee^^ort, 1846, thirty-six pages, first deals with the history and development of the Massachu- setts public school system. Mr. Mann then raises the question as to the ground upon which this system rests. He sees clearly that the foundation upon which it was placed by the Puritan Fathers in 1647 was much too narrow, because not all of the people of the Commonwealth are Protestant in religion. American independence brought forward a new argu- ment — the relation of popular education to republican government; but to a monarchist this would be a reason for destroying free schools and not for foster- ing them. Accordingly, a broader ground must be sought. He mentions the economical argument and the ethical one, and says the general failure, the world over, to support free schools must be found in false KEPOKTS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 177 ideas respecting the right to property more than any- where else. After some pages of analysis, he pro- pounds the three following propositions, as describing the broad and ever-enduring foundation that must underlie a strong and permanent system of com- mon schools : (1) " The successive generations of men taken collectively constitute one great common- wealth." (2) " The property of this commonwealth is pledged for the education of all its youth up to such a point as will save them from poverty and vice, and prej)are them for the adequate performance of their social and civil duties." (3) "The successive holders of this property are trustees bound to the faithful execution of their trust by the most sacred obligations, and embezzlement and pillage from chil- dren and descendants have not less of criminality, and have more of meanness, than the same offences when perpetrated against contemporaries." In this Eeport, as originally published, Mr. Mann condemns the practice of dividing towns into school districts, which sprang up in the last century. He considers the law of 1789, which authorized towns so to divide themselves, the most unfortunate law on the subject of common schools ever enacted in the State. He relates that already several towns have abolished their districts and assumed the adminis- tration of their schools in their corporate capacity, which was the beginning of a movement in the direc- tion of concentrating school authority that is now assuming large proportions.-^ 1 After Mr. Mann had left the ofifice, the State published, under his editorship, by the express authority of the legislature, the fol- 178 HORACE MANN The Eleventh Eeport, 1847, eighty-one pages, is almost wholly given up to another of Secretary Mann's special investigations. He sent out a circular to practical educators, chosen for their experience and soundness of judgment, inquiring what, in their opin- ion, would be the efficiency, in the promotion of social and moral character, of a good common school educa- tion conducted on the cardinal principles of the New England system.^ The valuable replies of these ex- perts fill several pages, and constitute the texts of a still more valuable discussion by the Secretary. It is needless, perhaps, to remark that the whole Eeport breathes the ardent faith in the remedial power of good common schools that characterized the ardent reformers of a half century ago. Referring to the educational activity of the time, Mr. Mann signifi- cantly says there could be no hazard in affirming that far more had been spoken and printed, heard and read, on this theme within the last twelve years than ever before were it all put together, since the beginning of the Colonies. The Twelfth Report, 1848, is in some respects the magnum opus, filling one hundred and eighteen pages of The Life and Works. Mr. Mann, as Secretary, now takes leave of the Board of Education, the public, and the cause of common schools. He naturally becomes lowing work : The Massachusetts System of Common Schools, being an Eyilarged and Revised Edition of the Tenth Annual Report of the First Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Boston, 1849. 1 These experts were John Griscom, D. P. Page, Solomon Adams, Jacob Abbott, F. A. Adams, E. A. Andrews, Roger S. Howard, Catharine E. Beecher. REPOETS TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 179 discursive and comprehensive in his last message. His great theme, he thus announces : " Tlie Capacities of our Present School System to Improve the Pecu- niary Condition and to Elevate the Intellectual and Moral Character of the Commonwealth." To a great extent it is a resume of matter that he had before- presented. As submitted to the Board, the Eeport contained some statistics that make a modest show- ing of certain aspects of progress that the schools had made since 1837. Mr. Mann says in his final Report that when he first assumed the duties of the Secretaryship two courses lay open before him. One was, to treat the school system of the State as though it were perfect ; to praise teachers for a skill they had had no chance of acquiring and did not possess ; to applaud towns for the munificence they had not shown ; in a word, to lull with flattery a community that was already sleeping. The other course was to advocate an ener- getic and comprehensive system of education ; to seek for improvements both at home and abroad ; to expose justly but kindly the incompetence of teachers ; to inform and stimulate school committees in respect to their duty ; to call for money adequate to the work to be done. He said the one cause would for a time have been ignobly popular ; the other was imminently perilous. Horace Mann saw all this, but he did not hesitate. Duty left him no option ; the only way to end prosperously was to begin righteously. The story of his experience