Horace Mann Reports to the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1840

From Third Annual Report of the Board of Education Together with the Third Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board. Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, State Printers, 1840, p. 35, 93-100.

To the Board of Education.

Gentlemen:--

After discharging, for another year, the duties of the office you have conferred upon me, I respectfully submit my Third Annual Report. During the last year, I have visited all the counties in the State, and met, in convention, at central and convenient places, such Friends of Education, as chose to assemble;--I have maintained an active correspondence with all parts of the Commonwealth, on subjects pertaining to the means and processes of popular instruction, and I have superintended the preparation and printing of the Annual Abstract of the School Returns for the school year 1838-9. . . .

Few men have battles to fight, or senates to persuade, or kingdoms to rule; but all have a spirit to be controlled, and to be brought into subjection to the social and divine law. The intellect forces the great problems of existence, and futurity, and destiny, upon all; and none will question that much depends upon human means, whether a man shall go through the world and out of it, elated by delusive hopes, or tormented by causeless fears.

Among the species, that oeprate to these momentous ends, books, certainly, occupy a conspicuous place. Whoever has read modern biography, with a philosophic eye to the causes of the extraordinary characters it records, must have observed the frequent references, that are made to some book, as turning the stream of life, at some critical point in its course. In one of Dr. Franklin's letters, he says, that, when a boy, he met with a book entitled, "Essays to do Good," which led to such a train of thinking, as had an influence on his conduct through life. Sir Walter Scott, in his writings and letters, makes repeated and repeated mention of the fact, that he owed his power of painting past times, to the books which he read when young. . . .

It has been frequently remarked by observing men, that towns, in which good libraries have been established, show a population of intelligence, superior to that of towns where none has existed. In a number of towns, recent attempts to establish libraries for grown people have utterly failed. The men and women, not having acquired a taste for useful reading when children, have lost it for life. Let the same course be followed in regard to the present children, and time is not more certain to bring the day, when they shall be men and women, than it is to bring the same feelings of indifference towards mental improvement. On the other hand, I have never heard of a well selected library for children, which has failed from their want of interest in it.

And in what way, except by furnishing good libraries to the people at large, can the reading of frivolous and useless books, of novels of the baser sort, and of that contaminating and pestilential class of works, which is now hawked around the country, creating moral diseases, or inflaming and aggravating where it finds them, be prevented? These books, no law can destroy or reach. No power of persuasion can ever induce whose who have acquired a love of reading them, to abandon what gives them pleasure, without some equivalent of pleasure is proffered in its stead. But a supply of good books would confer far more than an equivalent. It would prove a remedy, where the disease exists, and an antidote, where it threatens. Let good books be read, and the taste for reading bad ones will slough off from the minds of the young, like gangrened flesh from a healing wound. Nor will any severity of legislative enactment, nor any vigilance in the administration of the law, ever succeed in the extirpation of gaming, shows, circuses, theatres, and many low and gross forms of indulgence, without the introduction of some moral and intellectual substitutes. . . .

Could a library, containing popular, intelligible elucidations of the great subjects of art, of science, of duty, be carried home to all the children in the Commonwealth, it would be a magnet to reveal the varied elements of excellence, now hidden in their souls.

The State, in its sovereign capacity, has the deepest interest in this matter. If it would spread the means of intelligence and self-culture over its entire surface, making them diffusive as sunshine, causing them to penetrate into every hamlet and dwelling, and, like the vernal sun, quickening into life the seeds of usefulness and worth, wherever the prodigal hand of nature may have scattered them;--it would call into existence an order of men, who would establish a broader basis for its prosperity, and give a brighter lustre to its name,--who would improve its arts, impart wisdom to its counsels, and extend the beneficent sphere of its charities. Yet, not for its own sake only, should it assume this work. It is a corollary from the axioms of its constitution, that every child, born within its borders, shall be enlightened. In its paternal character, the government is bound, even to those who can make no requital. Sacredly is it bound to develop all the existing capacities, and to ensure the utmost attainable welfare, of that vast crowd can throng of men, who, without being known, during life, beyond their neighboring hills,--without leaving and enduring name behind them after death, still, by their life-long industry, fill up, as it were, drop by drop, the mighty stream of the country's prosperity. In the heart of this multitude, dwell capacities of good, and possibilities of evil, wholly transcending the power of finite imagination to conceive. Here are an inconceivable extent and magnitude of interests, sympathies, obligations;--here are all the great instincts of humanity, working out their way to a greater or less measure of good, according to the light they enjoy;--and, compared with this wide and deep mass of unrecorded life, all that emerges into history and is seen of man, is as nothing. To a superior being, to whom the world appears as it really is,--whose eye can see through it and round it,--the substance of its weal and woe, lies here; and ought not the means of knowledge, and the incitement and the aids to virtues, to be co-extensive with this vast expanse and depth of wants and responsibilities?

Again, it is believed that no barborous nation has ever been known to history,--amongst whom any form of government had been established,--which had not adopted specific measures to educate the heir of sovereignty, for the discharge of his regal duties. And can the obligation to prepare for the responsibilities, attendant upon power, be less, where all the citizens, instead of one, are born to the inheritance of sovereignty. By our institutions, the political rights of the father descend to his sons, in course of law. But the intellectual and moral qualifications, necessary for the discreet use of those rights, are intransmissible, by virtue of any statute. These are personal, not hereditary; and are, therefore, to be taught anew and learned anew, by each successive generation. Hence, as the work of education is never done, the means of education should never be withheld;--as the former must be continually renewed, the latter must, as continually, be supplied. . . .

Amongst all the letters, which I have received on the subject of libraries, not one man, in his individual capacity, and but one board of school committee men only, has questioned their desirableness and utility. And the reason assigned in the latter case, was, that the town to which the committee belonged, already possessed a sufficient number of books, accessible to all its inhabitants. The conventions, held in the different counties, have approved and recommended the plan by votes, which, with two exceptions, had not a dissenting voice; and, in neither of the excepted cases, was there more than half a dozen negative votes. Probably so entire a unanimity would not be found to exist, on any other subject whatever.

In view of these facts and sonciserations, I cannot close this Report, without suggesting to the Board the expediency of inviting the special attention of the Legislature to this subject, as one which has an important bearing upon the welfare of the present age, and a bearing still more important upon the welfare of coming generations.

Boston, Dec.26, 1839.