In my Civic Engagement Essay, the leader I choose was Horace Mann who lived from 1776 to 1859 and had a profound influence on what we call the education system. Mann started off his career in life as a lawyer in Massachusetts. While he was good at being a lawyer he soon found himself elected to the senate set for Massachusetts State. In this position he quickly came to realize that the state’s schools were performing poorly and was highly unorganized. At this point in history teacher were either poorly trained or not trained at all. In addition to the lack of qualified teachers the state also faced high levels of poverty which kept many children from attending school (Baines, 2006).
In Order to rectify the situation of depressed attendance numbers and lack of qualified educators; Mann took on this challenge to enact reformation of the education system. He accomplished through many different avenues. His first advance in education what to establish a school for the mentally handicapped which during his time was unheard of. Before then there had never been a school that catered to a specific subset of children with special needs. Following this same path he also implemented the idea of having colleges setup that would cater specify to the education and training of teacher. He felt that it was important to have well trained teacher in order for the schools to be successful in teach children (Baines, 2006).
Mann’s highest achievement in the advancement of education was when he created was the first interracial, coed, and free school system. This would allow anyone from any race to attend school without the financial burdens that had kept the poor out of school in the past. Mann’s vision for doing this was to create a unified collective within his state in order to advance diversity in education. He was able to push for this reform in education by inspiring others is the fact that education was a way to influence moral behaviors. He saw education as the tool guild the morality of others (Baines, 2006).
Mann was held as a leader in the education reform movement for much reason. The first if the qualities he possessed. Leaders often have certain quality that makes them leaders of others. In Mann’s case, his most notable quality was his concern for other. Concern for others by definition is a leader that cares for and nurturers the concept of humanity while considering other first and foremost (Manning, and Curtis, 2012).
Throughout the years of being a student at Council Rock, I have come to the realization of what a true leader is. A leader is not someone that just plans events, collects money, or shows up to meetings. Rather, this is someone that has a true connection with their peers, and has unmatched passion for what they do. With this, I can confidently say that since seventh grade, as a young adult, I have been shaped into an individual that fits these traits. Since that time, I have been involved in student government,
Ever since slavery has been established there has been negative and positive influences for white Americans. Some white Americans did not show any remorse for the African Americans and believed they deserved to be slaves. However, there were good white Americans like Horace Greeley that went to their grave to abolish slavery, and the brutality the Africans Americans faced. There was fairness for the African Americans because they were considered not human. People like D.L. Moody who was an evangelist that preached only his sermons to whites. Certain events like the yellow-fever epidemic of 1878 blamed the African Americans for the cause of it, yet some political leaders took it as an advantage to help stop slavery. These influences were not only bad influence, but positive as well.
Horace Mann, the Father of American Public Education, politician, and educator who promoted educational success for the poor as well as the wealthy as a means of making America a more stable, competitive county wrote twelve annual reports during his tenure as Massachusetts Secretary of Education. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Education Together with the Secretary of the Board 1841 The Indispensable Teacher and published ____ . More familiarly known as The Indispensable Teacher Mann’s fourth annual report voices his concerns with the present status and improvements to public education.
An institution that is large has a group of individuals or situations that shapes what it becomes. Without a doubt the American education system has had multiple examples that have shaped what it is today. There have been individuals that have placed emphasis such as Mann that brought the common school concept to light. In addition, there were landmark court cases that allowed minorities to also receive equal educations. Furthermore, there has been strong political influence over the years of American education development. This paper will focus on the importance of Horace Mann, John Dewey, the Science and Math Education Movement, and the No Child Left Behind Act.
While some citizens of the United States, between 1825 and 1850, believed that reform was foolish and that the nation should stick to its old conduct, reformists in this time period still sought to make the United States a more ideally democratic nation. This was an age of nationalism and pride, and where there was pride in one’s country, there was the aspiration to improve one’s country even further. Many new reformist and abolitionist groups began to form, all attempting to change aspects of the United States that the respective groups thought to be unfair or unjust. Some groups, such as lower and middle class women and immigrants, sought to improve rights within the county, while other reformers aspired to change the American education system into a more efficient way of teaching the county’s youth. Still other reform groups, particularly involved in the church and the second great awakening, wanted to change society as a whole. This was a time and age of change, and all these reforms were intended to contribute to the democratic way our country operated.
Orestes Brownson engaged in open opposition of Horace Mann’s vast reform policies of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. He directly opposed Mann’s work in Massachusetts on the formation of a centralized, state run school board on the grounds that state power over the educational process would result in biased and undemocratic instruction lending favor to one political interest group or another. In addition, Brownson held the belief that the state normal schools produced relatively uninformed teachers, which were in effect more akin to technicians. The Normal school system, which was adapted by Mann from the Prussian system during his travels in the eighteen forties produced teachers well informed in pedagogical methodology, while nearly uneducated in academic concepts beyond the scope of elementary education.
