The Dreams of Horace Mann

School Administrator, Sept, 1997 by Paul D. Houston

Last year I wrote about Horace Mann as the opening to our "Contrarians" issue (May 1996) of The School Administrator. I thought I would return to Horace to kick off this inaugural column of "Executive Perspective."

I intend to use this column to speak to you several times each year on issues that strike me as central to our roles as leaders. I can think of no better place to start than with Horace Mann, who more than anyone else is responsible for building the common schools that became the engine for our democracy. If we are to keep our democracy, as Lester Thurow reminded us at our national conference this past year, the most important task facing today's educators is to educate all children to be productive citizens. Horace Mann knew that over 150 years ago. He is still worth emulating.

Horace Mann was a dreamer. He was a visionary. Horace Mann believed in the American dream and in its possibilities. As we stand poised on the threshold of the next century, Horace Mann would be tossing and turning from the nightmare we face as a nation since that dream is at risk. Horace Mann believed in justice and equity, and he cared about everyone's opportunity to succeed. As we head into the new millennium, I believe Horace Mann would be horrified at the injustice and lack of equity our children face.

Horace Mann was skeptical about the role of discipline in school and the need for balance in exercising it. He said, "The discipline of former times was inexorably stem and severe; and, even if it were wished, it is impossible now to return to it. ... The preservation of order, together with the proper dispatch of business, requires a mean, between the too much and the too little in all the evolutions of the school," Horace would have severe questions about our zero tolerance policies of today.

He saw the role of education as being part of a system and all of the pieces were linked and could not be uncoupled. He wrote, "A systematic acquisition of a subject knits all parts of it together, so that they will be longer retained and more easily recalled. To acquire a few of the facts gives us fragments." Horace would worry about our modern assessment systems that test for "rabbit pellets" of information.

He understood that standards must mean something and that expectations had to be interwoven with reality. Again, Horace said, "It is not more true in architecture than in education that the value of the work in every upper layer depends upon the solidity of all beneath it. The leading, prevailing defect in the intellectual department of our schools is a want of thoroughness, a proneness to be satisfied with a verbal memory of rules instead of a comprehension of principles, with a knowledge of the names of things, instead of a knowledge of the things themselves; or if some knowledge of the things is gained, it is too apt to be a knowledge of them as isolated facts and unaccompanied by a knowledge of the relations which subsist between them and bind them into a scientific whole." That knowledge is hardly worthy of the name which stops with things, as individuals, without understanding the relations existing between them."

In short, in this era of zero tolerance, world class standards and the mechanical fix, Horace Mann would be sorely out of place in the school reform movement. Too dreamy. Too "touchy, feely." Too liberal. Not hard-nosed enough and certainly too soft-hearted. I hope that those of us who value public education will try to carry forward Horace Mann's dream. I hope we will stand up to those who are trying to reduce education to a mechanical process that makes each child a cog in the profit-making infrastructure.

Educational leaders a e not mere business leaders or political leaders. We must be moral leaders and the issues presented in public education require a moral courage on our part.

Paul Houston is AASA executive director.