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[[Image:160px-Sealcopy.jpg|right|Horace Mann MUN Club]]
[[Image:160px-Sealcopy.jpg|right|Horace Mann MUN Club]]
===Model UN===
===Model UN===
The school has an active and successful [[Model UN]] team. The team usually attends three or four away conferences a year. Its most recent victory was Best Large Delegation at the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference, hosted by the [[University of Pennsylvania]], its fifth first place finish there in six years. The team also organizes and hosts its own conference, Horace Mann Model United Nations Conference, HoMMUNC, attended by several hundred students.
The school has an active and successful [[Model UN]] team. The team usually attends three or four away conferences a year. Its most recent victory was Best Large Delegation at the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference, hosted by the [[University of Pennsylvania]], its fifth first place finish there in six years. The team also organizes and hosts its own conference, Horace Mann Model United Nations Conference, HoMMUNC, attended by several hundred students. Horace Mann has won the Harvard Model UN Conference five times between 2000 and 2005.



===Athletics===
===Athletics===

Revision as of 23:47, 5 February 2006

This article is about the Horace Mann School in New York City. For others of a similar name, see Horace Mann School (disambiguation)
Horace Mann School
File:LogoHMb.jpg

Magna est veritas et prævalet
(Great is the truth and it prevails)
Type Private
Established 1887
Head of School Dr. Thomas M. Kelly
Enrollment approx. 1,750
Campus Urban and Suburban
Location 231 West 246th St.
Riverdale, NY 10471
Website www.horacemann.org

Founded in 1887, the Horace Mann School is a college preparatory school located in Riverdale, New York City. It has approximately 1,750 students in attendance at four New York divisions of the school, and spans from nursery school through the twelfth grade.

History

The school was originally founded by 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 the Columbia campus, named Horace Mann Hall. However, Horace Mann was becoming a school in its own right instead of just a teaching laboratory, and it 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.

The New York School for Nursery Years (founded in 1954 on 90th Street) became the Horace Mann School for Nursery Years in 1968. 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 Horace Mann School returned to its roots as a co-educational learning environment and began admitting women to the Upper School. In 1999, 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

File:Horrace.jpg
Horace Mann's New Library & Theater Building, located in the Upper Division

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, Connecticut, used for extended field trips for classes of students starting in fourth grade and an orientation program for new students entering the High School.

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 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 Interim Head is Dr. Barbara Tischler. Glenn Sherratt is the current Director of the John Dorr Nature Laboratory.

Academics

Horace Mann is known for its academic rigour. Among the classes offered in the high school program, there are 20 Advanced Placement courses and 9 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, Health & Counseling, and Physical Education. Students must go beyond these basic requirements in at least some, if not all, subjects. 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, while, starting in the 2006-07 academic year, Mandarin will be 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.

Recognition

The Wall Street Journal ranks Horace Mann as one of the top four schools in the United States.[1] Each year, a very sizeable percentage of its graduates go on to Ivy League universities [2]. According to Worth Magazine, Horace Mann is one of the top feeder schools for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in the country.[3]

Admission

Admission to Horace Mann is highly competitive. 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.

Notable alumni

Famous graduates of Horace Mann include:

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.

Co-Curricular Activities

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 Richard Kluger '52 and Robert Caro '53.

In 1954, Horace Mann made national headlines after translating a copy of The Record entirely into Russian and then distributing it in the USSR, to show Russian schoolkids what life in (capitalist and democratic) America was like. The staff purposely kept in an article about the Horace Mann soccer team losing one of their games to show the Russian kids that Americans had a free press.

Volumes 99 (2001-2002) and 101 (2003-2004) of The Record were each 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. There are five full time 12th grade representatives, and one alternate, while in grades 9-11, there are five full time representatives and two alternates. Because there are significantly less faculty members, each voting faculty representative receives two votes, instead of one. Throughout its history, the GC has played a central role at Horace Mann. Over the years the Council has removed the once-strict dress code, instituted an honor code, began a debit card system to pay for items at the cafeteria and bookstore, and just recently revised the school's constitution.

Horace Mann MUN Club
Horace Mann MUN Club

Model UN

The school has an active and successful Model UN team. The team usually attends three or four away conferences a year. Its most recent victory was Best Large Delegation at the Ivy League Model United Nations Conference, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, its fifth first place finish there in six years. The team also organizes and hosts its own conference, Horace Mann Model United Nations Conference, HoMMUNC, attended by several hundred students. Horace Mann has won the Harvard Model UN Conference five times between 2000 and 2005.


Athletics

Students at Horace Mann can play on any of a great number of teams. Interscholastic athletics is a significant commitment. Teams fielded by the Horace Mann Athletics Department include:

Boys' Cross-Country (JV,V) Boys' Basketball (JV, V) Boys' Baseball (JV,V) Girls' Cross-Country (JV,V) Girls' Basketball (JV,V) Coed Golf (V) Boys' Football (JV,V) Boys' Fencing (JV,V) Girls' Golf (V) Boys' Soccer (JV,V) Girls' Fencing (JV,V) Girls' Softball (JV,V) Girls' Soccer (JV,V) Girls' Gymnastics (JV,V) Boys' Tennis (JV,V) Girls' Tennis (JV,V) Coed Swimming (JV,V) Boys' Lacrosse (JV,V) Girls' Volleyball (JV,V) Coed Winter Track (JV,V) Girls' Lacrosse (JV,V) Girls' Field Hockey (JV,V) Boys' Wrestling (JV,V) Boys' Track (JV,V) Coed Water Polo (JV,V) Girls' Swimming (V) Girls' Track (JV,V) Coed Ultimate Frisbee (V) Coed Sailing (V)

Athletics at Horace Mann in many sports is highly competitive. Horace Mann's Tennis team, for example, has won the New York City Mayor's Cup almost every year during the past decade. Pedro Alvarez '05, a former member of the Varsity Baseball team was offered a multimillion dollar contract with Major League Baseball. Many Horace Mann athletes go on to play their respective sports during college.

The "Ivy League"

Horace Mann School is a part of the Ivy Preparatory School League. 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; Horace Mann's annual charity basketball game, the Buzzell Game, is almost always against either Fieldston or Riverdale.

Miscellaneous

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 at least 80 hours of community service; 40 hours in ninth and tenth grades and 40 hours in eleventh and twelfth. In eighth grade, one out-of-school project or three in-school projects are necessary for graduation to the ninth grade; in sixth and seventh grades a homeroom project is done cooperatively. In the Lower School, there is no requirement, but there is a "Caring-in-Action Day" in December, which all Lower School families may attend, and visit local shelters to help out for a few hours.

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.

External links

References

  1. ^ College Bound News. "Admissions Watch." Vol. 18 No. 9, citing the April 2, 2004 Wall Street Journal. May, 2004. http://www.collegeboundnews.com/03-04issues/may04.html#anchor514965
  2. ^ Horace Mann School. "The College Admissions Process at Horace Mann." Updated 2005. http://www.horacemann.org/home/content.asp?id=1142
  3. ^ Prep School USA. "2003 High School Rankings," citing the Sept. 2002 Worth Magazine article entitled "Getting Inside the Ivy Gates," by Reshma Memon Yaqub. http://www.auap.com/prepschoolclass.html
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