In the early 1800’s education in America grew and developed rapidly, largely because of the works of three very important men: Noah Webster, William McGuffey, and Horace Mann. These three men were catalysts for the growth of education throughout the nineteenth century, and without them the large strides America took during this time would not have occurred. These great men all shared one goal: to educate the youth of America as well as possible. This was no small task, however, because the educational system in place was disorganized and had several large problems that had to be overcome.
Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Originally founded by Mary Lyon as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary on 8 November 1837, it is the "first of the Seven Sisters" and is the oldest continuing institution of higher education for women in the United States. In addition, according to the United States Department of Education, "Mount Holyoke’s significance is that it became a model for a multitude of other women’s colleges throughout the country." (contributors, 2008) 1834 was a turning point for Mary Lyon. She decided to leave Ipswich Female Seminary, where she was assistant principal, and focus all of her time and efforts on founding an institution of higher education for women. For the next three years, she crusaded tirelessly for funds and support. It was not the best time to ask people for donations, the U.S. was in a severe economic depression. But Mary Lyon persisted. She wrote circulars and ads announcing the plan for the school, raised money, persuaded prominent men to back her enterprise, developed a curriculum, visited schools and talked to educators as far away as Detroit, chose the school's location, supervised the design and construction of a building, brought equipment, hired teachers, and selected students. She endured ridicule from those who felt her ambitious undertaking would be "wasted" on women. Her constant travels often left her in a state of exhaustion. Yet, Mary Lyon never doubted her belief that women deserved to have the same opportunities for higher education as their brothers.
Horace Mann is well known as the Father of Common School Movement. He disputed that the universal public education is the essential method to educate the young children in the country as prudent republican citizens. He widespread the construction of the public school and established the program called ‘normal schools’ to train teachers to be a professionals. This is the reason why he is credited as the “Father of the Common School Movement” after all.
Horace Mann’s concept of the common school stressed many ideals, chief among them the need to create an institution capable of preparing students to contribute positively to the community and society as a whole. In order to achieve this lofty goal, Horace Mann advocated three main ideas. The first was a commitment to instilling Protestant virtues in the students. Secondly, Mann supported the idea that a community should be taxed to support the school in order to create a bond between the school and the community. Finally, Mann believed in training men and women who would be committed only to the profession of teaching America’s youth. Many of Mann’s ideas regarding education took hold in America, and even today there is evidence of the influence of Horace Mann’s ideology in our school system. This essay will examine Mann’s main points and critique how effective they were then and whether or not they would work in today’s society.
Mann is one of many that discusses about how schools and the students in the school are being tracked. In the film “Waiting for Superman” show how students and their parents try to get their children into a better school because if they stay at the ones that corresponds to them the children will essentially fall behind on work and just be passed through the school system. Yes, the nation has a growing epidemic on education, school are not functioning to its full capacity and where we see the problem are mostly in inner city schools, when its everywhere. There might be one or two schools in one area that are doing good and that attacks parents to want to get their children into the school that seems to have their things in
Throughout history, there have been great leaders, some for the good of humanity, and some for the not-so good of humanity. The one element all leaders have in common is in some way, have changed the course of history. The one great leader I have found to be interesting and envision of a great leader is William Bradford, an original passenger on the Mayflower, and the first ever governor elected on what is to become, American Soil.
Also, while Don McLeroy is a unequivocally divisive character in Texas academe, even he continuously states in the movie that while he might deviate on the subjects that students ascertain, it is nevertheless of vital significance that the Texas edification system is revised. Additionally, because Texas’s position in the yearly U.S. scholastic structure is (for the most part) abysmal, what they encompass into the schoolbooks utilized by masses of scholars turns out to be despondent (Grieder). Conversely, the modifications to texts are not unceasingly progressing the educational realm, for in The Revisionaries one of the vicissitudes uncovered is the relative triviality of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as incorporeal muses in the founding of American egalitarianism, when matched to John Calvin, the forefather of the biblical religion recognized as Calvinism (Thurman). Accordingly, if such flagrant nepotism is flaunted when regarding faith rather than knowledge or the genuine account of human history, then education itself is sincerely in
Within the last couple of centuries, there have been a great number of influential leaders in the education field, but one that always stood out to me and impacted me the most is Booker T. Washington.
If schools do not build character in young students, the next generation will be closed minded, illogical, and far from the requirements of a leader. However, another article also supports my claim. The article “The Goal of Education is Becoming” by Marc Prensky, informs readers about how the standard of the education systems today are not giving all the needed tools to become leaders by saying “ We spend so much time and effort looking at test scores, averages, and other petty measurements of "learning" that we have little time or energy left to focus on who our students are (or are not) as individuals, what they love or hate, or what drives them (Prensky2).” Prensky is saying that schools are only looking at the academic achievements of the students, but not at all their artistic, characteristic achievements. Students should be thriving to become better individuals, thinkers, and idealists. They can achieve this through the right environment, encouragement, and curriculum from