The Common School Movement

Themes to frame the Common School Movement

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

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

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

Horace Mann & the leader of the Common School idea

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

horace mann

The Common School: Horace Mann and a common Protestant education

Screen Shot 2019-11-12 at 4.18.11 PM

literacy2

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

upperclasseducation — The upper class opposed taxes for public schooling

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.

poor18thcfolk — The working class was opposed to taxes for public schooling

catholicschool cartoon — The working class was opposed to taxes for public schooling

The Common School and Catholicism — Famous 1876 editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting Roman Catholic bishops as crocodiles attacking public schools, with the connivance of Irish Catholic politicians