A Hero of Education

At heart, Mann was an idealist, always on the lookout for good causes. He once said to a friend: "All my boyish castles in the air had reference to doing something for the benefit of mankind."

By Peter H. Gibbon

"The molding of minds is about the noblest work that man or angel can do."

—Horace Mann

I am standing on the lawn of the Boston State House, looking up at a statue of the educator Horace Mann. His left hand holds a book, his right hand reaches out, and over his business suit hangs the scholar's robe. The 9-foot bronze likeness was sculpted by Emma Stebbins, paid for by the teachers and schoolchildren of Massachusetts, and dedicated on July 4, 1865. On that day his friend and fellow humanitarian Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, in prose characteristic of the 19th century, celebrated "a man whose greatness consisted in his love for his fellow man, in his confidence in their innate goodness, and their capacity for improvement." Why was Mann so venerated then? What makes him...