Boston Monuments; September 11, 2001 by Victor Walker

Garden of Remembrance 9/11
Arlington and Boylston Streets Victor Walker, Sculptor Stone / Granite
In honor of those who have fallen.

Taken from the Stone

Most Bostonians and New Englanders are unaware of a September 11, 2001 memorial monument tucked in the well shaded and peaceful corner of our Boston Public Garden. Dozens of our local citizens of all races and religious beliefs died that day for Freedom.

Since they first disembarked from their ship The Arbella in 1630, Bostonians have honored the memory of Americans who gave their lives defending our Freedom -- from the city of Boston or from our state of Massachusetts.

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Back to School : Horace Mann Father of Secondary Education.

Horace Mann (1796-1859)
Outside Beacon Hill State House
Miss Emma Stebbins (1815 – 1882), Sculptor Bronze

Horace Mann was a lawyer, Massachusetts Legislator, Secretary of the State Board of Education, Congress man to the United States House of Representatives, President of Antioch College, and Promoter of Public Educational Reforms for Massachusetts.

My mentor, along with many other American public school teacher, I went to his teacher’s schools. I attended the teaching schools of Salem State and University of Massachusetts, both of which are descendants of the “Normal Schools” founded by Horace Mann.

Horace Mann once said: “In a republic, ignorance is a crime. If we do not prepare children to become good citizens - if we do not develop their capacities, if we do not enrich their minds with knowledge - then our republic must go down to destruction.” 

“Webster gained a companion on 4 July 1865 when a bronze statue of Horace Mann (1796-1859) was placed opposite him on the State House lawn. Beginning as a lawyer and Massachusetts legislator, Mann became Secretary of the State Board of Education upon its creation in 1837, serving until 1848, when he was elected to the seat in the United States House of Representatives vacated by the death of John Quincy Adams.

 From 1852 to 1859 Horace Mann was president of Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. Funds for his memorial were collected from Massachusetts school children and teach- ers in 1860, the year following his death; the statue was modeled in Rome by Miss Emma Stebbins (1815-1882)
and cast in bronze in Munich. The sculptress veiled Mann’s clothing in a voluminous mantle, producing what was not unreasonably described as ‘a mass of bad drapery.’”

 

During this period he served in the Massachusetts State Legislature as a member of the House from 1827 to 1833, and then as a member of the Senate from 1833 to 1837. As President of the Senate during his final year in the legislature, he signed a significant education bill, which became law on April 20, 1837.
During his years of service as the new Secretary of Education, Horace Mann transformed the moribund school system in Massachusetts.

Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in his Whig Party, for building public schools. Most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for “normal schools” to train professional teachers. Mann has been credited by many education historians as the “Father of the Common School Movement”. 

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