8.2
 Describe the public school movement
 Describe how reformers tried to improve the condition
of prisoners and people with mental illness
 Evaluate the effectiveness of the temperance
movement.
 Reforming Education
 Helping the Ill and Imprisoned
 The Temperance Movement
 Read 8.2
 Answer Question # 4 on pg. 277. Answer it in the form
of a thesis statement.
 During the 1780s Education in America was
inadequate to say the least.
 There was only one notable educational textbook at
the time called “The American Spelling Book” by Noah
Webster.
 There were no public schools that children were
required by law to go to.
 The public school movement sought to establish a
system of tax-supported public schools.
 Horace Mann was one of the greatest school reformers.
 He advanced the idea of a free public education that
students must attend.
 He also created the state board of education.
 Horace man was also a Massachusetts Senator.
 One reformer who turned her religious ideals into
action was Dorthea Dix.
 She discovered that people suffering form mental
illnesses were housed along with hardened criminals,
she decided to change that.
 She spent the next two years visiting every prison and
hospital in Massachusetts.
 Then she wrote to the state legislature describing the
horrors she had seen.
 Dorthea went on a campaign across the nation
encouraging other communities to build humane
hospitals for people with mental illnesses.
 She was remarkably successful.
 She started the prison reform called the penitentiary
movement.
 This formed two different prison models.
 The Pennsylvania System- Prisoners were urged to
repent, and lived in complete solitary confinement,
working alone in their cells and exercising in
individual yards. This was expensive to run and
considered Cruel.
 The Auburn System- Prisoners worked with one
another during the day under strict silence but slept in
individual cells at night. This form was the most
popular.
 Reformers surveyed American society and they saw a
country in desperate need of reform.
 They started the Temperance Movement, an effort to
end alcohol abuse and the problems created by it.
 Temperance is different than prohibition.
 This will be an on going issue even until today.