HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 The country school as it existed in the thought of Horace Mann had 
 nothing in common with the college or the university. In his mind 
 the education of the child of the humblest laborer in the commonwealth 
 was of as much consequence as that of the child born to an inherit- 
 ance of millions. The act defining his duties, after enumerating cer- 
 tain methods of work, declares the end to be, ‘ ‘that the children de- 
 pending on the common schools for instruction may have the best 
 education which those schools can be made to impart.” In his time, 
 when people talked of the common schools, they^afl m mind the 
 
 ' * *(t. * ' V 
 
 country school, the little red school house of which Whittier wrote: 
 
 “Still sits the school house by the road, 
 
 A ragged beggar sunning: 
 
 Around it still the sumachs grow, 
 
 And blackberry vines are running.” 
 
 The entire school nomenclature of the present day is a new inven- 
 tion, which would have been senseless jargon in the ears of those 
 who lived in the times of Horace Mann. Of state universities, of 
 agricultural colleges, of secondary schools, of manual training, of 
 university extension, he had no occasion to learn, and so was left 
 free to concentrate the powers of his mind upon his work in behalf 
 of the common district school. He recognized the apathy, the abso- 
 lute indifference of the people, as a great evil. In order to remedy 
 this he scattered circulars and letters everywhere; he enlisted the 
 prominent men of the commonwealth; he gathered information from 
 every possible source and spread it broadcast among the people. 
 But the most powerful means which he used was his personal pres- 
 ence and his addresses. He went from village to village and from 
 hamlet to hamlet, preaching everywhere to the common people the 
 saving gospel of education ; and the common people heard him gladly. 
 
2 
 
 HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 His words came to them like water to the thirsty soul, and like bread 
 to the hungry. 
 
 Secondary schools, high schools, city supervision, manual training, 
 have usurped nearly the entire educational field, while the schools in 
 which the children of the farm laborer, the miner, the rural commu- 
 nity, must receive at best a limited education, sit in the valley of the 
 shadow of ignorance waiting for their redemption. The country 
 schools in ever}” state need an educational regeneration; a fresh 
 baptism into the spirit of Horace Mann. 
 
 It is to be noted here that the subjects of his lectures were cal- 
 culated to enlist the sympathies of his audience. They appealed 
 to the common heart of the populace. There is danger that as a 
 profession we may yet become too professional/ Psychology, peda- 
 gogy, philosophy, scientific teaching, are all well enough when we are 
 debating among ourselves; but if we expect to interest and instruct 
 the people we must talk common sense. When he said: “The 
 mobs, the riots, the burnings, the lynchings, perpetrated by the men 
 of the present day are perpetrated because of their vicious or defec- 
 tive education when children;” and again when he said, “If we per- 
 mit the vulture’s eggs to be incubated and hatched, it will then be 
 too late to take care of the lambs, ” he was lecturing upon ‘ ‘Means and 
 Objects of Common School Education.” He once used these words: 
 “If republican institutions give greater scope and impulse to the 
 lower order of faculties belonging to the human mind, then they must 
 give also more authoritative control and more skillful guidance to the 
 higher ones. If they multiply temptations they must fortify against 
 them. If they quicken the activity and enlarge the sphere of the ap- 
 petites and passions, they must at least in an equal ratio establish the 
 authority and extend the jurisdiction of reason and conscience. ” He 
 was talking to the people concerning the “Necessity of Education in 
 a Republican Government. ” 
 
 In his lecture, “What Grod does and what He leaves for man to 
 do m the work of Education,” he combines more pure pedagogy than 
 is sometimes contained in an entire volume which is put into the 
 teacher’s hand to study. The work of the creature must apply and 
 supplement the work of the Creator . 
 
HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 3 
 
 “Surely,” he says, speaking of the training of children, “in no 
 other department of life is knowledge so indispensable; surely in no 
 other is it so little sought for. In no other navigation is there such 
 danger of wreck; in no other is there such blind pilotage.” He was 
 speaking to a promiscuous audience, not to one composed of teachers 
 alone. 
 
