The Common School Movement

Themes to frame the Common School Movement

Three Distinct Features of the Common School Movement ~ 1840’s -1870’s

1. To educate all children in a common schoolhouse to create a common culture and reduce social-class conflict
2. To use schooling to improve public morality, end crime and poverty and provide equality of opportunity
3. To create state agencies to control local schools

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The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) — Local vs. State vs. Federal control of education

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Horace Mann & the leader of the Common School idea

Men are cast-iron; but children are wax — Horace Mann

The Common School:  Horace Mann and a common Protestant education

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An eighteenth-century English primer for “memorizing the alphabet and learning prayers”

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Taxes to pay for public education:  The working class and the upper classes make for strange “bedfellows.” The upper class opposed taxes for public schooling.