School Movement: Influences on Cotemporary

¶ … school Movement: Influences on Cotemporary Education

The idea that I would like to focus on in this paper is the agreement of both the common school movement reformers (like Horace Mann) and the Workingmen's parties that a common school education was necessary to eliminate the distinctions between the rich and the poor (social class tensions and clashes) and to promote access to better equality of economic opportunity.

What is so interesting about the Common School movement is their adaptation of Allport's contact theory way before it was founded. Gordon Allport had argued that if people from diverse backgrounds were put in close contact / association one with the other, prejudice would be reduced. This idea was so American: In Europe of the time, for instance, differences between the rich and poor were sharply circumscribed. The two classes simply did not mix, and at one time it was thought that Divine purpose had kept them apart and that it was Divine will that this order be sustained.

The common school movement was typical of the age. The 1830s and 40s was the period of optimism: of progress, reform, and belief in the marching of the world towards imminent perfection. It was a time of confidence reflected in Mann's credo that "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Spring, 84). It, too, was a time of pride in the nation that America was and a period when the objective was to merge all immigrants into one American people. 'Common' therefore was an indication to the philosophy that there was one 'common' American people; one common way of living' one common culture, and that were instruction to be handed over in this 'common' spirit, rich and poor alike would be conjoined in generating their country's productivity and good, and political conflict would be lessened.

Mann was right, too, in believing that economic deprivation lay at the root of political turmoil. Mann seemed to have been ahead of his time in several ways of thinking. Heralding Marxism but in a positive, less conflictual manner Mann sought to break boundaries between rich and poor, not by setting poor against the rich, but by introducing the poor to the education of the rich thereby giving them the same opportunity.

Something of Mann's endeavor has remained. Rich and poor -- with arguable exceptions -- receive a common education, particularly in college and higher academic institutions when scholarships grant disadvantaged the opportunity to merge with the wealthy. Times have changed, however, and instead of the objective being to disseminate one syllabus and agenda that attempts to make of diversified cultures one pure American, the focus is on relativity of cultures and 'truth' and on encouraging each to sustain and adhere to his or her mother culture. The time for politics has long passed. The objective is no longer to use education as means to an end -- i.e. To creating one pure, full-blooded American as Mann wished, but rather to open students up to a diversity of cultures. Rather than forming the one, who happens to live in America, into a citizen of this nation, the objective of the 21st century is to make him a citizen of the world. And it is arguable, too, whether the focus is on knowledge as power as it was in Mann's days; focus may have changed to knowledge of technology and business as per power as evidenced by the increasing number of dropouts and increasing stress of corporations and need to make money. Individualism was rubbed into conformism in the attempt to make one patriotic American citizen. It is thought that today we are more individualistic, but the reality may be that Adam Smith may merely have taken center place today, and contemporary conformism centers around money.

Other differences include the shift from nation to individual. In Mann's days the individual existed for the purpose of a common end, and, accordingly, education demanded absolute obedience, attention, and conformism from the individual. He (and it usually was a 'he'), along with others, was slotted into one mold that passed through the furnace and was expected to emerge alike, the purpose being to bring pride and contribution to his country. Today, it is widely acclaimed that the country exists for the individual not the reverse, and huge emphasis is placed on seeking out the individual as qua individual and helping him recognize and use his unique characteristics. We have made almost a total -- if not a total -- U-turn.

Interestingly enough, the focus of assimilation has changed, too. In Mann's days it was unthinkable for sexes and races to commingle in equal education. Mann's objective of commingling of classes was perhaps the initial step on the route to commingling of far more and severance of far more than class. Today the objective is on desegregation of races and, to that end, we can say that Mann and the Workingmen were the harbinger of this fashion.