After reading this chapter I realized that Horace Mann left a very sour taste in my mouth. Maybe it was simply my interpretation of him, or the way the book made him seem but he just seemed to be scared, he had this unreasonable fear of people and social disorder. His idea that educating children on what is right and wrong at an early age will keep them from committing crimes and in general become law abiding moral citizens, in a way I can see his point but I also think that placing such pressure and power on the schools can lead to brainwashing children.
The ideology of the common school was very interesting since it dealt with the same issues that are still being dealt with in schools. I can imagine it was even harder at that time to separate church and state since religion played a larger factor in people’s lives.
While reading this chapter a few questions arose in my mind. The first being do you that schools nowadays if they do teach values still do it in a biblical or Judeo-Christian way?
The latter goes off topic a little bit but there was this idea in the chapter about textbooks in the high school and how everything in the high schools was taught only from textbooks to create a general curriculum, do you believe that is something we can implement in the US teaching every grade and school from the same textbook? Would this lead to less inequality both socially and religious or would it lead to public outcry in more conservative states?
