What did horace mann accomplish

Running Head: GUIDED RESPONSE 1

GUIDED RESPONSE 73

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See the attached example. Please list five significant historical events/leaders from this era (Chapters Three and Four) and choose two to compare and contrast. Your Discussion Forum response will satisfy the following requirements:

a. Five events and the date each event occurred is listed.

b. Two events are chosen and a Venn Diagram is completed showing (at least three in each category) the similarities and differences of each chosen event.

c. Three of the following five questions have been answered.

· These events are still significant today because____.

· If I could change the outcome of one of my listed events I would change___ because____.

· If only one of these events/individuals could have taken place; I would chose ___ because____.

· If I could change the outcome of one of my chosen events I would choose___ because____.

· What would you say is the most important result of each of your chosen events?

Chaper 3

3.1 Education Under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution

The first attempt at self-governance, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, were adopted by the Continental Congress and went into effect after their ratification in 1781. With the Articles of Confederation, Congress attempted to organize the 13 separate colonies under a national government that was given little authority and included no executive or judicial branches. It was also unable to tax, regulate commerce, or enforce civil law. This weak government could not bring 13 disparate governments into a unified whole, and popular unrest, particularly over issues of money and debt, erupted with increasing frequency.

Fearing that the confederation would collapse and that anarchy would prevail, delegates from each state (except Rhode Island, which declined to send any representatives) met in the summer of 1787 and drafted the Constitution. After its ratification in 1789, it launched the new republic.

Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the Constitution mention education. It is thus one of the powers reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment, which states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." And, in fact, by 1800, 7 of the then 16 states had adopted constitutions that contained formal statements regarding their responsibility for education. Eventually, all the states adopted specific provisions for education. The language of these provisions range from a very general statement that the state provides a system of free public schools to very specific provisions specifying school terms and finance.

Northwest Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787

Despite reserving education for the states, there can be no doubt that the nation's founders recognized its importance to a form of government in which the quality of representation depended on citizens' abilities to make informed choices at the ballot box. To ensure that the settlers in the Northwest Territory did not neglect education, Congress passed perhaps the most important piece of legislation under the Articles of Confederation: the Land Ordinance of 1785.

This ordinance established that the Northwest Territory would be surveyed into square townships, which would be 6 miles on each side. Each township would be further divided into 36 sections of a square mile each, and the law required that the 16th section of land in each township in the Territory be set aside for the support of education. The land could be sold or leased, but the proceeds were to go to fund education. The 16th section, which was the section closest to the geographical center of the township (see Figure 3.1), was also a strategic choice for the possible location of a school.

The 16th section of each township in the Northwest Territory was set aside for the support of education. Modern-day state of Ohio shown with a small square imposed over a small area of

the state. This small area is enlarged at left to show how each township was

divided into 36 1 square mile sections and the 16th section was reserved for the

support of education. Inset map at top left shows the states of Ohio, Indiana,

Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Although it would be three quarters of a century before the federal government again participated in any meaningful way in the support of public education (with passage of the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act), the Land Ordinance of 1785 established the principle of federal support for education. The precedent of setting aside land for the support of education was followed in all subsequent federal grants to states and territories and provided the basis for the permanent school funds that still exist in most of these states. Ultimately, the federal government distributed 80 million acres of land for the support of public education under the terms of the Land Ordinance of 1785.

Two years after the first ordinance, Congress reiterated the importance of education in Article Three of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which incorporated the Northwest Territory: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."

Nationalism and Education

The spirit of nationalism that dominated the new republic shaped the view of the Founding Fathers regarding education. Whereas the primary purpose of colonial education had been sectarian, political leaders now emphasized citizenship and the nation-state. They saw education as the best way to both prepare citizens to participate in a republican form of government and maintain order.

The Founding Fathers were well aware (and were reminded by popular uprisings like Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1787 and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794) of the uncertain existence of the national government. Although influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, they also knew the lessons of history, which suggested that republics had a tenuous existence. Education, they believed, especially if based on Protestant principles and morals, was essential to preparing virtuous and orderly citizens.

At the same time, they sought to preserve the principles of liberty and equality for which they had fought. In their search for ordered liberty they accepted a paradox: "the free America was to be, in political convictions, the uniform America," and in the end they "saw conformity as the price of liberty" (Tyack, 1967, pp. 84–85).

