The chief aim of this education should be moral character and social efficiency. The material equipment of the schools should re This universal education, however, should have as its chief aim moral character and social efficiency, and not mere erudition, culture, and accomplishments. "No amount of intellectual attainments," in Mann's judgment, "can afford a guaranty for the moral rectitude of the possessor." But while the public school should cultivate a moral and religious spirit, this could not be accomplished, he felt, by inculcating sectarian doctrines. The main objection urged to the private school system in his First Report was its tendency "to assimilate our modes of education to those of England, where Churchmen and Dissenters, each sect according to its creed, maintain separate schools in which children are taught from their tenderest years to wield the sword 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." His Improvement of Material Equipment and of Methods This practical reformer likewise gave much attention to the material side of education. He declared that ceive careful school buildings should be well constructed and sanitary. This matter seemed to him so important that he wrote a special report upon the subject during his first year in office. He carefully discussed the proper plans for attention. rooms, ventilation, lighting, seating, and other schoolhouse features, and insisted that the inadequate and squalid conditions that were existing should be improved. In his Fourth Report also he considered many of the physical evils, especially those arising from pupils of all ages being in the same room. He found that in many cases this was the result of a multiplication of districts, and suggested union schools or consolidation as a remedy. should be scientific, and the teachers should be trained. Instruction in the schools, he maintained, should be The methods based upon scientific principles, and not authority and tradition. "Some teachers," said he, "will teach only from the books from which they themselves learned. This would create an hereditary descent of books, and the line would be immortal." And elsewhere he insists, "No one is so poor in resources for difficult emergencies as they may arise as he whose knowledge of methods is limited to the one by which he happened to be instructed." Pestalozzi's inductive method of teaching He favored received his approval, for he felt that the pupils should inductive be introduced at first-hand to the facts of the humani- method. ties and sciences. The work should be guided by able teachers, who had been trained in a normal school, and should be imparted in a spirit of mildness and kindness through an understanding of child nature. The teachers, who should be men as well as women, ought also to supplement their training and experience by frequent Pestalozzi's The studies should be adapted to practical needs. He overemphasized bookkeeping and physiol ogy. gathering in associations and institutes for mutual improvement and instruction. His Emphasis upon Practical Studies In the matter of the studies to be pursued, Mann was inclined toward the practical, and held that educational values and the natural order were often neglected. In his Sixth Report he inquires: "Can any satisfactory 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 twentythree 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 roadmakers, why should geometry take the precedence of surveying; and among seekers after intellectual and moral truth, why should rhetoric have double the followers of logic?" Similarly, he holds that of all subjects, except the rudiments, physiology should receive the most attention, and he writes an extended essay upon its use and value. He exaggerates the importance of this subject, possibly as a result of his devotion to phrenology; and in his whole espousal of subjects that will prepare for concrete living, he seems very close to Spencer's test of "what knowledge is of the most worth." 2 1 See footnote on p. 267. 2 See pp. 275 ff. 1 His Missionary Spirit and Its Achievements not an philosopher, but an edu missionary. In order that these various ideals might be realized, Mann was Mann insisted frequently that the state should spare no educational labor or expense. "A patriot," to his mind, "is known by the interest he takes in the common schools." But cational in a republic he felt that "education can never be attained without the consent of the whole people. Compulsion, even if it were desirable, is not an available instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, is our resource. The nature of education must be explained." Or, as he declares elsewhere, "All improvements in the school suppose and require a corresponding and simultaneous improvement in public sentiment." It was such an elevation of ideals, effort, and expenditure that Horace Mann sought, and for which he began his great crusade. He was a man of action, and not a philosopher. He had no deep thoughts on the problems of education, and not much insight into its nature beyond a dim notion gained from phrenology 1 that there were certain great 'laws' in man's nature which would furnish a plan for education and moral reform. Most of his im 1 1 Phrenology was a reputable science in Mann's day. Such persons as Gall, Spurzheim, Combe, and, later, O. S. Fowler, show the standing of the subject then. Their theory of a localization of brain functions is now accepted by psychology in a general way, just as their contention that the amount of capacity in a given direction can be determined by measuring is generally rejected. His achieve ments were remarkable, he doubled the appro priations for public education; he increased the number and salary of the teachers, the length of the school opportunities education; pulse was the direct result of his intense moral earnestness, to which his intellect was always subordinate. But it was just this characteristic that was needed to achieve the reforms he desired, and it alone accounts for the number of practical results accomplished by Mann. His actual achievements cover a wide range. During the twelve years of his secretaryship the appropriations made for public education in Massachusetts were more than doubled. Through this rise in enthusiasm for public education, the proportion of expenditure for private schools in the state was reduced from seventyfive to thirty-six per cent of the total cost of schools. The salaries of masters in the public schools were raised year, and the sixty-two per cent, and, although the number of women for secondary teachers had grown fifty-four per cent, the average of and brought their salaries was also increased fifty-one per cent. The school attendance enormously expanded both absosional train- lutely and relatively to the growth of population, and a full month was added to the average school year. Fifty new high schools were established, and the opportunities for secondary education, which had been fading for half a century, were once more opened. While the time for a full appreciation of skilled school superintendents had not yet arrived, Mann saw the value of careful supervision, and greatly increased its efficiency by making the compensation of visiting committees about skilled supervision and profes ing. |