SUBSCRIBE NOW WELCOME BACK. Do you want to continue reading where you left off? New Republic subscribers can pick up where they left off no matter which device they were previously using. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Go Home Horace Mann, Antichrist?

TIMOTHY NOAH FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Horace Mann, Antichrist?

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

I wrote a blog post recently expressing shock that Rick Santorum would attack public education at the state level--an attack he later repeated in the Feb. 22 debate ("not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business"). Santorum was attacking an idea traceable to Thomas Jefferson that was later put into action by Horace Mann, the great educational reformer of the early 19th century. What I didn't know until a reader informed me was that the Christian right has had Mann in its crosshairs for some time now.

Here, for example, is Tim LeHaye in his 1980 book The Battle For The Mind (quoted in Religious Fundamentalism and American Education: The Battle For The Public Schools by Eugene F. Provenzo):

The process did not begin with Horace Mann, although he probably did more to humanize American education in the nineteenth century than any other educator, and thus we tend to trace humanistic roots back to him. Mann was vigorously opposed by ministers of his day, who foresaw the shift from a biblical to a humanistic base for education, but their resistance was gradually overcome.

This passage would be unobjectionable if written by anyone other than a Christian fundamentalist. What the uninitiated need to know is that in the wingnut lexicon "humanist" and "humanistic" are pejorative terms synonymous with "godless and sinful." The Christian right theologian R.J. Rushdoony, an early advocate for Christian homeschooling, spelled this out (this quote is also by way of Provenzo):

Control of children and their education is control of the future. Humanists have always understood this. Horace Mann, James G. Carter, and their many associates (including Senator Charles G. Sumner) were all Unitarians; they hated the Puritan faith of their forefathers with a passion. Their purpose in promoting state control of education was twofold. First, they rightfully understood that the only way to destroy Biblical faith was to control the schools and, little by little, remove Christianity and introduce Humanism. Second, they were Centralists or statist, men who believed that salvation comes by work of statist legislation or law.

"The direction of America’s education," writes David A. Noebel, former president of Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colo., "can be seen as a descent from Jonathan Edwards (1750) and the Christian influence, through Horace Mann (1842) and the Unitarian influence, to John Dewey (1933) and the Humanist influence." (The Christian right hates Dewey even more than it hates Mann.) From there, Noebel explains, it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Eric Fromm, Carl Sagan, and Norman Lear.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you ... the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. This week, anyway.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Show all 28 comments

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

28 comments

Carl Sagan? I did not know he was "billions and billions" evil.

- tmmats

February 23, 2012 at 1:26pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Ever known a Newfie(Newfoundlander)? Until quite recently, they had far and away the lowest percentage of college grads in Canada. They are like the Poles of of the North, the subject of innumerable jokes regarding their intelligence. Unlike the Poles, they are so good-natured(on the whole) that they laugh at themselves. Fortunately, now even the residents of the most remote outports want their kids to get schooling beyond high school. Its pretty clear why the Newfies were so far behind educationally, in spite of having the same rate of graduation over the years as other parts of Canada. Until the 1970's their schools were exclusively "denominational", run by religions and religious orders. If you were Catholic, you went to Catholic school for your entire secondary education, if you were Anglican, ....(As a side note, the few Jews of the colony/province mostly went to RC schools.) The schools were far more intent on inculcating their version of the catechism in what they perceived to be a religious competition, than teaching the 1,2,3s or ABCs. And it still shows thirty plus years later, in the people and in the always nearly failing economy. The segregation, particularly between the Protestant faiths and Roman Catholics, resulted in a legacy of serious ethnic and creedal conflict--between people who you and I could never tell the difference apart--that has only recently dissipated.

- bufatutu

February 23, 2012 at 1:37pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Lets take two obscure authors with no impact on current society, highlight out-of-context seemingly radical views, and declare those views represent the view of Christians. Hard to underestimate the lunacy and stupidity of liberal moon-bats. But did you know all liberals are eugenicist racists -- Margaret Sanger says so *** Margaret Sanger, hero of liberalism and feminism, and founder of Planned Parenthood, was an ardent eugenicist who wanted to exterminate 'negros'. You can see it in her own words. Here’s an interesting quote from one of the greatest patron saints of liberalism: “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976. So its settled -- liberals are stupid evil racist supporters of eugenics.

- mr_rationale

February 23, 2012 at 1:52pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

An attack on public schools, public universities in particular, is an attack on the middle class, for it is the public university that is the path to a successful and rewarding career for the middle class. Why does Santorum hate the middle class?

- rayward

February 23, 2012 at 1:53pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

As I am probably the only educator who will post on this thread I can say that before I was a teacher I was for as much local control of education as possible because people in the communities would know the local conditions in which the children grow up. Now while I realize that this still holds to some degree (you can't have a teaching strategy be the same in inner city Newark and rural Idaho) by and large I have come to accept that Republicans are completely full of shit. I taught in China for 7 years, Mexico for 7. For thousands of years, (except during the Maoist dark ages) the formula for education in China was the same for everyone, everywhere. Meaning study your ass off for years on end with education being the highest priority. This also meant National standards for everyone. How much truer is that in the 21st century. Of course I want a uniform curriculum across the country. People freaking move. I want my 9 year old to pick up precisely where he left off if we moved to a new school district in another state. Employers have the right to know a degree from anywhere holds the same core competencies. Santorum, with his home schooling and charging the state of Pa. $35 grand to do so, does not have a clue. And love how the Rat man completely avoided the point since he obviously has no clue how to answer it.

