Essay On Horace Mann Education System

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Many of the issues faced in the 20th century are also faced today. In June of 1897 Walter Page wrote, “The Forgotten Man” which addresses the difference of education between the North and the South and even more importantly the misleading separate but equal facade that black education was equal to white education. The fact was education was funded differently in 1900 by racial and gender lines. People were the undeveloped resource and a new education system had to be created in order to tap into this resource (Page,Rose, 140). The new education system that was praised is what we know today as the Public School System. The new Public School System went from family and religious based to one based on the Prussian system of centralized government controlled training of teachers, unified curriculum, public control and public funding, compulsory attendance, no corporal punishment, and a nationalized system that was introduced to Horace Mann by Charles Brooks. Horace Mann brought this idea to America. Mann simply wanted to build a strong country in the mid 1800’s and saw education as the key. In the first few decades of the 21st century the goal is the same. The first school district of America collected information on what studies were the most successful while monitoring best practices. Horace Mann set the stage for people like John Dewey and Stanley Hall as well as others (Sanders, 2010). Stanley Hall felt school was too restrictive in creating conditions conducive to productive childhood education, so specific curricula, methods, materials and data became a focus for teaching child centered education. Hall’s work was based on his ‘general psychonomic law’ that proved children learn in different stages. This helped educational theor... ... middle of paper ... ...man states (1960), “In order to effectuate any objective, teachers must develop a set of intermediate objectives, which will provide direction for their efforts in the classroom” (Rose, 126). Understanding how to translate information learned into information taught with the intent of engaging a variety of student learners. This is the issue educators have faced for centuries. Developing a young mind is a chore and there are myriads of techniques that can be implemented. Teachers are not machines so the implementation of technique into useful classroom practice can only be as effective as the educators will, understanding, intelligence and personal belief. None of this can be tested so unless a school chooses the correct technique for the correct assessment it is possible to be competent educators while being non proficient at meeting national or state standards.

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