is disheartening in parts ; but, taken together, it is a mighty stimulant to all teachers and school ofiicers to do their duty. Moreover, teachers 180 HORACE MANN and school officers should not miss the spirit in which he did his work. " The education of the whole people in a republican government/' he said, '' can never be attained without the consent of the whole people. Compulsion, even if it were desirable, is not an avail- able instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, is our resource. The nature of education must be explained. The whole mass of mind must be instructed in regard to its comprehension and enduring interests. We can- not drive our people up a dark avenue, even though it be the right one ; but we must hang the starry lights of knowledge about it, and show them not only the directness of its course to the goal of prosperity and honor, but the beauty of the way that leads to it." These resumes reveal in part what the Eeports them- selves reveal in full — the nature, the range, and the limitations of Horace Mann's educational genius. They present him to the world as an educational statesman rather than a philosophical educator or a trained pedagogist. The Reports are among the best existing expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and the State. The student or educator, the journalist or politician, who is seeking the best arguments in favor of popular education, will find them here. CHAPTER VIII THE CONTROVERSY WITH BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS The judicious reader at the present day reads Mr. Mann's celebrated controversy with, the Boston school- masters, or their controversy with him, with mingled feelings of satisfaction and pain. It throws much light upon the state of education in Massachusetts and Boston, and particularly upon the teaching pro- fession at the time of the Common School Eevival. It presents studies of character. Again, it has a con- siderable interest merely as a piece of controversy. But when all is said, these feelings are shrouded with regret, to use a mild word, that the great reform should have been marred by an uncalled-for onslaught upon the foremost reformer by prominent men in the teaching profession. The story must be told once more, because it is a part of the history, and particu- larly because, in the end, it promoted the reform. But first let us see why, as has been stated in a previous chapter, the controversy lay in the nature of things and was in fact unavoidable. Schools are a conservative engine, and teaching is a conservative profession. The causes of these facts lie deep in the very nature of the work to be done. Much of the work of the elementary school is to put the pupil into proper relations with the civilization about him. 181 182 HORACE MANN Teaching is also a self-conscious profession, rendering its votaries keenly alive to criticism, and, some would say, not conducive to the development of proper sense of proportion and perspective. In 1843 Massachu- setts, as she reflected upon her Puritan-descended system of public schools, was filled with complacency. Teachers shared in the opposition that the creation of the Board of Education had provoked, some of them moved by their religious feelings, but more, probably, by professional bias. Had not the schools gotten on very well without such a Board for two hundred years ? The setting aside of Mr. Carter for Mr. Mann in 1837 still rankled in some bosoms. The one was a teacher, the other a lawyer and politician ; and some teachers, no doubt, looked upon Mr. Mann's presence in the chief educational office of the State much as a pious Jew would have regarded the pres- ence of a G-entile in the palace of the High Priest at Jerusalem. What could a man not bred to the trade teach the teachers of Boston? Then Mr. Mann, looking at his subject broadly and setting forth his ideas in an oratorical mode, gave quick offence to some minds. His winged words stuck in the wounds that they had made. Such phrases as " incompetent teach- ers," "ignorance of teachers," "depressed state of com- mon schools," " sleepy supervision," deficiencies of teachers in the "two indispensable prerequisites for their office," and the Massachusetts common school system "fallen into a state of general unsoundness and debility" were carefully treasured up against a possible day of reckoning. Intent upon improvement, the Secretary naturally dwelt more upon the defects BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 183 of the schools than upon their excellencies. His consuming duties prevented his coming into close relations with many teachers in their work, and so of measuring, or even discovering, some of the diffi- culties under which they labored. He knew that teaching the young was a grand theme for the plat- form and for a Board report; they knew by daily experience that it was a most difficult and trying art. The Normal schools, as has been already related, were an offence to many, as well within as without the teaching profession. Even the name " Normal " was held up to scorn. The masters of the Boston schools were men of education and character, some of them possessing un- usual ability ; they had experience in their work, and were devoted to it; they were conservators of the things educational that time had tested and approved; they deserved well of the community that they served, and received that respect for the teacher which was traditional in New England. The Boston schools were the best of their kind. Even those critics who con- tended that the schools of the State had tended to deteriorate down to 1837, made an exception in favor of Boston. The masters were a part of the renown of the city, and