 I have dwelt at some little length upon this point, because I know 
 that if we expect to rescue the common district school from its present 
 low estate we must catch the spirit of Horace Mann, and talk to the 
 people in plain, unmistakable language concerning the duty as well 
 as the necessity of providing for every child in the state the best 
 education possible, at the public expense. Ministers have lately 
 discovered that if they wish to convert sinners they must go where 
 sinners are. If we ever reach the people to convert them to our 
 way of thinking, educationally, we must go where the people can 
 hear us. We must bring common truths home to the conscience of 
 the people. We have no need of a Moses to lead us a tedious jour- 
 ney of forty years through the wilderness, but we do need a Joshua 
 who can stand by the river, even when it fills all its banks, and bid 
 the priests w r ho bear the ark of popular education go forward and 
 stand in the midst of the stream, that the people may pass over dry- 
 shod. 
 
 It is a most serious question which confronts us in many locali- 
 ties : what can we do more than we are doing to arouse an intelligent 
 enthusiasm in behalf of better schools? We are having fair success 
 in many cities, although even there many ignorant and unworthy 
 men are elected to the board of education, often through party 
 politics. But in many country districts in every state where popu- 
 lation is scarce and school houses far apart, apathy, ignorance and 
 indifference brood like a thick cloud over the entire communit}^ 
 When national and state associations are busy with the mint, the 
 anise and the cumin, who is there left to attend to the weightier 
 matters of the law? There are two questions which claim the at- 
 tention of the public just now. The one is how to obtain better re- 
 sults from the work done in the elementary schools in our towns and 
 villages; the other is how to raise the character of the instruction 
 
4 
 
 HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 given in the common country school. The Committee of Ten which 
 can solve these questions will build for themselves a monument more 
 enduring than brass. These are far above all questions concerning 
 secondary or collegiate education. 
 
 It is interesting to note the importance which Horace Mann at- 
 tached to the rudimentsl branches. He says of the normal school 
 then just started at Barre: “There are fifty students in attendance, 
 which number might have been doubled if the instructors would have 
 consented to carry them forward into algebra and chemistry and as- 
 tronomy and geometry, instead of subjecting them to a thorough re- 
 view of common school studies.” He evidently preferred for the 
 district school that a teacher should be thoroughly prepared in a few 
 important branches, rather than have a superficial omniscience gained 
 by a cursory study of every known branch of knowledge. Thor- 
 oughness in preparation induces thoroughness in work } a superficial 
 preparation renders thoroughness in instruction impossible. 
 
 Horace Mann’s teacher for the district school must possess apt- 
 ness to teach, as well as knowledge, which he says embraces a 
 knowledge of methods and processes. He adds: “He who is apt 
 to teach is acquainted not only with common methods for common 
 minds, but with peculiar methods for pupils of peculiar dispositions 
 and temperaments. ” The best normal schools are not always those 
 with the finest buildings, or the most extended curriculum, but those 
 in which the students study and apply “the principles of all 
 methods,” so that they may vary their modes of instruction to suit 
 the individual wants of the child. 
 
 The era of individuality is at our doors, and the teacher of the 
 future will be compelled to deal with the pupils as his wants of each 
 one may require. Rules, regulations and systems must give way, 
 and the individual child must be enthroned as the one supreme object 
 for whose welfare the school was established. This was Horace 
 Mann’s idea. It can best be carried out in the country school, but 
 it can nowhere be successfully done unless the teacher possesses and 
 is governed by the teaching spirit. The teacher in the country 
 school, isolated in her work, with but little advice or supervision, 
 
HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 O 
 
 finds here her only solace; her only refuge from the dull monotony 
 of hearing lessons and keeping order. 
 
 But Horace Mann’s teacher must also possess the power to govern 
 and control her school, not necessarily through fear, for love is far 
 better and more enduring. Yet when love fails, force must be called 
 in, for disobedience is the open gate to all evil influences. He, how- 
 ever, expresses a pungent truth when he says, ‘‘Children coming' 
 from homes where they have always been accustomed to love and 
 sympathy, should expect to find love and sympathy in the school; 
 and those coming from homes in which there is no love and no sym- 
 pathy, above all others, ought to find these in their teachers.” 
 
 As Horace Mann desired that teachers for the district schools 
 should be prepared in the common branches, he did not hesitate to 
 deprecate the tendency, even in his day, to increase the number of 
 
 branches in the common schools! What would he have said could 
 
 / 
 
 he have inspected the course of study in some of our high schools? 
 Said an earnest teacher the other day, “We have so many things to 
 do, so much instruction to give in different branches, that we have 
 no time to build character.” And yet character endures, wheit 
 knowledge fails. “If there be tongues they shall cease; if there be 
 knowledge it shall vanish away. Now abideth these three, faith, 
 hope, love.” 
 
