Who is Horace Mann

Horace Mann is the “father of the American public school.” Horace Mann worked to win reforms and public support for the schools in the United States. He pioneered the concept that education should be universal, nonsectarian, and free. Mann won widespread approval from modernizers for building public schools. Most U.S. states adopted a version of the system Mann established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers. Educational historians credit Horace Mann, along with Henry Barnard and Catherine Beecher as one of the major advocates of the Common School Movement.