they knew it. But, unfortunately, the Boston schools had not been touched by the new movement. They merely kept on in the old way, respectable, indeed, but slow. Down to 1843 it is not probable that any equal group of schools in the State had been less influenced by Mr. Mann's work than these schools. In the mean time the schools of other cities and towns were in quick motion. As a con- 184 HORACE MANN temporary writer put it, other cities began to shame the Capital, and some people began to demand what was the matter with Boston. The masters felt uncom- fortable in view of this state of things, and ascribed their discomfort to Mr. Mann, whose work they began to challenge. Accordingly, the Boston schools and the Boston masters, while the best of their kind, were still a part of the very system that Mr. Mann wished to reform. So the masters went on in their self-con- scious way, appropriating to themselves the Secretary's sharp criticisms, until the cup of their endurance was filled to the brim. The Seventh Eeport caused it to overflow. The Secretary had indeed used due dili- gence not to wound their sensibilities. He did not bring the schools of Massachusetts into formal com- parison with those of Prussia, the schools of Boston with those of Dresden ; but to their sensitive nerves this did not mend matters. He held up the mirror, and they could not refrain from looking into it and seeing what other people saw. Or as the writer just referred to said: "His readers made the application fast enough. The Boston teachers saw that they were likely to lose a large share of the reputation they had inherited, and to be beset by still stronger importuni- ties for reform. Thus urged, they resolved to quit their neutral position, and to act vigorously in the offensive. They would appear as the champions of conservatism, and do battle stoutly against the radical and innovating tendencies of the times. '^ ^ 1 See an article by Prof. Francis Boweu, The North American Revieiv, January, 1845, pp. 224-24(3. This article is an excellent contemporary view of the controversy. BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 185 Overcoming their inertia^ tMrty-one of the masters sent out to the world a pamphlet of one hundred and forty-four pages, called Bemarks, etc./ the purpose of which was declared to be " in some degree to correct erroneous views and impressions, and thus tend to pro- mote a healthy tone in x^nblic sentiment in relation to many things connected with the welfare of our common schools." The masters were organized in a society called the Principals' Association, and it was a committee of this Association that sent out the pamphlet. The style and temper of the Bemarks betray a plurality of author- ship. The preface is signed by the thirty-one masters who united in the act, and differences of opinion among them are at once confessed and excused in the sentence, "We have no object in view but the public good, and for that all are ready to yield things of minor considera- tion." It is plain that the masters think their enemies are upon them, and that they must sink differences of opinion and make a united stand against the common foe. To borrow a figure used at the time, they wished to act in solid column, so that they might make up in weight what they lacked in skill and prowess. Before we go farther we should, guard against a possible misunderstanding. Kot all the teachers of Massachusetts or of Boston passed the Board of Edu- cation and its Secretary by with averted face. On the contrary, both Board and Secretary had no more enthusiastic supporters than were to be found in the educational profession. Still, it remains a fact, and 1 Remm^Tcs on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Bos- ton, 1844. 186 HORACE MANN one full of admonition, that the Common School E-e- vival found some of its most formidable foes in its own household.^ The JRemarks are divided into four subdivisions, each division proceeding mainly but not wholly from a single hand. The first division, which is a sort of general introduction covering thirty-eight pages, is much the most offensive part of the document in sub- stance and in tone. It is a general arraignment of the Secretary of the Board of Education. The writer begins with the customary eulogy upon the Massa- chusetts schools. These schools had ever been the pride and glory of the State, and the good cause was never more prosperous than at the time the Board of Education was formed. Great stress is laid upon the fruits of observation and experiment in teaching, and scorn is heaped upon literary and moral amateurs who repudiate the notion that experience is the best schoolmaster. The infant school, phrenology, the monitorial school, and the Normal school are men- tioned as illustrations of the vagaries of the amateurs. The tone of the writer is the familiar one that the regulation schoolmaster so easily falls into, viz., that 1 It has sometimes been said that the Massachusetts State Teachers' Association, 1844, was organized in a spirit of opposi- tion to the Board and its policy. This, Mr. Elbridge Smith, in his historical address delivered at the fifteenth anniversary of the organization of the association, distinctly denies. Of the eighty- five teachers who participated in the organization, he says, only fifteen were opponents of Mr. Mann. At the first meeting resolu- tions expressing approbation of the Board were tabled without dis- cussion ; at the second meeting such resolutions were unanimously adopted. — Fifty-eighth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, p. 476. t BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 187 the man who is outside the sacred profession has no claim to the