History of Common School Education

The Common School Movement

• Horace Mann, a Massachusetts lawyer, is frequently credited with founding the Common School Movement. The term "common school" reflected Mann's conviction that all children were entitled to the same education, regardless of gender, or economic or social class.

Race and Common School Education

• The great exception to the Common School vision for education were African American children. Even after the abolition of slavery, educational opportunities for these children were limited.

Common Schools at Work

• Common Schools offered a basic education that included reading, writing, spelling, mathematics, history and geography. These schools were usually one-room facilities with a single teacher in charge of the entire student body. School schedules were often arranged around agricultural or local industrial needs.

Common Schools became Public Schools

• The labor union movement of the late-19th and early-20th century was instrumental in establishing child labor laws. These reforms, along with the growing need for better a better educated labor force, resulted in the Common School evolving into the public education system in the United States.

Famous Names and the Common School Movement

• Catharine Beecher, sister of writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, founded one of the first academies dedicated to educate and train young women as teachers for Common Schools.