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Horace Mann School
Magna est veritas et prævalet
(Great is the truth and it prevails)
| Established | 1887 |
|---|---|
| School type | Private |
| Head | Dr. Thomas M. Kelly |
| Location | New York City |
| Enrollment | approx, 1,750 |
| Campus | Urban and Suburban |
| Homepage | www.horacemann.org |
Founded in 1887, the Horace Mann School is a college preparatory school located in New York City. It has approximately 1,750 students in attendance at the four New York divisions of the school, which spans from nursery school through the twelfth grade.
History
The school was originally founded by a bunch of bitches Nicholas Murray Butler as a co-educational experimental and developmental unit of Teachers College at Columbia University. The school started life at 9 University Place in Manhattan, and then moved in 1901 to 120th Street in Morningside Heights. Columbia University followed suit soon afterards, moving northwards to its present location. The name of the school can still be seen on the western-most building at Teachers College, named Horace Mann Hall. However, Horace Mann was becoming a school in its own right instead of just a teaching laboratory, and became more independent of the University and Teachers College. Thus, Teachers College created the Lincoln School to continue its experiments in teaching.
Shedding its co-educational roots, the school split into separate all-male and all-female schools. In 1912, the Boys' School moved to 246th Street in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and during the 1940's it severed formal ties with Teachers College and became Horace Mann School. The Girls' School merged with the Lincoln School in 1940, and then finally closed in 1946.
In 1972, Horace Mann merged with the nearby Barnard School to form the Horace Mann-Barnard Lower School for kindergarten through grade six, located on the former Barnard School campus. In 1975, the school returned to its roots as a co-educational learning environment and began admitting women to the Upper School. In the late 1990's, the sixth grade moved from the Horace Mann-Barnard campus to the main 246th Street campus and formed a distinct Middle School along with the seventh and eighth grades.
Divisions
Thus, there are now four divisions of the school, all co-educational: a Nursery Division located on 90th Street in Manhattan, a Lower Division on the Horace Mann campus on Tibbett Avenue in Riverdale (kindergarten through fifth grade), a Middle Division on the 246th Street campus in Riverdale (sixth through eighth grades), and an Upper Division also on the 246th Street campus (ninth through twelfth grades). There is also the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, located on 100 acres in Washington Depot, Connecticut, used for extended field trips for classes of students starting in fourth grade.
Each division of the school has its own Division Head and the Middle and Upper Schools have separate student government organizations. The entire school is overseen by a Head of School. The current Head is Dr. Thomas M. Kelly, who was appointed ninth Head of School, effective July 1, 2005, succeeding the popular Dr. Eileen Mullady, formerly of Princeton University and the Lawrenceville School, in whose honor the school named one of its new buildings. Prior to Dr. Mullady, the long-standing Head was the late R. Inslee Clark, Jr., previously Dean of Admissions at Yale University. Dr. Kelly previously served as Superintendent of Schools in Valhalla, NY. The current Horace Mann Nursery Division Head is Patricia Zuroski, the current Lower Division Head is Dr. Steven B. Tobolsky, the current Middle Division Head is Robin Ann Ingram, and the current Upper Division Head is Dr. Barbara Tischler. Glenn Sherratt is the current Director of the Dorr Laboratory.
Academics
Among the classes offered in the high school program, there are 20 Advanced Placement courses and 8 foreign languages. The school's 220 faculty members hold 210 master's degrees and 25 doctoral degrees.
Students in the Upper Division are required to study English, Modern World History, United States History, Biology, Chemistry or Physics (most students take both), Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry, and various requirements in the Arts, Computer Science, Counseling and Health, and Physical Education. They are also required to take at least three years of either French, German, Japanese, Latin, or Spanish. Additional classes in Greek, Italian, and Russian are offered.
Starting in eleventh grade, students have more flexibility with their requirements and can choose from courses in Economics, Psychology, Classical History, United States Legal History, Calculus, Statistics, Astronomy, Science and Public Policy, and many other classes.
Independent Study and Senior Projects, where students create their own coursework and present their findings in weekly meetings, are also common. Additionally, many students develop original research projects with faculty at Columbia University, Cornell University Medical Center, NYU, and Rockefeller University.