Although they differed on many details, the republican leaders held at least four beliefs in common regarding education: (1) that education must be relative to the form of government—hence, a republic needs an educational system that prepares citizens to function effectively in a republican form of government; (2) that what was needed was a truly American education purged of all vestiges of older, monarchical forms and dedicated to the creation of a cohesive and patriotic citizenry; (3) that education should be genuinely practical, aimed at the improvement of the human condition, with the new sciences at its heart; and (4) that American education should be exemplary and a means through which the nation could teach the world the glories of liberty and learning (Cremin, 1982).

3.2 Republican Educational Theorists

The nation's leaders, along with most other Americans, acknowledged that the condition of education at the end of the revolutionary period was deplorable. This conviction led a number of the Founding Fathers to draft legislation or make other formal proposals designed to improve and extend schooling and to make it increasingly state supported.

This is not to say that their ideas of publicly supported education systems were immediately adopted in the new republic, but as the historian David Tyack (1967) reminds us, "The concept of uniform, systematic education serving republican purposes did not disappear. Later, when challenges confronted society during the period of the common school crusade, the ideas would emerge again, fortified by added sanctions and new anxieties" (p. 92).

Although many of the Founding Fathers expressed their views on the importance of education, the three who stand out as having the greatest influence on the education that developed in the new republic are Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and Noah Webster.

Thomas Jefferson

Of the Founding Fathers, perhaps none is so well known for his views on education as Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), who wrote letters, authored legislation, and spoke publicly on education throughout his life. Strongly influenced by his classical education (Boutin & Rodgers, 2011) and the philosophy of John Locke, he believed that government must be by the consent of the governed and that men were entitled to certain rights that could not be abridged.

Jefferson was also one of the chief proponents of the addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. According to one educational historian, "Few statesmen in American history have so vigorously strived for an ideal [liberty]; perhaps none has so consistently viewed education as the indispensable cornerstone of freedom" (Rippa, 1984, p. 68).

Plan for a State Education System

Jefferson's Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, introduced in the Virginia legislature in 1779, proposed the establishment of a system of public schools for the state. In its preamble Jefferson gave the prototypical republican, nationalistic argument for the importance of state-supported education:

When it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expense, those of their children who nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked.

The bill called for each county to be subdivided into parts called hundreds; each hundred was to provide a tax-supported elementary school. Attendance would be free for all White children, male and female, for 3 years. The curriculum would focus on reading, writing, arithmetic, and history. Jefferson believed that through the study of history students would learn to recognize tyranny and support democracy.

The bill went on to propose that the state be divided into 20 districts and that a boarding grammar school be built at public expense in each district. Those attending would be not only those boys whose families could afford the tuition, but also the brightest of the poorer students from the elementary schools, whose tuition would be paid by the state. The curriculum of the grammar school was to include Latin, Greek, geography, English, grammar, and higher mathematics.

Finally, upon completion of grammar school, 10 of the scholarship students would receive 3 years' study at the College of William and Mary at state expense to prepare them for professional careers as statesmen or clergy. The remaining scholarship students, according to Jefferson, would most likely become masters in the grammar schools.

This plan, viewed in today's light, appears strikingly elitist, limiting access to secondary and higher education to only a small number of the brightest students. But in Jefferson's day it was considered excessively philanthropic and reflected Jefferson's commitment to the concept of a system of universal, free public education, if only for 3 years, and his belief in its necessity for a democracy. The bill's opponents defeated it in the Virginia legislature in 1789, in 1797, and again in 1817. Its defeat can be attributed in large part to the unwillingness of the wealthy landowners to pay property taxes for the education of the poor.

While Jefferson did not succeed in his campaign for public education, he still had a major influence on education in the United States. His "true success came in his becoming part of the tradition which inspired him. As the ideas of Socrates, Quintilian, and others influenced Jefferson, the ideas of Jefferson influenced Mann, Dewey and other great American educators" (Boutin & Rodgers, 2011, p. 210).

Founding the University of Virginia

Jefferson's interests also extended to higher education. After leaving the presidency of the United States in 1809, he devoted much of his energy to establishing the University of Virginia. He created the project (sometimes called "Mr. Jefferson's University") in every detail: He designed the buildings and landscape (even buying the bricks and picking out the trees to be used as lumber), chose the library books, designed the curriculum, and selected the students and faculty.

