and school officers should not miss the spirit in which he did his work. "The education of the whole people in a republican government," he said, "can never be attained without the consent of the whole people. Compulsion, even if it were desirable, is not an available instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, is our resource. The nature of education must be explained. The whole mass of mind must be instructed in regard to its comprehension and enduring interests. We cannot drive our people up a dark avenue, even though it be the right one; but we must hang the starry lights of knowledge about it, and show them not only the directness of its course to the goal of prosperity and honor, but the beauty of the way that leads to it."

These résumés reveal in part what the Reports themselves reveal in full-the nature, the range, and the limitations of Horace Mann's educational genius. They present him to the world as an educational statesman rather than a philosophical educator or a trained pedagogist. The Reports are among the best existing expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and the State. The student or educator, the journalist or politician, who is seeking the best arguments in favor of popular > education, will find them here.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CONTROVERSY WITH BOSTON SCHOOLMASTERS

THE judicious reader at the present day reads Mr. Mann's celebrated controversy with the Boston schoolmasters, or their controversy with him, with mingled feelings of satisfaction and pain. It throws much light upon the state of education in Massachusetts and Boston, and particularly upon the teaching profession at the time of the Common School Revival. It presents studies of character. Again, it has a considerable interest merely as a piece of controversy. But when all is said, these feelings are shrouded with regret, to use a mild word, that the great reform should have been marred by an uncalled-for onslaught upon the foremost reformer by prominent men in the teaching profession. The story must be told once more, because it is a part of the history, and particularly because, in the end, it promoted the reform. But first let us see why, as has been stated in a previous chapter, the controversy lay in the nature of things and was in fact unavoidable.

Schools are a conservative engine, and teaching is a conservative profession. The causes of these facts lie deep in the very nature of the work to be done. Much of the work of the elementary school is to put the pupil into proper relations with the civilization about him.

The

Teaching is also a self-conscious profession, rendering its votaries keenly alive to criticism, and, some would say, not conducive to the development of proper sense of proportion and perspective. In 1843 Massachusetts, as she reflected upon her Puritan-descended system of public schools, was filled with complacency. Teachers shared in the opposition that the creation of the Board of Education had provoked, some of them moved by their religious feelings, but more, probably, by professional bias. Had not the schools gotten on very well without such a Board for two hundred years? The setting aside of Mr. Carter for Mr. Mann in 1837 still rankled in some bosoms. one was a teacher, the other a lawyer and politician; and some teachers, no doubt, looked upon Mr. Mann's presence in the chief educational office of the State much as a pious Jew would have regarded the presence of a Gentile in the palace of the High Priest at Jerusalem. What could a man not bred to the trade teach the teachers of Boston? Then Mr. Mann, looking at his subject broadly and setting forth his ideas in an oratorical mode, gave quick offence to some minds. His winged words stuck in the wounds that they had made. Such phrases as "incompetent teachers," "ignorance of teachers," "depressed state of common schools," "sleepy supervision," deficiencies of teachers in the "two indispensable prerequisites for their office," and the Massachusetts common school system "fallen into a state of general unsoundness and debility" were carefully treasured up against a possible day of reckoning. Intent upon improvement, the Secretary naturally dwelt more upon the defects

His

of the schools than upon their excellencies. consuming duties prevented his coming into close relations with many teachers in their work, and so of measuring, or even discovering, some of the difficulties under which they labored. He knew that teaching the young was a grand theme for the platform and for a Board report; they knew by daily experience that it was a most difficult and trying art. The Normal schools, as has been already related, were an offence to many, as well within as without the teaching profession. Even the name "Normal" was held up to scorn.

The masters of the Boston schools were men of education and character, some of them possessing unusual ability; they had experience in their work, and were devoted to it; they were conservators of the things educational that time had tested and approved; they deserved well of the community that they served, and received that respect for the teacher which was' traditional in New England. The Boston schools were the best of their kind. Even those critics who contended that the schools of the State had tended to deteriorate down to 1837, made an exception in favor of Boston. The masters were a part of the renown of the city, and they knew it. But, unfortunately, the Boston schools had not been touched by the new movement. They merely kept on in the old way, respectable, indeed, but slow. Down to 1843 it is not probable that any equal group of schools in the State had been less influenced by Mr. Mann's work than these schools. In the mean time the schools of other cities and towns were in quick motion. As a con

1

temporary writer put it, other cities began to shame. the Capital, and some people began to demand what was the matter with Boston. The masters felt uncomfortable in view of this state of things, and ascribed their discomfort to Mr. Mann, whose work they began to challenge. Accordingly, the Boston schools and the Boston masters, while the best of their kind, were still a part of the very system that Mr. Mann wished to reform. So the masters went on in their self-conscious way, appropriating to themselves the Secretary's sharp ericisms, until the cup of their endurance was filled to the brim. The Seventh Report caused it to overflow. The Secretary had indeed used due diligence not to wound their sensibilities. He did not bring the schools of Massachusetts into formal comparison with those of Prussia, the schools of Boston with those of Dresden; but to their sensitive nerves this did not mend matters. He held up the mirror, and they could not refrain from looking into it and seeing what other people saw. Or as the writer just referred to said: "His readers made the application fast enough. The Boston teachers saw that they were likely to lose a large share of the reputation they had inherited, and to be beset by still stronger importunities for reform. Thus urged, they resolved to quit their neutral position, and to act vigorously in the offensive. They would appear as the champions of conservatism, and do battle stoutly against the radical and innovating tendencies of the times.""

1 See an article by Prof. Francis Bowen, The North American Review, January, 1845, pp. 224-246. This article is an excellent contemporary view of the controversy.