Horace Mann Analysis

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.

Horace Mann served as the first secretary to the Massachusetts State Board of

This practice certainly left some students without specific representation in a time when denominational clashes were commonplace. Additionally, Mann’s new system of central school board control over appropriate curriculum books and material took local decision making power and commandeered it, taking along with it the power of local influence within the arena of formal education. This was perhaps the most extreme measure against democratic procedure and social mobility, and was considered later to be an attempt at hindering basic social liberties. “We object also to the sanction of the school board because it is an approach to a censorship of the press.” (Brownson, O. 1840). Censorship in schools showed students nationwide only what the centralized board deemed appropriate, however this method was not practical at a local level, from either a social or economic