In the selection of the faculty and textbooks, what has been described as Jefferson's "rigid liberalism" (Tyack, 1967) was much in evidence. That is, Jefferson's liberal position on tolerance did not extend to what he considered political "heresy": He insisted that students be protected from exposure to Federalist faculty and texts that supported a strong federal government as opposed to Jefferson's republican position.

The University of Virginia opened in 1825. In addition to the classical curriculum dominant in higher education at the time, the university offered a much-publicized experimental elective system that included a nonclassical track of modern languages, natural sciences, law, government, and medicine (Pak, 2008). So important was the University of Virginia to Jefferson that he requested that its founding be included on his tombstone among what he considered his other greatest accomplishments: writing the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and authoring the Declaration of Independence. Serving as President of the United States was not included.

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The Founding Father Dr. Benjamin Rush was an advocate of education of both females and African Americans.

Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), a medical doctor and professor, was a graduate of both the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and Princeton. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he was a professor at the College of Philadelphia. Rush was deeply interested in education as well as a broad range of social issues: He was strongly opposed to the death penalty and encouraged penal reform and the establishment of institutions for the mentally ill. A former slave owner himself, he later co-founded of one of America's first abolition societies, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

Free Schools

Rush wanted to establish a system in Pennsylvania, and eventually the entire nation, that would provide public support for free schools. In his "A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania," which was similar to Jefferson's plan for Virginia, Rush proposed that in every town of 100 or more families a free school be established where children would be taught to read and write English and German (widely spoken in Pennsylvania at the time) as well as arithmetic. An academy was to be established in each county "for the purpose of instructing youth in the learned languages (Latin and Greek), and thereby preparing them to enter college."

The higher education provisions of the plan included four colleges where males would be instructed in mathematics and the "higher branches of science," as well as one university located in the state capital where "law, physic, divinity, the law of nature and nations economy, etc. be taught . . . by public lectures in the winter season, after the manner of the European universities."

Rush's education plan, which, like Jefferson's, was too revolutionary to be accepted in its day, was intended to tie together the whole education system: The university would supply the masters for the academies and free schools, and the free schools, in turn, would supply the students for the academies. More than perhaps the other leading republican theorists, Rush was concerned about the quality and character of the teachers and the financial support they might receive:

It will be no purpose to adopt this or any other mode of education unless we make choice of suitable masters to carry our plans into execution. Let our teachers be distinguished for their abilities and knowledge. Let them be grave in their manners, gentle in their tempers, exemplary in their morals, and of sound principles in religion and government. Let us not leave their support to the precarious resources to be derived from their pupils, but let such funds be provided for our schools and colleges as will enable us to allow them liberal salaries. (Rush, cited in Rudolph, 1965, p. 21)

Education for Women and African Americans

Rush was an advocate for the education of women and founded one of the first female academies in the United States, the Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia. However, he was not an egalitarian. In fact, in his opinion, education would make women more subservient to men and help them to recognize and accept their natural inferiority and that men were by intent and design the natural leaders of the world (Campbell, 2000).

To a large extent Rush's support of women's education was based on his view of their particular duties in a republic. In his "Thoughts Upon Female Education" (1787), Rush espoused the idea of "republican motherhood," the idea that women's primary duty was to bring up their sons to be virtuous citizens and instruct them in the principles of liberty and government. Other major duties were to be "stewards and guardians of their husband's property" and the educators of their children.

To best prepare females for these duties, Rush proposed that women be instructed in not only reading and writing, but also "some knowledge of figures and bookkeeping . . . [and, since] there are certain occupations in which she may assist her husband with this knowledge, and should she survive him and agreeably to the custom of our country be the executrix of his will, she cannot fail of deriving immense advantage of it" (p. 9); geography; "the first principles of astronomy and natural philosophy, particularly with such parts of them as are calculated to prevent superstition" (p. 9); history; vocal music and dance; English literature; moral philosophy; and the Christian religion.

Rush was also an advocate for the education of African Americans, which he saw as a moral and economic imperative: "Let the young negroes be educated in the principles of virtues and religion . . . let them be taught to read and write—and afterward instructed in some business whereby they may be able to maintain themselves" (Blinderman, 1976, p. 21).