serious attention of experienced teachers. And this in total forgetfulness of the fact that educa- tion lies proximate to every great source of activity, and that multitudes of men and women who are not teachers are perfectly competent critics of educational results, if not of the methods and processes of teach- ing. It is charged over and over again that Mr. Mann has wantonly disparaged the teachers of Massachu- setts, and of Boston, and his disparagement is re- pelled with an air of injured innocence. Mr. Mann, Dr. Howe, Mr. Emerson, Cyrus Pierce, and others have formed a mutual admiration society, alternately prais- ing one another. Advantage is taken of every chance expression that can be twisted to answer the writer's purpose ; words are torn from their connection, and passages widely separated are brought together. Mr. Mann's competency to pass judgment upon schools is denied, and the faithfulness of his descriptions is some- times questioned. At times the writer takes on an air of patronage. In view of his antecedents, it is not per- haps strange that Mr. Mann has done injustice to the schools of his native State. He had not extended a warm sympathy to teachers. The casual mention of Boston leads the writer to ask what the Secretary knew about the schools of Boston. " With one voice the answer is, he knows comparatively nothing." In his preference for what was foreign, he was not less severe in reflecting upon his own country than Madame Trollope herself had been. It is assumed that Mr. Mann's general criticisms are to be taken in specific senses, and that whatever he describes he approves 188 HORACE MANN unless tie explicitly states the contrary. Whether the Secretary praises, blames, or keeps silent, he has Boston in his eye. For example, Mr. Mann, speaking of the intense activity that he had seen in certain schools of Scotland, said the schools that he left at home must be regarded almost as dormitories, and the children as hibernating animals in comparison ; which is taken for proof conclusive, as he did not state the contrary, that he approved the agonism of these schools, and considered the Boston schools dormitories for animals. But we need not go farther; we may dismiss this division of the Remarks with the words employed by the contemporary writer : captious, vul- gar, and abusive, abounding in glaring misrepresen- tations, calculated to throw odium upon the Board of Education and its Secretary, and to excite the prejudices of the ignorant. The other divisions are in a much less shrill tone than the first one. While they are by no means free from exhibitions of ill temper, misrepresentation, and false imputations, they cannot fairly be called abusive ; they are real discussions of serious questions, and not mere ebullitions of spleen. There is not merely the semblance of argument, but real argument. The writ- ers do not deal so much with Mr. Mann's flowing de- scriptions and casual remarks as with principles of education and methods of teaching, concerning which they and Mr. Mann and many other persons disagreed. Mr. Mann's incompetency to pass judgment upon things didactic is indeed still assumed, and the as- sumption is maintained that he approves of things which he has merely described. Sometimes, it must BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 189 be admitted, these calmer writers score points against the Secretary in the game. The second writer devotes seventeen pages to the Prussian mode of instruction. It will not be claimed that, even to-day, a final adjustment of oral instruc- tion and text-book instruction in elementary schools has been reached; much less had such an adjustment been reached in 1843. It is not an easy question, and no fixed, unvarying answer is possible. Some- thing will depend upon the study, the teacher, the pupil, and attendant circumstances. Two things, however, are obvious to discerning educators : text- book grind by the pupil and loose, flowing talk by the teacher are equally to be avoided. Pupils will not become scholars unless they apply their own powers to study and learn how to use books ; nor can they learn how to use books without actually using them. Still the present successors of the thirty-one Boston schoolmasters will not deny that, under the old regime, text-book work was in excess, that there was much need of a capable teacher to interpret the printed page, and that Germany was far nearer right than Massachusetts. Part third, which embraces forty-seven pages, is devoted to the investigation of modes of teaching children to read. Before he went abroad Mr. Mann had committed himself to the opinion that no thor- ough reform could be looked for in the common schools unless the alphabetic method of teaching read- ing was abolished. He believed in what was then called the " 'Rew " Method, now the " Word " Method, and his observations in Germany confirmed him in 190 HORACE MANN his belief. It would seem that this subject certainly could be discussed by educators with calmness, and it is surprising to see the amount of heat that it is made to give forth in this controversy. We need not examine the laborious arguments pro and con. If time has not passed finally on the method of teaching children to read, it has certainly given judgment against the alphabetic method, as that was used fifty or sixty years ago. Perhaps there is reason to ques- tion whether the various modes of teaching reading, in the hands of good teachers, are as widely different as some writers and lecturers who describe them would have us think ; also whether more does not depend upon the skill of the teacher than the technique of the method. It is certain, at all events, that children did learn to read in the