 Horace Mann’s idea was very far from confining instruction in the 
 country schools to the three R’s. Whatever has a tendency to make 
 the boy more useful on the farm, or to make the life of the farm 
 more attractive to him ; whatever will make the daughter more use- 
 ful in the home, or make the home a place of supreme pleasure to 
 her, may legitimately be taught in the district school. The subjects 
 taught in the country school ought to bear a close relation to country 
 life. The great storehouse of nature opens her doors and displays 
 her treasures to the rural school. Seedtime and harvest, bud and 
 flower, blossom and fruit, the care of animals, singing birds and run- 
 ning streams, can be made the source of lessons useful as well as 
 pleasant to the children. The country school is shorn of half its 
 usefulness because the teacher is not able to rise to the height of her 
 opportunities. And what a wonderful opportunity she has to teach 
 
6 
 
 HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 the pupil to “translate forms of beauty into thought, and thought into 
 words.” 
 
 To make a system of education effective, it must be in accord with 
 its environments. The countiy school should be thoroughly coun- 
 trified ; it should never put on metropolitan airs. It is not desirable 
 that the country school should keep equal pace with the city system 
 in the character and kind of studies introduced in it; but especially 
 in nature studies, and in elementary science as bearing upon agricul- 
 ture and rural life, the curriculum of the country school should be 
 greatly enlarged. What the city school ought to do in fitting boys 
 for the office or for professions, the country school must do in fitting 
 boys and girls for the farm. Just as soon as the farmers in the ag- 
 ricultural sections of the land find that the school is making the boys 
 and girls more useful on the farm, more intelligent and more con- 
 tented to remain at home, they will value it for its usefulness and 
 rally to its support. 
 
 In an article in the Common School Journal , then, in 1840, edited 
 by Horace Mann, the writer, after enumerating a long list of eminent 
 men, says of them : * ‘All common school men, some scarcely that, 
 
 but yet all educated man, because they were made alive.” The 
 
 * 
 
 school, whether it be in the city or country, which .does not do this 
 for the pupils is failing of its purposes. We have lost sight, to some 
 extent, of the purposes of school education and possibly we may 
 have to go back to the country school of Horace Mann in order to 
 get our bearings again. 
 
 I do not say we do not, but I do saj 7 we ought to turn out of our 
 common schools reasonable, thinking, live men and women, anxious 
 to be of service to mankind, eager for knowledge, with a quickened 
 conscience, with the seeds of growth planted so deep that neither 
 drought nor frost can reach them ; growing year by year like the 
 young sapling of the forest which does not reach its maturity until 
 it has been nourished by the sunshine of a hundred summers, and 
 has breasted the storms and winds of a hundred winters. He i& 
 educated, then, “Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. ” 
 
 But where are we to get our teachers fitted for this work? This 
 is true, that no state in the Union is so thoroughly equipped with 
 
HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 7 
 
 normal schools as to be able to give all her teachers a professional 
 training. This is also true, that that normal school takes apparently 
 highest rank which approaches nearest to being a well equipped col- 
 lege. I do not object to this, and yet but few of the graduates of 
 these schools will find their work permanently in the country. The 
 state must bring its normal training close to the farmer’s door. 
 
 0 the pitiless, merciless, barbarous experimenting w T hich is being 
 practiced upon thousands of American children in the schoolrooms! 
 The blind teaching them to see ; the dumb teaching them to talk ; 
 the lame and the halt teaching them the grace of motion. It is a 
 sin which cries to heaven. Horace Mann tells this story. A by- 
 stander after witnessing a wonderful operation upon the eyes per- 
 formed by the most skillful oculist in London, asked him, “How in 
 the world did you learn to do it?” He replied, “By practice, but I 
 spoilt a bushel basketful of eyes in learning how.” 
 