Rush was perhaps the most demanding of the republican theorists in terms of seeking discipline and political conformity—indeed, indoctrination—through education. The following quotes from Rush provide what Kaestle (1983) called a "chilling reminder of the harsh side of revolutionary educational thought":

In the education of youth, let the authority of our masters be as absolute as possible. The government of schools like the government of private families should be arbitrary, that it may not be severe. By this mode of education, we prepare our youth for the subordination of laws and thereby qualify them for becoming good citizens of the republic. I am satisfied that the most useful citizens have been formed from those youth who have never known or felt their own wills till they were one and twenty years of age. . . .

From the observations that have been made it is plain that I consider it is possible to convert men into republican machines. (pp. 16–17)

A National University

A major goal for Rush, one he shared with all the presidents from George Washington to Andrew Jackson, was to establish a national university. In the view of Rush, Washington, and many others, such an institution would train the nation's future leaders in every field, especially politics, and would be a means of promoting nationalism. Rush went so far as to propose that Congress pass a law, to take effect 30 years after the founding of the university, to prevent any person from holding office who had not graduated from it (Tyack, 1967).

An equally strong proposal by Jefferson included bringing the entire faculty of the College of Geneva, Switzerland, to become the core for a national university (Butts & Cremin, 1953), and Washington repeatedly proposed a national university in his public addresses and even pledged personal financial support (Pangle & Pangle, 1993).

Many of the other leaders of the new nation also supported the creation of a national university. In fact, the proposal was considered by the drafters of the Constitution but was rejected because it would require the inclusion of too much detail in that concise document. Nevertheless, each of the first six presidents of the United States voiced his support for what historian David Madsen (1966) called an "Enduring Dream of the U.S.A."—a national university. Although not to be realized in the form envisioned by its early proponents, the national military academies realized at least part of the dream, to train leaders for the "militia" and the navy.

Noah Webster

Jefferson and Rush proposed systems of public education, but it was a teacher, Noah Webster (1758–1843), who had the most influence on education in the new republic. Although Webster could probably be considered more a Federalist than a Jeffersonian Republican, he shared the view of his contemporaries that education was central to ensuring stability and liberty in the nascent republic. Webster believed that the primary purpose of education should be the inculcation of patriotism, and that what was needed was a truly American education rid of its European influence (Madsen, 1974). These goals could best be accomplished, he believed, by creating a distinctive national (American) language and curriculum.

Spelling Books

Title page of the first edition of Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the

English Language.

Everett Collection/SuperStock

Through his dictionary and textbooks, Webster sought to create a distinctive American language.

To further this goal, Webster prepared a speller, a grammar, and a reader to replace the English texts then in use. Of these, the most popular was the American Spelling Book, published in 1783 and often referred to as the blue-backed speller. Books were called spellers because spelling was the way children were taught to read at the time. "The spelling-for-reading approach, better known to us as the "alphabet method" was then the standard way to teach beginning reading. Children learning to read were taught to spell words out, in syllables, in order to pronounce them (Denham, 1983, p. 178).

The speller soon became the most widely used in the United States. Its success and royalties allowed Webster to devote his time and attention to his other major project intended to standardize the American language, the American Dictionary of the English Language (Kendall, 2011).

After the publication of the dictionary, Webster dramatically revised the spelling book, which was reprinted in 1829 as the Elementary Spelling Book. Although within a decade reading instruction began to rely on sequenced readers, Webster's Elementary Spelling Book "which could be purchased at virtually every little country store across the nation" (Monaghan, 2005, p. 361) remained very popular.

And for one special population it was especially popular: the enslaved and newly freed. Both the American Spelling Book and the Elementary Spelling Book are mentioned over and over in slaves' accounts of how they tried to teach themselves to read before the Civil War. In 1866, the year after the war ended, nearly 600,000 newly freed African Americans bought copies of the blue-backed speller, "which had attained a reputation of mythic proportions among African American communities for the role it played in teaching the novice to read (Monaghan, 2005, p. 361).

Webster's speller continues to be sold and used today, more than 200 years after its original publication. Probably no other single-volume textbook has sold as many copies in the United States.

