So far we’ve looked at the first public school in the U.S., what education was like in the Massachusetts Bay Colony circa 1635, and what the Bray School tells us about education around the time of the Revolutionary War. We also looked at the Lancaster Monitorial system from the early decades of the 19th century. We’re going to jump ahead again to 1837 to the Common School Movement and how it shaped U.S. Education.
Horace Mann; image in the public domain
Enter Horace Mann. Mann was a Greek and Latin tutor-cum-librarian who went on to become a lawyer. He was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1827 and in 1837, he became the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. He immediately began to advocate for the creation of public schools that would be available to all children and entirely funded by the state. He called these Common Schools. Mann emphasized that a public investment in education would benefit the whole nation by creating literate, moral, and productive citizens, who would in turn provide civic and economic benefits for society. He didn’t use the term return on investment because it didn’t yet exist, but that was essentially his argument. Further (and especially), Mann emphasized that universal education would prepare poor and middle class children to obtain good jobs.* Proponents of Mann’s ideas also believed education would quite literally help students in the “pursuit of happiness” Jefferson had described 61 years earlier in the Declaration of Independence.
Mann was a bold reformer. Unusually for the time, he argued for the widespread education of girls, pointing out that many of them would grow up to instruct their own children and should therefore be prepared to do so. He also argued for (and usually won) the abolishment of corporal punishment in schools, a practice that was so entrenched that it was considered a fundamental duty on the part of the teacher. Attitudes toward corporal punishment in school had begun to shift in other parts of the world; Poland had banned it at the end of the 18th century and other European countries were beginning to phase it out. Mann was at the forefront of reform in this area in the U.S.**
First Normal School, Lexington, MA. Image in the public domain.
Mann also established the first ‘normal schools’ in 1839 — schools dedicated to teaching teachers how to teach. This really was novel since there was previously no benchmark level of knowledge required to become a teacher. A teacher could have a university education, a grammar school education, a petty school education, or simply the ability to read and write. In a system stretching all the way back to medieval monasteries, what qualified a teacher to teach was that they themselves had received some education, but what that education consisted of varied dramatically. Mann systematized pedagogy, setting up model classrooms so aspiring teachers could see instructional delivery and thus learn how to deliver instruction themselves.
Parley’s Common School History textbook, 1840. Image in the public domain.
Common schools sought to provide a systematic, elementary education. Upon graduation from a Common School, students would have approximately an 8th grade education, though that would look very different from an 8th grade education today. Few poor children attended high school, because immigrant and working-class families relied on their children working to support the family. High schools almost always cost money to attend and since they weren’t widespread there were often boarding fees as well. Students tended to be middle- and upper-class who wanted white-collar jobs or a university education. High schools would not begin to be included in free, public education until the late 1800s.
Common School students learned the “three R’s” (reading, writing, arithmetic), along with history, geography, grammar, and rhetoric. They also got a strong dose of moral instruction to instill civic virtues. Although the curriculum had expanded to include grammar, history, geography, and rhetoric, math was still limited to the four main operations — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing — and some work with percentages. Students now used a “reader” — a term used interchangeably with “primer” (pronounced ‘primmer’) for the next 60 or so years — to learn their letters and basic reading skills and to practice spelling. They also had access to a history book and likely a geography book. It has to be said, though, that access to books was at least somewhat theoretical because books were often in short supply. Hornbooks continued to be used up until the 1900s in some places to save on materials; other places adopted slates and chalk for the same reason. Like the Monitorial schools, all teaching was still drill and memorization. Students were not given conceptual underpinnings; they memorized and recited portions of text or facts –such as times tables or states and capitals — to demonstrate their mastery. Often, they began their day in choral recitation of prayers or scripture. Recitations, often as a kind of end-of-year presentation for parents, would remain a major part of education until the early part of the 20th century.
Page from McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader, circa 1860. Image in the public domain.
Immigration from all parts of Europe was constant and increasing, so building a cohesive citizenry was of some concern. Mann and his proponents believed that universal free schooling for children would help unify a diverse population into a homogenous whole. In short, education would “Americanize” them. In practice, however, there were some issues. Although the Common Schools were nominally non-sectarian, students read, memorized, and recited passages from the King James Bible, a practice that Roman Catholics objected to. Some 19th century Common School textbooks also portrayed Catholics in a negative fashion. Rather than unifying the two sects, the strongly protestant bent of the Common Schools led to Philadelphia’s Bible Riots in 1844 between Catholic immigrants and protestant “nativists.” All that tension was a contributing factor in the subsequent creation of the Catholic parochial school system.
Bible Riots notwithstanding, Mann’s ideas were extremely influential. Most Northeastern states adopted some version of the Common School and its curriculum. Mann’s program of normal schools was also widely adopted. The Common School would be the dominant model for American education until at least 1900, shaping teacher preparation and the delivery of instruction across the country.
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*This argument was necessary on two fronts. First, many parents needed the income their children earned through factory or farm work. Second, some still held that educating the poor would eradicate the workforce by giving them “ideas above their station.” This was a period of rapid industrialization that saw unscrupulous businessmen ruthlessly exploiting their workers, particularly uneducated immigrants whose English skills were lacking. Education was a major threat to this and it’s possible to see historically that as one immigrant population became educated, unscrupulous owners phased them out and turned to newer, uneducated and thus more easily exploited groups for cheap labor.
**It’s hard to believe this in the Year of Our Lord 2025, but corporal punishment in schools is still around in the U.S. New Jersey was the first to ban it in 1867; the next state to ban it was Massachusetts 104 years later in 1971. Department of Education data from 2011–2012 show that 70% of students subjected to corporal punishment were from just five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, with the latter two states accounting for 35% of all corporal punishment cases. Louisiana currently bans corporal punishment for students with disabilities, but not for anyone else.