Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Oh good Lord, its 2am and I just finnished a paper. I feel sooooooooooooooo good but I'm gonna pay tomorrow. LOL. I always get this creative peak late at night. My parents hate me for it though. All I want to do is go to sleeeeeppppp. I'm gonna post the essay so you can tell me what you think. Night!
The Educated Man.
Horace Mann’s twelfth Annual Education Report (The Education of Free Men, 1848) discusses the importance of the common school and its relevance to society. Many scholars use this to support a thesis of mandatory, secular, public education, when it is meant instead to convey the importance of education to the people of Mann’s time frame. Every work of educational philosophy possesses certain timeless truths. With those truths come contemporary views and opinions meant to deal with the concerns of the day. Mann’s reasoning and contributions to the field of education and teacher training are monumental, and when taken in historical perspective, his views can be applied to a modern day educational system with encouraging success.
Horace Mann was a leader in the education field in Massachusetts. He served as the first state director of education – a revolutionary idea for the time. During the 19th century the schooling was primarily done at home with exceptionally talented boys being sent far off to attend college. In his twelfth address Mann argues for a mandatory, publicly funded education for all US citizens. He refers to every man’s “absolute right” to education which “proves the correlative duty of every government to see that means of education are provided for all.” Mann’s emphasis on the importance of education sets almost prophetically the stage for future debates on the “why” and the “how” of public education.
Views on the purpose of education are diverse, but all points agree on the fact that educating society’s children involves influencing a future generation for good or ill and that responsibility should not be taken lightly. Mann says, “Society is bound to protect natural life…to watch over and protect [it], and to expand its subsequent existence into usefulness and happiness.” The ways to which we entrust this commodity dictate the future of the individual and society.
One method of how this is to be done rests on education’s purpose being to improve society, to move beyond the status quo and build and improve society. Education is referred to as “the great equalizer,” bridging the gap between social strata. “For such a thing never did happen,” says Mann, “and never can happen, that an intelligent and practical body of man should be permanently poor.” John Dewey writes that the individual without society is an “abstract.” The pragmatist way of thought continues that a student’s social experience is a core part of the process of learning, and therefore it follows that as the experiences develop the structure of society will improve.
Another method discusses education as the organized transfer of information from one generation to the next. Philosopher Robert Hutchens says education is to “improve man as man.” One of the concerns Horace Mann’s theories addresses is that of preparing the student to make headway in the current reality of society. Mann says that the “means of education are the grand machinery by which the raw material of human nature can be worked into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and great expounders of ethical and theological science.” Mann and his contemporaries saw the increasing immigration, industrialization, and technological developments and pushed for schools as mechanisms to prepare the next generation to deal with such changes, including participation in the new representative republic our government is based on.
An argument that surfaces currently in dealing with mandatory public education is that of change. Schools have remained one of the few institutions that have not been subject to the constant change and upgrade that other have gone through. While methods of work and fads of society come and go the school system has remained, as some would say, stagnant in its ways. Mann’s compulsory education proposal was designed to prepare students to enter an era of factory work and rampant illiteracy. Modern times leave students entering a world of entrepreneurs and abstract thinkers. The belief is that education methods should change to fit the current society. A manifestation of this thought would be charter schools, home schooling, trade schools, early college entrance, and correspondence schooling. These methods echo the freedom and abstractness of labor in today’s society.
In his conclusion, Mann suggests the “Untried experiment,” “To train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it…” Be it for social or individual development, the subject of how we educate our children is to be approached with the attitude of “unselfish and just means” in mind. Education gives “each man the independence and the means, by which he can resist the selfishness of other men.” The timeless aspect can be found in this final statement: “[The new generation] shall be trained to wield its energies for the protection of society against… war, slavery, bigotry, the woes of want and the wickedness of waste.” Where men learn and grow, society also learns and grows. The adaptation of methods to contemporary culture determines its effectiveness.
The Educated Man.
Horace Mann’s twelfth Annual Education Report (The Education of Free Men, 1848) discusses the importance of the common school and its relevance to society. Many scholars use this to support a thesis of mandatory, secular, public education, when it is meant instead to convey the importance of education to the people of Mann’s time frame. Every work of educational philosophy possesses certain timeless truths. With those truths come contemporary views and opinions meant to deal with the concerns of the day. Mann’s reasoning and contributions to the field of education and teacher training are monumental, and when taken in historical perspective, his views can be applied to a modern day educational system with encouraging success.
Horace Mann was a leader in the education field in Massachusetts. He served as the first state director of education – a revolutionary idea for the time. During the 19th century the schooling was primarily done at home with exceptionally talented boys being sent far off to attend college. In his twelfth address Mann argues for a mandatory, publicly funded education for all US citizens. He refers to every man’s “absolute right” to education which “proves the correlative duty of every government to see that means of education are provided for all.” Mann’s emphasis on the importance of education sets almost prophetically the stage for future debates on the “why” and the “how” of public education.
Views on the purpose of education are diverse, but all points agree on the fact that educating society’s children involves influencing a future generation for good or ill and that responsibility should not be taken lightly. Mann says, “Society is bound to protect natural life…to watch over and protect [it], and to expand its subsequent existence into usefulness and happiness.” The ways to which we entrust this commodity dictate the future of the individual and society.
One method of how this is to be done rests on education’s purpose being to improve society, to move beyond the status quo and build and improve society. Education is referred to as “the great equalizer,” bridging the gap between social strata. “For such a thing never did happen,” says Mann, “and never can happen, that an intelligent and practical body of man should be permanently poor.” John Dewey writes that the individual without society is an “abstract.” The pragmatist way of thought continues that a student’s social experience is a core part of the process of learning, and therefore it follows that as the experiences develop the structure of society will improve.
Another method discusses education as the organized transfer of information from one generation to the next. Philosopher Robert Hutchens says education is to “improve man as man.” One of the concerns Horace Mann’s theories addresses is that of preparing the student to make headway in the current reality of society. Mann says that the “means of education are the grand machinery by which the raw material of human nature can be worked into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and great expounders of ethical and theological science.” Mann and his contemporaries saw the increasing immigration, industrialization, and technological developments and pushed for schools as mechanisms to prepare the next generation to deal with such changes, including participation in the new representative republic our government is based on.
An argument that surfaces currently in dealing with mandatory public education is that of change. Schools have remained one of the few institutions that have not been subject to the constant change and upgrade that other have gone through. While methods of work and fads of society come and go the school system has remained, as some would say, stagnant in its ways. Mann’s compulsory education proposal was designed to prepare students to enter an era of factory work and rampant illiteracy. Modern times leave students entering a world of entrepreneurs and abstract thinkers. The belief is that education methods should change to fit the current society. A manifestation of this thought would be charter schools, home schooling, trade schools, early college entrance, and correspondence schooling. These methods echo the freedom and abstractness of labor in today’s society.
In his conclusion, Mann suggests the “Untried experiment,” “To train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it…” Be it for social or individual development, the subject of how we educate our children is to be approached with the attitude of “unselfish and just means” in mind. Education gives “each man the independence and the means, by which he can resist the selfishness of other men.” The timeless aspect can be found in this final statement: “[The new generation] shall be trained to wield its energies for the protection of society against… war, slavery, bigotry, the woes of want and the wickedness of waste.” Where men learn and grow, society also learns and grows. The adaptation of methods to contemporary culture determines its effectiveness.
Chicklette 2:13 AM
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