- blackton

February 23, 2012 at 2:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Oh, please, please, PLEASE let Santorum be the Republican nominee!!!

- Claris

February 23, 2012 at 2:18pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

For Mr_Rationale's post you would look at the work of the blogger who describes himself thus: "My educational background consists of a Bachelor’s degree with a double major in Marketing and Advertising Management from Portland State University, and Master’s degrees in Divinity and in Philosophical Theology from Talbot Theological Seminary." The reference is: http://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/lest-we-forget-liberal-progressive-science-was-at-the-core-of-the-holocaust/ The "moonbats" and whatnots are Mr_R's own contribution, possibly.

- mldarby

February 23, 2012 at 2:32pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Although my husband disagrees that would be such a good thing. If Santorum runs and goes down in flames, the Repubs will have no choice but to regroup. But if Romney runs and loses, it will guarantee four more years of in-fighting with wingnuts who will claim Romney just wasn't conservative enough. Have to go now - I'm drooling so much I'm afraid my keyboard will short-circuit.

- Claris

February 23, 2012 at 2:33pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The late Rousas John Rushdoony was a real crackpot. He began the Christian Reconstruction movement, and he makes Sick Rantorum look like a liberal. He favored the death penalty for homosexuality, adultery and witchcraft, among other peccadilloes. In my reading, I encountered this theocrat somewhere around the very late 1970s or early 1980s.

- liberalref

February 23, 2012 at 3:11pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Ordinarily, answering Mr_Rationale in any way is almost a guaranteed waste of time. However, I can't help pointing out that, even by the lights of his own limited logic, his first line makes no sense. Tim LaHaye is, alas, not obscure, but is the best selling author of books highly popular with any number of college students. I once joked about the "left behind" series in a class, assuming that even in the backwater region where I teach, anyone attending my university would join in the fun. Nope--I was told that Lahaye was a great writer, and by someone whom, if memory serves, wanted to teach high school.

- timteeter

February 23, 2012 at 3:38pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

timteeter - The mention of Tim LaHaye leapt out at me, as well. I've read LaHaye's updated version of "The Battle for the Mind," 2000's "Mind Siege." While I initially bought it to chuckle at, it is in fact an alarming insight into the mind of LaHaye and his acolytes, depicting the world of utter paranoid schizophrenia in which they live. As I recall, it opens with a tale of the near future-a confused parent pulling out a twenty to get his teenager to talk to him and explain what he's seeing on the television. It turns out to be a worldwide celebration of the death of God, the culmination of decades of societal sabotage and deliberate moral subversion by the atheists who secretly controlled the world, now openly taking ownership. LaHaye's persecution complex is...impressive, to say the least.

- janus

February 23, 2012 at 4:47pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Ummm, Rat: Sanger wrote those words in 1939, 73 years ago. She is not running for President in 2012. What's next, "More people died in the back of Ted Kennedy's car than [fill in conservative cause celebre here]."

- dubyadoubte

February 23, 2012 at 7:43pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Kind of weird that Peretz's TNR recent post on the religious right mostly turned into a comment thread on Unitarianism. Peretz's post on Mormonism has just turned into a poetry -fest! Not that I want to spend a single minute more on this because it has been a truly revolting lesson to learn (elsewhere past few days) that the "social conservatives" who are targeting Planned Parenthood, circa 2012, for extinction, are using mr. rat's 'racist eugenicist' angle to delegitimize Sanger, who died in 1966. My advice to mr. rat is to go find melody and her cohort at RedState.com and you will finally find your kin, or coven, depending on how one views all of these religious revisionists who wallow in selective edits. For the record, TNR just reposted Margaret Sanger's essay on "The Status of Birth Control" from the April 20, 1938 issue of The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/100850/the-status-birth-control-1938?page=0,1&utm_source=The%20New%20Republic&utm_campaign=c58555bed3-TNR_Archives_021912&utm_medium=email I really need to stop trying to make any sense out of this. Time to go live with dogs and cats and songbirds.

- K2K

February 23, 2012 at 9:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"What I didn't know until a reader informed me was that the Christian right has had Mann in its crosshairs for some time now." That reader was me. I am glad you gave this perverse way of looking at education the attention it needs. In some ways the fight for public education goes back to the enlightenment. At that time, believe it or not, it was the English Protestants sects like the Methodists (thought they came later) who were behind the push for public education. enlightenment luminaries like Voltaire hated the idea of educating the poor especially the children of farmers and the laboring classes. Most other French enlightenment figures with the exception of Montesquieu (and I think Rousseau though Himmelfarb would disagree) were also against free public education. Moreover they were also against any kind of charity given to the poor either by the government or by private organizations. (You can read about this history in "The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American. Enlightenments" by Gertrude Himmelfarb. How times have changed. How this reversal came about would make a fascinating study methinks.

