HORACE MANN'S OPINION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1981, 24 May 1919, Page 4

HORACE MANN'S OPINION.

Horace Mann, one of the most distinguished of American educators, laid the foundations of educational reform. He was-horn in 1700, was a Unitarian, served ns a member of the Massaehussots Legislature. He accepted the secretaryship of the newly created State Board of Education, visiting Europe to study educational systems there (see his reports). He entered Congress, filling a vacancy caused by the death of John Quiueey Adams. He laboured (o reform the education system, meeting with strong opposition from the Boston schoolmasters, who were opposed to the new order of things. In Massachusetts Slate, for more than a century and a half, dogmatic religious instruction was allowed in the public schools, ministers being allowed to visit the schools to catechise the children. Horace Mann strongly opposed this sectarian teaching in the public schools, which brought him into conflict with the clergy. The following are extracts from his replies to opponents :—“The Bible is an invaluable book for forming the character of children, but it was not at all necessary to leach the children in the schools (he theological creeds. . .” In this controversy Mr Mann stood firmly, as lie always did, for reading the Bible in the public schools, but without note or comment. (This principle has now been adopted by most American States.) Selections from Horace Mann:— “Moral education is a primal necessity of social existence. The unrestrained passions of men are not only homicidal, but suicidal; and a community without a conscience would soon extinguish itself.” “Religious education: Devoid of religious principles and religious af-

feetions, the race may never fall so low but that it may fall still lower; animated and sanctified by them, it can never rise so high but that it may still ascend higher. And is it not at least presumptuous to expect that mankind will attain to the knowledge of truth without being instructed in truth?” “Indeed the whole frame and constitution of the human soul shows that, if a man is not a religions being he is among the most deformed and monstrous of all possible existences. His propensities and passions need the fear of God as a restraint from evil. . . .”

“The man, indeed, of whatever denomination or tongue he may be, who believes that the human race, or any nation, or any individual in it, can attain to happiness, or avoid misery, without religious principle and religious affections, must be ignorant of the capacities of (he human soul, and of the highest attributes in the nature of man.” Mann’s Educational Ideals, —As Mann’s reforms advanced he look great pride in the fact that more and more of the children arc educated together under the same roof. The chief end of tips education should be moral character and social efficiency. “No amount of intellectual attainments,’’ in Mann’s judgment, “can afford a guaranty for the moral rectitude of the possessor. , .

Private Schools. —The main objection urged to the private school system was “its tendency to assimilate our modes of education to those of England, where Churchmen and Dissenter maintain separate schools in which children arc taught from their tendercst years to wield the sword of polomics ivilli fatal dexterity; and where the. Gospel, instead of being a temple of peace, is converted into an armory of deadly weapons for social interminable warfare. ... A patriot,'! to his

mind, “is known by the interest he lakes in the eonmiun schools.'’ I am indebted for (lie above extracts to (lie works, “Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States,” by B. A. Hinsdale, Rh., L.L.D., and “Ureal Redagogieal Essays,” by F. V. N. Rainier, A.H.D.D.'