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Horace Mann, ardent abolitionist, social reformer, and visionary educator, was the founding President of Antioch College (1853-59). Born in Massachusetts in a Calvinist small town, Mann (1796-1859) had little formal education as a youth, but read extensively at the town library, where he learned enough to be admitted to Brown University.
 After graduation in 1819 he taught for a while, studied law and then entered politics, where he soon became a rising star in the state assembly (1827-37). During this period, Mann was instrumental in the enactment of laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, establishing state mental institutions, and in 1835, he cast his vote in favor of creating the nation's first state education board. He then shocked family and friends by taking the job of the first secretary to that body, the Massachusetts Commission to Improve
Education (later the State Board of Education), an agency with no money or control over local schools.
Awed by the immensity of the challenge of his new post, Mann swore to himself on the day he accepted, "Henceforth, as long as I hold this office, I dedicate myself to the supremest welfare of mankind on earth." Over the next twelve years he transformed the state's hodgepodge of charity schools for the poor into a great system of free public schools, organized on solid educational principles. His central thesis was essentially Jeffersonian--no republic can endure unless its citizens are literate and educated. In the United States of the 1830s, arguing for "common school"-- that is, a school commonly supported, commonly attended by all people regardless of race, class or sex, and commonly controlled -- was a radical idea.some would say it still is!
He accomplished this feat by persuasion alone, for the board had no power to compel or enforce anything. Mann held teachers' institutes and public meetings in every county, using the oratorical skills he had honed at Brown, to raise public consciousness (which he likened to "trying to batter down Gibraltar with one's fist"). Besides oratory, Mann's only other instrument of persuasion and influence, was the Annual Report of which he wrote 12, and in which he set forth his vision of what education should be in a free society.
To quote briefly from Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board (1848):
Hence it is, that the establishment of a republican government, without well-appointed and efficient means for the universal education of the people, is the most rash and fool-hardy experiment ever tried by manSuch a Republic may grow in numbers and in wealth. As an avaricious man adds acres to his lands, so its rapacious government may increase its own darkness by annexing provinces and states to its ignorant domain. Its armies may be invincible, and its fleets may strike terror into nations on the opposite sides of the globe, at the same hour. Vast in its extent, and enriched with all the prodigality of nature, it may possess every capacity and opportunity of being great, and of doing good. But if such a Republic be devoid of intelligence Such a Republic, with all its noble capacities for beneficence, will rush with the speed of a
whirlwind to an ignominious end; and all good men of after-times would be fain to weep over its downfall, did not their scorn and contempt at its folly and its wickedness, repress all sorrow for its fate. . . .
In 1848 Mann was elected to Congress to fill the seat vacated by John Quincy Adams's death, where he fought vigorously against slavery. In 1854 he was named president of Antioch College in Ohio. As a well known fiercely non-denominational Unitarian, Mann set about to develop at Antioch an innovative institution that reflected his interests and values. The founding Christian Church that had hired Mann as college president may not have realized the full power of Mann's educational and social commitments. Only a few years after his arrival, the church broke with Antioch. Financial struggles
weighed heavily on Mann and his family and, it is said that his wife felt it contributed to his death. Her anger was so great that she demanded that his body be disinterred after burial in Yellow Springs and returned to Massachusetts.
Antioch's early curriculum was unique in the middle of the 19th century: it emphasized the sciences as well as the classics--a major departure, it introduced discussion into the classroom, and it even offered a rudimentary form of independent study. Mann set high standards for admission, classroom performance, and moral character that surpassed most colleges of the day. It is said that his striking physical presence alone served to motivate the earliest Antioch students.
Of more modern interest is the educational implementation of Mann's social commitments which led Antioch to be the first college in the country to educate women as equals to male students studying the same curriculum. The College also hired the first fulltime woman faculty member equal to her male colleagues. Mann's social commitment also led Antioch to be one of the first colleges in the country to recruit and educate black students as equals to white students. To this day, Mann's beliefs in the education of the whole person and that students must learn to act on their values as well as study permeates all of Antioch University. In fact, Mann's challenge to the graduating class of 1859, just two months before his death, is repeated at every Antioch graduation and is instilled in the consciousness of all Antioch students: "Be ashamed to
die until you have won some victory for humanity."
For further reading: Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (1972); Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience (1980); Lawrence Cremin, ed., The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men (1957); and Michael Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform (1968). Also, contact Antiochiana.
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