But it’s a holiday. A game is in order. Let’s play “Who was this man?”

He was born in an agricultural area, yet blessed with an innovative, quality education for his time and place. It enabled him to obtain his college degree in three years. He studied law, but interrupted his legal career to become a college teacher. He had a special interest in libraries.

At the age of 28 he came to the attention of the president of the United States.

With no background or training in K-12 education, he subsequently abandoned a promising career in politics, law and public lecturing to take a position on a school board. “Let the next generation be my client,” he said. His friends’ reaction? “All men but one, so far as I know, thought me a fool and most of them said so.”

But he applied his legal training to education as well, noting that the applicable state education laws “are scarcely better than they have been for a century and a half.”

He once wrote, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” He spent his life in search of such accomplishment. But he was to experience more battles than victories. And as a result of his lifetime of public service he never enjoyed the wealth that surely would otherwise have been his.

He read “everything that he could lay his hands on” about education. Having done so he then traveled the nation and the world in search of educational innovations that he might help encourage locally. He was especially impressed with the enthusiasm, cheerful classrooms, innovation – and results – obtained by the teachers in Germany.

His conclusion? “Where I have found the worst schools I have found the spirit of self-complacency, and even an offensive disinclination to hear of better methods.”

He was not the creator of educational research projects. Rather, according to one biographer, his contribution was a “remarkable ability to identify the ideas of theorists and the methods of the best teachers and interpret and popularize these ideas.”

But all were not eager to adopt his proposals. So he began writing, every two weeks, and in occasional memos and reports, in an effort to enlist public understanding and support for much needed reforms. More than one commentator has remarked upon “the volume of his writing, its freshness and vigor.”

Even that was not enough.

As he commented, “There are owls who, to adapt the world to their own eyesight, would keep the sun from shining. Most teachers have been activated to greater exertions by the account of the best schools abroad. Others are offended at being driven out of the Paradise which their own self-esteem erected for them.”

The local “Principals’ Association” launched an attack on this board member.

He said he read their pamphlet “with astonishment and grief. It introduces my name more times than there are pages in connection with sentiments that I never felt, and expressions I never uttered.”

With no factual basis he was charged with “disparaging” the local schools. It was a charge he demolished with his reply. Even the local paper was publishing editorials that he characterized as an “atrocious attack.”

More closely identified with the Unitarian church than any other, he was also a target for those local ministers who believed that only their own denomination’s theology could possibly provide adequate character education for students.

Indeed, one author reports that “all phases of conservatism made him a target.”

“Faith is the only sustainer I have,” he once wrote. “Faith in the improvability of the race.”

One of the many challenges he faced was the difficulty of recruiting, and then retaining, quality teachers – primarily because of the low salaries, which he campaigned to raise. What he called “aspiring and highly-endowed youth” were being attracted to medicine and the ministry rather than teaching. He thought year-round school calendars might help sell the public on his campaign.

He was asked to serve on Iowa’s initial planning committee for schools.

Who was this man? This man was Mann. Horace Mann. Massachusetts school board member 1837 to 1848. The same Horace Mann for whom one of our schools is named.

A school of which he would be proud, with its innovative writing program, high standards, professional and caring teachers and involved parents.

Horace Mann. Someone worth remembering this Fourth of July.

Nicholas Johnson is an Iowa City School Board member. More information is available on his Web site, http://www.nicholasjohnson.org.

Lawrence A. Cremin, ed., The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1957)

Robert B. Downs, Horace Mann: Champion of Public Schools (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974)

Louise Hall Tharp, Until Victory: Horace Mann and Mary Peabody (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1953)

Albert E. Winship, Horace Mann, The Educator (3rd ed., Boston: New England Publishing, 1896)

The Notes:

[Note: Rather than footnote, or endnote, calls as such, these references are to (a) the subject for which there is a source, followed by (b) the author's name of the book in which found, and (c) the page number. They are listed in the order in which the material appears in the column.]

Born. Downs, 11.
Education. Downs, 15.
College; three years. Downs, 15-16.
Law school. Downs, 17-18.
University professor. Downs, 17.
Attention of President; age 28. Downs, 20; Downs, 1 and 20.
Political career. Downs, 20.
Next generation. Tharp, 136.
Thought me a fool. Tharp, 137.
Old laws. Tharp, 136.
Ashamed to die. Tharp, 316.
Everything lay hands on. Tharp, 136. And see Downs, 47.
German schools. Tharp, 197.
Self-complacency. Winship, 53.
Remarkable ability. Downs, 47.
Volume. Winship, 41.
Owls. Tharp, 203.
Principals’ attack, reply. Tharp, 203-204.
Conservatism. Winship, 39.
Faith. Tharp, 136.
Salaries. Downs, 43.
Iowa’s planning committee. Downs, 118.