- arnon

February 23, 2012 at 9:35pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

btw: If Himmelfarb is right, I wonder what contorted argument she and her "neo-conservative" friends will come up with in order to support Santorum and his ilk.

- arnon

February 23, 2012 at 9:54pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Arnon, thanks for the tip. I meant to thank you earlier.

- Timothy Noah

February 24, 2012 at 10:41am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You are most welcome, Mr. Noah.

- arnon1

February 24, 2012 at 12:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

That was a nice tip, arnon. The bit on Tim LaHaye prompts me to mention a very good book that I read last week in which LaHaye is prominently mentioned: The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age by Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson, both of whom teach at evangelical colleges. They well-capture the epistemic closure, Christianist division, that afflicts so many evangelicals.

- liberalref

February 24, 2012 at 12:35pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Thanks Libref: I am interested in the historic transformation of ideas. For example, how a notion that seemed liberal in one historic period became seen as conservative in another and its converse. Though the explication of how religious views fare in a secular age and secular ideas in a religious age is also interesting.

- arnon1

February 24, 2012 at 1:19pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Well, political positions and ideas are mutable, like so much else, no? Republicans in the 1920s were overwhelmingly protectionist and now mostly they are not. What we now call conservative positions on birth control and abortion and homosexuality found comfortable places in the Democratic Party of a couple of generations ago and now they are anathema there. Forty years ago, upper-class Republicans were much more likely to support the legalization of abortion than were blue-collar Democrats. All is in flux, said Heraclitus, my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher.

- liberalref

February 24, 2012 at 3:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Knowledge is power, and power corrupts...ignorance is bliss...it's like they want us to be too ignorant to be unhappy...

- GSpinks

February 24, 2012 at 3:51pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

" All is in flux, said Heraclitus, my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher." "Everything changes," why didn't I think of that, libref? Don't need to read books anymore. Just listen to country and western music on the radio:

- arnon1

February 24, 2012 at 3:59pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I was inspired by your post, arnon, I wan't attempting to counter you. And Heraclitus' insight is far from a universal position. There are plenty of people - and not only religious ones - who entertain Platonic notions of unchanging realities residing somewhere. Last year I read all of the way through Ronald Dworkin's large book, Justice For Hedgehogs, and it was clear to me that Dworkin has a Platonic conception of the law. Even after reading his book, I could not figure out where Dworkin's legal philosophy resides, perhaps in one of those curled-up dimensions that are hypothesized by string theorists.

- liberalref

February 24, 2012 at 4:15pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

blackton ... As I am probably the only educator who will post on this thread... I don't have your China "chops" (unless I can dubiously cheat by citing my Mandarin fluent millionaire Taiwanese cousin), but after getting the world's most useless college degree (English), I went on to get the world's most useless graduate degree (Masters of Education). I then taught in semi-ghetto public schools; where the students laughed at me because rhythm-deficient white Jewish men can't make jump shots. So I am another educator posting on this thread. Of course, not all the jump-shooting students were going to make it in the NBA (and even if they did some would wreck their joints and tendons and shoot their salaries up their noses with cocaine. So for most, it would have been a better strategy to learn to read and count. I have no idea if I succeeded in teaching them for their more likely future.

- skahn

February 24, 2012 at 4:25pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

To follow up your comment (Blackton, again) your comment about "national" standards, in part of my career as a high school student, I studied in New York state (three high schools) where they have the "Regents" system of state wide exams. There were virtues and benefits to this standardized system.

- skahn

February 24, 2012 at 4:28pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Noah, not surprisingly, is just lying about Santorum position on public education. Full context of Santorum quote is that Gov is not very good at providing educational services. The word that stumped Noah is 'anachronistic'. Not attacking public education, just stating obvious -- it is not very good.

- mr_rationale

February 24, 2012 at 6:41pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The Heritage staffer is gibbering again. Here is someone who steals quotes and passes them off as her own, without quotation marks, sometimes without attribution. And then this nutter accuses Timothy Noah of lying for not quoting what the staffer wanted to see quoted. The context still does not change he fact that Sick Rantorum does not like public education. Also, one would think that said staffer would not have an affinity for a big government conservatives like SR. The bar is pretty low already when it comes to intellectual honesty at Heritage, but don't you think this is a bit much, folks?

- liberalref

February 24, 2012 at 7:29pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"Full context of Santorum quote is that Gov is not very good at providing educational services." Which government is he/are you talking about. Federal/State/Local? How is it that New York City government (and others too) was able to produce many a Nobel prize winner? http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/current/student/welcome/convocations/nobel.cfm How many great scholars and scientists graduated from State Schools? I'll not bother you with the record of foreign State Universities. Where did you graduate from, or are you home schooled?

- arnon1

February 24, 2012 at 7:41pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

SHARE HIGHLIGHT

0 CHARACTERS SELECTED

TWEET THIS

POST TO TUMBLR

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

Close