Nathan Pucel, Vinny Motzel and Sam Vascellaro

Mr. Zeibarth and Mr. Hoverson

National History Day Project

15 February 2017

History Day Process Paper:

Horace Mann Public Education Movement

Horace Mann was first introduced to us as a part of the AP US History curriculum. The

topic of a fight for better education in America was interesting to us because, obviously, it has

affected our daily lives ever since we enrolled in kindergarten. Interest in the topic was sparked

as a result of our questioning modern education, as we struggle to find meaning in many of the

courses we are forced to take. Understanding how education developed into what it is today

became important to us. We chose a website because we believed it was the only way to

completely explain the separate ideas that play into the outcome of the actions made by Horace

Mann. With a website we are able to fully explain how Manns life affected his decisions, how

his decisions affected the world, and how he was able to actually make a difference in a much

more straightforward manner.

The very first thing we did was go to our school library and talk to our librarian. She

pointed us in the direction of a couple books within the library, and we gathered information

from those first. These gave general information on education in the early 1900s, although they

never specifically mention Horace Mann. She also helped us find some books with very good

information in the online U of M library. She ordered these books and gave them to us a week or

so later. They dive deeper into the actual process of changing the school system. We then set out

to find different sources online that would help us get all the information we needed to present

our project. Vinny found many of the primary sources on databases. Most of what he was able to
find were speeches and written documents by Mann himself, which explain his point of view.

These were hard to find, and we were not able to find a ton of primary sources. Sam and Nathan

found many of the secondary sources from various websites. These gave general information

points about Manns life and the education system he was building. Eventually, we realized we

should use our APUSH textbook, and received a lot of useful information from that as well.

We found the website to be very easy to work with, and ended up splitting the work

amongst us by assigning ourselves each a certain page or two to fill out on the website, which

made the design only somewhat difficult to work with.

Horace Mann has done America a great service. The most important change he made to

the public education system was doubling the teachers salaries, as it raised an interest among

many to commit themselves to helping the kids learn. I now understand why the school system is

what it is - not only is it in place to help us understand certain disciplines of knowledge, but also

to help us increase our mental capacity of understanding the world so that we may do good and

be happy.