old-fashioned way. It is certain, also, that the subject was still an open one in 1843, and that no man should now be condemned simply because he then took the wrong side. The last division of the Remarks, forty-three pages, is devoted to the subject of school discipline — a theme that lay very near to Mr. Mann's heart. It was also the most important of all the specific ques- tions that were mooted in this controversy. Erom the time of his entry into the Secretary's office, if not from a still earlier date, Mr. Mann had grown increasingly distrustful of the use of corporal punishment in schools, and his observations abroad strengthened this feeling. The account that he gives of the regimen of kindness and conciliation in the German schools is one of the most vivid passages to be found in the Seventh Eeport. Calling to mind BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 191 three things pertaining to the Prussian and Saxon schools about which he could not be mistaken, he said : " Though I saw hundreds of schools and thou- sands, — I think I may say within bounds tens of thousands of pupils, — I never saw one child under- going punishment or arraigned for misconduct. I never saw one child in tears from having been pun- ished, or from fear of being punished.'' Whether this was really so remarkable as he thought — whether teachers and pupils are not commonly on their good behavior when visitors from foreign countries are making their rounds, is a question that the writer in the Remarks presses sharply; but there can be no doubt that, in respect to physical coercion, the German schools of the time were far in advance of the Massachusetts schools. Still more, it is almost superfluous to add that Mr. Mann's views on the sub- ject were in accord with the growing sentiment of the time, or that they were an integral part of his philos- ophy of human nature and human conduct. They were in accord, also, with his inherited character, for, in the language of phrenology, his " Benevolence " was remarkably large. It is not strange, therefore, that he shrank from the use of physical force in managing children, a.nd recommended a principal reliance upon moral suasion. He was not, indeed, a non-resistant, a>nd did not go to the extreme of saying that the rod should never be seen in the schoolmaster's hand; on the contrary, he distinctly admitted that in the schools as well as in society at large when gentle means failed material force must be the ultima ratio ; but this necessity was mainly owing, in his view, to 192 HORACE MANN the present imperfections of schools and of society. Like Moses, he yiekled something to the hardness of men's hearts. He believed in the increasing perfecti- bility of men ; and so looked forward to a time when reason would so abound and love so prevail that the rod could be relegated to the museum of cast-off school appliances. Indeed, his optimism was so fervid that the glorious vision of the prophet relative to the Branch out of the Rod of Jesse, they shall neither hurt nor destroy in all the Holy Mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, seemed to him capable of practical realization. But this was not the faith, and still less the practice of American teachers in 1843. Not unnaturally therefore those portions of the Seventh Eeport that deal with this subject, when the schoolmasters wrote the Remarks, came in for ex- tended animadversion. The writer of this division lays down the good old doctrine : " All school order, like that of the family and society, must be established upon the basis of acknowledged authority, as a starting point " ; it is not merely the teacher's right, but his duty as well, to establish and enforce such authority " by an appeal to the most appropriate motives that a true heart and sound mind may select among all those which God has implanted in our nature " ; the higher are always to be preferred to the lower motives, but none are to be rejected "which circumstances may render fitting, not even the fear of physical pain ; for we believe," adds the writer, " that that, low as it is, will have its place, its proper sphere of influence, not for a limited period BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS 193 merely, till teachers can become better qualitied and society more morally refined, bnt while men and children continne to be Imnian ; that is, so long as schools and schoolmasters and governments and laws are needed." At this distance it is hard to see anything very dangerous in this writer's fundamental ideas, or to discover any great difference between them and those ideas which Mr. Mann himself had often avowed. In application and details there was more difference between the two men. But Mr. Mann saw things very differently. To him the fourth division, leav- ing the personal qualities of the first one out of view, was the most objectionable part of the whole pamphlet. If the Boston masters expected to have the last word, they counted without their host. The Bemarks appeared in August, and in October Mr. Mann put out a pamphlet of one hundred and seventy-six pages in reply. ^ Professor Bowen's contemporary characteriza- tion of this Iie2)ly as a whole is a perfectly just one. The Secretary, he said, had not only vindicated himself, but had retaliated upon his assailants with terrible severity ; though he disliked the use of the rod for children, he evidently had no objection to whipping schoolmasters, and in this case he had certainly plied the birch with remarkable dexterity and streugtli of arm ; and if the reader did not keep in mind the un- 1 Repbj to the " Reraarks" of Thirty-one Boston Schoobnasters on the Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the 3fassachu!