Horace Mann Report No. 12 Summary

The key claims that Horace Mann develops in Report No. 12 includes, most importantly, the idea that the single most important characteristic of any successful society is the common education of its students. Mann maintains that students need to be well educated to even the playing field between rich and poor to create a better future. He also supports the idea that education is essential to a Republican society to be prosperous. When Mann is education the reader on the importance of educating the youth, he draws on the idea that education takes in the children as “raw material” and turns them into productive members of society using education. Mann stresses that schools are the most effective of all forces in civilization, mostly because it so strongly influences all of the other forces. He equates the

Education is the great equalizer, the balance wheel of society, and can greatly benefit the poor who often would otherwise resort to agrarianism. He also seems to scoff at the idea that some are poor because others are rich and says that with education we can create new wealth. For in the creation of wealth and wealthy people, he goes on to mention, intelligence is the grand condition. Mann’s last main idea is that education is essential to a successful Republican society. He discusses how in a Republican government, legislation is a mirror which reflects the moral character of the constituents and that without an educated government, the results would be fatal. Mann goes on to describe how if intelligence gained though common education should leave legislation, weakness, rashness, contradictions, and error would run rampant among the leaders of our