Mann, Horace (1796-1859), played a leading role in establishing state-supervised, state-funded, mandatory-attendance school systems in the United States. He worked to reduce the number of schools that were funded and controlled by local communities. Mann believed that, especially in rural areas and in the South and West, too much local control would result in some children receiving too little or improper schooling.
Mann gave up a law practice and a seat in the Massachusetts legislature in 1837 to become secretary of the newly established Massachusetts State Board of Education. As secretary, his speeches and 12 annual reports on education were influential in changing the definition of common school. The term had long applied to one-room, community-based schools. After Mann’s work, only tax-supported schools graded by age and organized within township units were called common or public schools. In 1839, Mann helped found the country’s first state-supported normal school (teacher-training school), in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Mann resigned from the State Board of Education in 1848 to take a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as an antislavery member of the Whig Party. Mann was defeated as a Free Soil Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He was president of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, from 1853 until his death on Aug. 2, 1859.
Mann was born on May 4, 1796, in Franklin, Massachusetts, and graduated from Brown University. He began his public career as a member of the Massachusetts state legislature in 1827. He was elected to New York University’s Hall of Fame when it was established in 1900 to honor prominent Americans.