 The state should inaugurate a series of normal schools, one in each 
 county, or at least in each congressional district, with a curriculum 
 confined almost exclusively to elementary branches, the course to be 
 completed in two years, and in charge of the best instructors whom 
 money can get. Then we may look for the dawn of the educational 
 miilenium; the day when the doors of the public school will be 
 locked against every candidate who has not had some special pre- 
 paration for her work. Then the seedtime shall not fail, and thou- 
 sands of happy children shall yearly celebrate the harvest home of 
 knowledge. 
 
 There are but two other points to be touched upon. Long 
 and earnestly did Horace Mann labor to reform the architecture 
 of the country school house. From his day to this there have 
 been spurts, spasms of reform, but nothing lasting; there never will 
 be suitable buildings, built with regard to health, comfort and con- 
 venience, in accordance with the laws of sanitary science, and of 
 civilized decency, until the state exerts its authority and compels it 
 as a prerequisite of obtaining a share of the public funds. It will 
 take years to reach this conclusion, but the agitation should begin 
 now and bear with it the active influence and co-operation of this Na- 
 tional Educational Association. 
 
8 
 
 HORACE MANN’S COUNTRY SCHOOL. 
 
 Finally, the district school house must be the rallying point for 
 every influence which tends to elevate or benefit mankind. Within its 
 walls should be kept the district library; the museum of specimens 
 gathered and labeled by the children; the herbarium of flowers and 
 leaves which the children have gathered on the prairies or the hills. 
 Here may be held the country lyceum, the debating society, the 
 singing school. No matter if religious meetings and Sunday schools 
 are held there, provided the religious conscience can be so elevated that 
 the worshipers will not desecrate the room by tobacco, nor purloin 
 the books of the pupils. Here may be held historical or scientific 
 lectures for the benefit of both parents and pupils. The surround- 
 ings should be sightly and attractive. Trees and flowers and shrubs 
 should adorn the grounds, which should be scrupulously cared for. 
 In short, the district school house and the grounds should have such 
 a hold upon the community that they would be the last places which 
 they would permit to be desecrated by the vandal or the tramp. 
 This would be the district school as Horace Mann would have it. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM HORACE MANN. 
 
 Libraries. — How can this flood of pernicious reading be stayed? It 
 must be done, if done at all — in the expressive language of Dr. Chalmers 
 — '‘by the expulsive power of. a new affection.” A purer current of 
 thought at the fountain can alone wash the channels clean. For this pur- 
 pose I know of no plan, as yet conceived by philanthropy, which promises 
 to be so comprehensive and efficacious as the establishment of good libra- 
 ries in all our school districts, open respectively to a'l the children in the 
 state, and within half an hour’s walk of any spot upon its surface. 
 
 Wanted Men. — No doubt a college-boy will learn more Greek and Latin 
 if it is generally understood that college honors are to be mainly awarded 
 for proficiency in those languages; but what care we though a “man can 
 speak seven languages, or dreams in Hebrew or Sanscrit, because of their 
 familiarity, if he has never learned the language of sympathy for human 
 suffering, and is deaf when the voice of truth and duty utters their holy 
 mandates? We want men who feel a sentiment, a consciousness of 
 brotherhood for the whole human race. We want men who will instruct 
 the ignorant, not delude them, who will succor the weak, not prey upon 
 them. We want men who will fly to the moral breach when the waters 
 of desolation are pouring in, and who will stand there, and if need be, die 
 there, applause or no applause. 
 
 Free Schools. — In a social and political sense, it is a free school sys- 
 tem. It knows no distinction of rich and poor, of bond and free, or be- 
 tween those, who, in the imperfect light of this world, are seeking, 
 through different avenues, to reach the gate of heaven. Without money 
 and without price, it throws open its doors, and spreads the table of its 
 bounty for all the children of the state. Like the sun, it shines not only 
 upon the good, but upon the evil, that they may become good; and. like 
 the rain, its blessings descend not only upon the just, but upon the unjust, 
 that their injustice may depart from them, and be known no more. 
 
 Deeds. — Deeds survive the doers. In the highest and most philosophic 
 sense, the asserted brevity of human life is a fiction. The act remains, 
 though the hand that wrought it may have perished. And when our 
 spirits shall have gone to their account, and the dust of our bodies shall 
 be' blown about by the winds, or mingled with the waves, the force which 
 our life shjill have impressed upon the machinery of things will continue 
 its momentum, and work out its destiny upon the character and happiness 
 of our descendants.