Article #3 >>>>> The Origins and Consequences of Wretched Public Education Throughout the United States

Failure to Fully Implement the Thomas Jefferson-Horace Mann Idea of the Common Schools

Thomas Jefferson, he who personified the contradictions of the dual reality of the United States polity, offered many ideas for circulation on the nobler side of that reality.

As an advocate for the empowerment of the citizenry as the only safe depository of governmental authority, Jefferson asserted that if citizens did not exercise their power with a wholesome discretion, the remedy was not to take power from them but to inform their discretion through public education.

Thinker, activist, and member of the House of Representatives Horace Mann (1796-1859) took up the Jeffersonian charge as an advocate for common schools, public institutions to be established in every community for the impartation of that knowledge necessary for the wbolesome exercise of citizenship.  Mann's vision was in part realized in the increasing number of states establishing free public schools.  But these schools varied widely in quality.  Teacher training, eventually in institutes dubbed normal schools, also varied and often sent forth teachers capable only of dispensing very rudimentary skills.

Still, the aspiration was to give the general public some approximation of the education that the wealthy had long acquired through private tutors.  Knowledge was valued as that common stock of information necessary for the exercise of enlightened citizenship.  And in many one room school houses students did acquire substantive knowledge in history, government  and geography.  

In many schools >McGuffey Reader< texts were used for the impartation of such knowledge and for selections from high-quality literature.  The knowledge thus imparted was idealistically patriotic and not culturally diverse, reflecting the temper of the times.  But students in such schools emerged with key shared knowledge sets that in accord with the vision of Jefferson-Mann informed their discretion in the exercise of citizenship.

Many students did not matriculate beyond grade six.  Few attended school beyond grade eight.  But in cities and limited outposts in the nation high schools, more worthy of that "high" moniker than is the case with today's dim counterparts, appeared;  about 1910, a few junior high schools (junior in that they featured similar curriculum preparatory for high school) were established.  

Many normal schools had improved.  High school teachers took subject matter seriously.  At a time when few Anericans attended colleges or universities, most high school teachers held field-specific bachelor's degrees;  some had received master's degrees, 

Curriculum was informed by that conveyed by private tutors, focused on mathematics, history, government, geography, literature, and Latin---  with added emphasis on biology, chemistry, and physics.

But junior high and high schools were limited in number, tended to be urban, and were rarely available, and racially exclusive.

Even at this juncture in late 19th century/early 20th century United States history, realization of the Jefferson-Mann ideal of the common school was woefully incomplete.  

How lamentable, then, that in the succeeding decades, matters got much worse.