Admission
Decisions are based on an applicant's recent grades, an interview, and the candidate's score on either the ISEE or SSAT test.
Sixth Grade is Horace Mann's largest entry point, with between 50 and 55 places available each year. For Ninth Grade, Horace Mann traditionally enrolls between 35 and 45 new students. Admissions maintains a substantial waitlist consistent with the fact that the Wall Street Journal ranks Horace Mann as one of the top three schools in the United States. [citation needed]
The "Ivy League"
Horace Mann School is a part of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Like the Ivy League for universities, this was originally an athletic conference, not a scholastic one, but over time has evolved into a shorthand designation for some of the most prestigious private schools in New York. The athletic division includes the Dalton School in Manhattan, Poly Prep in Brooklyn, Fieldston in the Bronx, Riverdale in the Bronx, Trinity School in Manhattan, The Collegiate School in Manhattan, and Hackley School in Tarrytown.
Fieldston, Riverdale, and Horace Mann together are known as the "hilltop schools," as all three are located within two miles of each other in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, on a hilly area above Van Cortlandt Park. The three also share perhaps the greatest amount of inter-school sports rivalry.
Notable alumni
Famous graduates of Horace Mann include:
- Peter L. Bernstein, class of 1936 - economist and editor
- Robert Caro, class of 1953 - author
- Roy Cohn, lawyer
- Martin Duberman, class of 1948 - author and gay rights historian
- Robert L. Heilbroner, class of 1936 - author and economist
- Ari Hest, class of 1997 - singer and songwriter
- August Kleinzahler, poet
- Ira Levin, author-"Rosemary's Baby", "The Stepford Wives", "The Boys from Brazil"
- Anthony Lewis, class of 1944 - journalist
- Allard K. Lowenstein, Congressman
- Jane Mendelsohn, class of 1983 - author
- James Murdoch, son of News Corporation Owner Rupert Murdoch
- Herb Nass, author and attorney
- Gideon Rose, class of 1981 - Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine
- Barry Scheck, class of 1967 - attorney and founder of the Innocence Project
- James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense
- Ted Sperling, class of 1979 - Broadway orchestrator
- Eliot Spitzer, New York State Attorney General
- Andrew Tobias, class of 1964 - author and Democratic National Committee fundraiser
- Peter Vierick, class of 1933 - author* E. J. Kahn, class of 1933 - author
- Paul Francis Webster, Academy-Award-winning and Grammy-Award-winning songwriter
- William Carlos Williams, class of 1903 - poet
- Dr. Z (Paul Zimmerman) - Senior football writer for Sports Illustrated
Writer Jack Kerouac also attended Horace Mann for one year of high school as part of the class of 1940 and played on the football team.
School newspaper
The Record, established in 1903, is the weekly, student-run newspaper of the Horace Mann School. Throughout its history, The Record has won various national journalism awards and has served as the training ground for distinguished journalists and authors, including Anthony Lewis '43, Richard Kluger '52, and Robert Caro '53. Volume 101 of The Record, in the 2003-2004 academic year, was recognized by the American Scholastic Press Association as the "Best High School Weekly Newspaper" in the United States. The Record is published every Friday by the students of the Horace Mann School during the academic year. The Record can be found online here.
Student government
The main body of student government is the Governing Council (GC), made up of students and teachers. The GC plays a central role at Horace Mann. Over the years the Council has removed the once-strict dress code, instituted an honor code, allowed students to use their ID card to pay for food in the cafeteria, and more.
Miscellaneous
Each year, about many graduates attend Ivy League universities [1]. The top students from each class attend either Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
The school's motto is "Magna est veritas et prævalet", meaning "Great is the truth, and it prevails". It comes from the King James version of the Old Testament, which is usually translated today as "Magna est veritas et prævalebit", or will prevail. The school mascot is a lion, possibly a holdover from the days when the school was associated with Columbia University, whose mascot is also a lion. The school colors are maroon and white.
All students are required to take American Red Cross CPR certification in order to graduate. Horace Mann students are also required to complete a total of 80 hours of community service.
Several films have been shot on the Horace Mann campus over the years, including Splendor in the Grass and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.