The common school was the tax-funded, nonsectarian public school of the nineteenth-century United States, originating in New England as a community-funded institution of education for all children of a region or neighborhood. The movement is dated from 1837, when Massachusetts appointed Horace Mann the first secretary of its State Board of Education; he led the reform through 1848 as a lawyer, state senator and board secretary, campaigning against fees and religious sectarianism in the classroom even as his own proposals on Bible use drew resistance from religious groups. Common schools typically taught the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic, alongside history, geography and moral instruction, and the movement is the direct ancestor of universal public literacy in the United States.
Facts
Founded Year Ownership Type FAQs
Why did Bible reading in common schools lead to riots in Philadelphia?
Catholics objected to the Protestant King James Bible read in public schools; the dispute was the immediate cause of the 1844 riots.
Universal public schools, also called common schools, were new in the United States, and because Americans thought religion the prime way to teach morals, the school day usually began with a Bible reading. Most school leaders were Protestant, so the reading came from the King James version, which conflicted with Catholic teaching. Catholics used the Douay Bible, translated in 1582 from the Latin Vulgate. According to a Goodman Institute account, the escalating conflict over the Protestant Bible in public schools was the immediate cause of the Philadelphia riots of May and July 1844, in which Protestant nativists and Catholic newcomers, mostly Irish immigrants, fought pitched battles.
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Additional Source Common school (Wikipedia)Lead section
Informed By
Early nineteenth-century American educators, Horace Mann among them, studied the Prussian model directly; Michigan's 1835 constitution embraced it outright with a state-administered, tax-funded school system.
Source Wikipedia
Additional Source Common school (Wikipedia)Prussian education system, Influence on Other Countries section
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2. Common school (Wikipedia)
Lead section
A common school was a public school in the United States during the 19th century.
Common school article
the state of Massachusetts appointed Mann as the first secretary of the State Board of Education
- Informed By: Prussian Education System, Prussian education system, Influence on Other Countries section
View the SourceWikidata: Common School
- Wikidata Q5153616, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
- Wikidata Q5153616, class allow-list match (w-bbfill-education6-0927)
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