I believe that Horace Mann was trying to educate for the betterment of society, not trying to indoctrinate young citizens. Some believe that his avoidance of controversy in the classroom, demand that the common schools be a place to avoid religious sections, and belief that common values be taught, proves Katz’s theory of schooling as a way to indoctrinate the population. I believe that these could be used to argue the opposite. His goal was to provide young citizens with the skills in which they would need to become productive members of society, without forcing or encouraging different values and ways of thought upon them. He had come from a culture and a system of schooling in which Puritan religious values had been strictly taught and enforced