3.3 New Providers of Elementary Education

Although most of the specific education proposals made by Jefferson, Rush, and others were not adopted, other proposals for expanding educational opportunities were implemented in the early republic. However, despite the fact that Webster and others promoted the establishment of a uniquely American education, some of the major innovations in American education in this period were of European origin. Among these were the monitorial school, the Sunday school, and the infant school. None of them survived in their initial form, but they promoted the common school movement by both illuminating the need for education and giving the common people a taste for learning.

Monitorial Schools

Monitorial schools originated in England and were brought to America by a Quaker, Joseph Lancaster. In the Lancasterian monitorial system, one paid teacher instructed hundreds of pupils through the use of monitors, or student teachers, who were chosen for their academic abilities. Monitorial education was concerned with teaching only the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The first monitorial school in the United States was opened in New York City in 1806, and the system spread rapidly. One such school in Pennsylvania designed to accommodate 450 students was described as follows:

The teacher sits at the head of the room on a raised platform. Beneath and in front of the teacher are three rows of monitors' desks placed directly in front of the pupils' desks. The pupils' desks are divided into three sections . . . and each section is in line with one of the rows of monitors' desks. . . . A group of pupils would march to the front of the room and stand around the monitors' desks, where they would receive instruction from the monitors. When they finished, they would march to the rear part of their particular section and recite or receive further instruction from another monitor. While this group was marching to the rear, another group would be marching up to the front to take their places around the monitors. When finished, the pupils would march to the rear, and the group in the rear would move forward to the second part of their section to receive instruction from yet another monitor. Because each of the three sections had a group in front, one in the rear, and one in the middle working on different things, a total of nine different recitations could be carried on at one time. (Spring, 2010 p. 73)

The monitorial system was attractive not only because it provided an inexpensive system for educating the poor, but also because submission to the system was supposed to instill the virtues of orderliness, obedience, and industriousness. The system gained wide appeal. In fact, Kaestle (1983) asserts that it was "the most wide-spread and successful educational reform in the Western world during the first 30 years of the nineteenth century" (pp. 41–42).

The monitorial format was considered ideal for charity schools operated by free school societies for the children of the poor in urban areas not being served by denominational charity schools. Overall, these free schools were not a major factor in the history of education; nonetheless, for a period they did provide the only education some children received. For example, by 1820 the Free School Society of New York City (renamed the Public School Society in 1826 and placed under the city department of education in 1853) was teaching more than 2,000 children (Cremin, 1982). Indeed, the free schools provided the basis for the public school systems that developed in many American cities in the mid-19th century (Kaestle, 1983).

In time the monitorial system declined. It appeared to be better suited to large cities with large numbers of students than to the small towns and rural areas where many Americans still lived. Even in the large cities it was not always considered successful. Among the many criticisms of the system were that often the peer monitors were not able to command respect and maintain discipline and that the schools afforded only the most basic education. Yet, instead of being an educational dead end, as depicted by many educational historians, Lancasterian monitorial-ism may have been the model for the factory-like urban schools that emerged in the United States in the late 19th century (Gutek, 1986).

Sunday Schools

The Sunday school, a form of charity school, was begun in 1780 in England by Robert Raikes. The first Sunday school in America opened in 1786 in Virginia. Its purpose was to offer moral instruction and the rudiments of reading and writing to children who worked during the week, primarily in the factories of the larger cities. Historians have estimated that as many as 40% of the laborers in the factories in the late 18th century were children. The Sunday school was seen as serving a secular purpose by providing these working children—boys and girls aged 6 to 12 or 14—with an alternative to roaming the streets on Sunday.

By 1800 Sunday schools in Philadelphia enrolled more than 2,000 students. They were also in operation in New York, Richmond, and other eastern cities. In some locations Sunday schools obtained some public support for their operations. The Sunday and Adult School Union, a national organization established in 1817 that was reorganized as the American Sunday School Union in 1824, promoted the movement across the country. The Union published and distributed reading and spelling books, religious books, and books for moral guidance and instruction. It also distributed sets of "Sunday School Libraries" which served, de facto, as the only public libraries in many rural communities (Boylan, 1988).

It has been estimated that, by 1827, 200,000 children attended Sunday schools (Kaestle, 1983). In a number of communities, mainly in cities but even on plantations until the education of slaves was forbidden by law, African American adults and children were among those who took advantage of the opportunity to learn to read and write on Sunday, albeit in separate classes from Whites.