Curriculum+Movement

[|Jefferson's views on education]

Jefferson called for the division of each county into wards, or "little republics," and the creation therein of elementary schools into which "all the free children, male and female," would be admitted without charge. These publicly supported elementary schools would equip all citizens with the basic literacy and computational skills they would need in order to manage their own affairs.

Jefferson called for publicly supported education: []

__Quotes from Jefferson__ "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

"It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan."

Benjamin Rush-Signer of the Declaration of Independence and educational reformer

Benjamin Rush's perspective on educational needs of the country: "But, shall the estates of orphans, bachelors, and persons who have no children be taxed to pay for the support of schools from which they can derive no benefit? I answer in the affirmative to the first part of the objection, and I deny the truth of the latter part of it…. The bachelor will in time save his tax for this purpose by being able to sleep with fewer bolts and locks on his doors, the estates of orphans will in time be benefited by being protected from the vantages of unprincipled and idle boys, and the children of wealthy parents will be less tempted, by bad company, to extravagance. Fewer pillories and whipping posts and smaller jails, with their usual expenses and taxes, will be necessary when our youth are more properly educated than at present."

Read more: [|Common School Movement - Colonial and Republican Schooling, Changes in the Antebellum Era, The Rise of the Common School]

Horace Mann was known as the father of common schools His educational contributions: []

Video of Horace Mann: []

1) Value 2) Knowledge 3) Human Nature 4) Transmission 5) Society 6) Opportunity 7) Consensus 8) Learning

Mann's quotes: 2:55 "And if ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld, by all of toil or sacrifice that the human hand or heart can endure, it is the cause of education." 5:44 "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

6:30 "Teaching is the most difficult art, and the most profound of all sciences."

Mann's Principles of Education (Ceglie, 2/3/10): 1) General public should be educated 2) An interested public should support and fund education 3) Children from various backgrounds should be educated together 4) Education should be non-sectarian 5) Education should be steeped in free society principles 6) Teachers should be trained professionals

Common School Movement-Encyclopedia entry [|Click here]

[|A School for Common Good, by Lawrence Baines and Hal Foster (Summer 2006)]

Competing educational philosophies, as well as political and social divisions in society, have made the issue of what should be "common" about common schooling one that is continually under review. If, as one historian has observed,"the American public school is a gigantic standardized compromise most of us have learned to live with" (Kaestle 1976, p. 396), it is a compromise that has been, and must continue to be, constantly renegotiated.
 * Kaestle, Carl F. 1976. "Conflict and Consensus Revisited: Notes Toward a Reinterpretation of American Educational History." Harvard Education Review 46:390 – 396.**

Another article by Kaestle...[|Victory of the Common School Movement- A Turning Point in American Educational History]

[|Call for Compulsory Attendance in Common Schools]

[|Canadian Common Schools Pamphlet]
 * __Developments in Canada__**

[|Black perspective on Common Schools (Separate but Equal)]