HORACE MANN SCHOOL

The 'Horace Mann School' is an independent college preparatory school in New York City. Founded in 1887, Horace Mann spans from nursery school to the twelfth grade and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Its Upper, Middle, and Lower Divisions are located in Riverdale, a neighborhood of the Bronx, and the Nursery School is located in Manhattan. In addition, the school has the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, a 168-acre campus in Washington Depot, Connecticut, that serves as the school's outdoor education and environmental education center; it is visited by students throughout the year. Horace Mann is known for its rigorous academic program, and is ranked as one of the best high schools in the United States.College Bound News. "Admissions Watch." Vol. 18 No. 9, citing the April 2, 2004 Wall Street Journal. May, 2004. See http://www.collegeboundnews.com/03-04issues/may04.html#anchor514965 or http://webreprints.djreprints.com/wsj_tuition_040104.pdf for the full WSJ rankings reprint.

Contents

History

Institution

Divisions

Academics

Arts

Admission

Rankings

Student life

Clubs and organizations

Student publications

Student government

Athletics

Interscholastic leagues

Sports teams

Athletic accomplishments

Notable alumni

Miscellaneous

See also

External links

References

History

The school was founded in 1887 by Nicholas Murray Butler as a co-educational experimental and developmental unit of Teachers College at Columbia University. Its first location was a building at 9 University Place in Manhattan, but it moved in 1901 to 120th Street in Morningside Heights. Columbia University followed suit soon afterwards, moving northwards to its present campus. 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 a teaching laboratory, and it became more independent of the University and Teachers College. The Teachers College therefore 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 Columbia University and became Horace Mann School. The HM School for Girls remained at Teachers College, and then merged with the Lincoln School in 1940, and finally closed in 1946.
The New York School for Nursery Years (founded in 1954 on 90th Street in Manhattan) became the Horace Mann School for Nursery Years in 1968, and was co-ed. In 1972, Horace Mann merged with the Barnard School, also in Riverdale, to form the Horace Mann-Barnard Lower School for kindergarten through grade six, located on the former Barnard School campus. At that point, only the lower school was co-ed. That changed inn 1975, when HM returned to its roots as a co-educational learning environment and began admitting females 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.
Total enrollment is 1755.

Institution

Divisions

There are four divisions of the school, all co-educational: a Nursery Division (three year olds through kindergarten) located on 90th Street in Manhattan, a Lower Division (kindergarten through fifth grades) on the Horace Mann campus on Tibbett Avenue in Riverdale, a Middle Division (sixth through eighth grades) on the 246th Street campus in Riverdale, and an Upper Division (ninth through twelfth grades) also on the 246th Street campus. There is also the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, located on 168 acres of land in Washington Depot, Connecticut, used for extended field trips for classes of students starting in second grade and an orientation program for new students entering the Middle or Upper Divisions.
Each division of the school has its own Division Head. The Middle and Upper Divisions have separate student government organizations. The entire school is overseen by a Head of School. The current Head is Dr. Thomas M. Kelly, who, as the ninth Head of School, succeeded Dr. Eileen Mullady, on July 1, 2005. Formerly of Princeton University and the Lawrenceville School,^[1] Dr. Mullady was the namesake of one of the new buildings erected under her term. 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, who will depart this spring to run the Chestnut Hill School, an elite N-6 prep school outside Boston. Assistant Lower Division Head Wendy Steinthal will take over in the interim. The current Middle Division Head is Robin Ann Ingram, and the current Upper Division head is Dr. David Schiller. Glenn Sherratt is the current Director of the John Dorr Nature Laboratory.

Academics

Horace Mann is known for its academic rigor. The school offers 20 Advanced Placement courses and 10 foreign languages. Its 220 faculty members hold 210 master's degrees and 25 doctoral degrees.
Students in the Upper Division are required to study English, Atlantic World History, United States History, Biology, Chemistry and/or Physics, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry, and also meet 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, Mandarin, 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, Political Philosophy, United States Legal History, Calculus, Statistics, Science and Public Policy, and many other elective 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.

Arts

Horace Mann has an extensive arts program, offering a variety of courses in the fields of Performing and Visual arts. At least 1.5 arts credits are required for graduation, with at least one half-credit course in performance/studio arts and one half-credit course in art history/appreciation.
Horace Mann has two major instrumental ensembles: The Horace Mann Orchestra and the Horace Mann Jazz Band. The Jazz Band program is also split into two ensembles: the Contemporary Directions Ensemble and the Creative Arts Philharmonic. Each ensemble performs at least three to four concerts per year, culminating in trip abroad. Recent trips have taken the Glee Club and Orchestra to Germany, France and Spain. Horace Mann also has an established Glee Club, which performs several concerts each year, including past performances at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, and Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center. In 2006, the Jazz Bands performed at the world-famous BB King's jazz club. On February 25 2007, the Horace Mann Jazz Band performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center in the world-famous Allen Room.

Admission

Admission to Horace Mann is highly selective. 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. In the ninth grade, Horace Mann traditionally enrolls between 35 and 45 new students. A smaller number of students are accepted in other grades, although there are no admissions to the twelfth grade.

Rankings

The Wall Street Journal ranks Horace Mann as the fourth best high school in the United States, as measured by student admission rates to exclusive colleges. Each year almost all Horace Mann graduates attend nationally-ranked universities.^[2] Worth Magazine ranked Horace Mann seventh out of all the nation's high schools based on the proportion of graduates attending Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities.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

Student life

Co-curricular activities are an integral part of Horace Mann. Clubs give students the opportunity to produce publications, hone their debating skills, participate in activism and much more.

Clubs and organizations

The school has a considerable number of clubs, especially in the Upper Division. Prominent clubs include:

★ Amnesty International ★ Anime Club ★ Asian Film Club ★ Book Day Committee ★ Business League ★ Chess Club ★ Classic Film Club ★ Documentary Film Club ★ East Wind West Wind ★ Environmental Awareness Club ★ Fashion Forward ★ Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA)

★ The HarMannics (A capella group) ★ Inner City Hope ★ International Rescue Committee ★ Junior State of America (JSA) ★ Knitting Club ★ Knowledge Masters ★ Lincoln-Douglas Debate Club ★ Manualism Club (Horacemanualism) ★ Math Team ★ Mock Investment ★ Mock Trial ★ Model Congress ★ Model United Nations (MUN)

★ Readers Forum ★ Rubik's Cube Club ★ Science Associates ★ Science Team ★ Shakespeare Club ★ Ski Club ★ Students Promoting Awareness (SPA) ★ Theatre Company ★ Table Tennis Club ★ The Union ★ Women's Issues Club ★ Young Entrepreneurs

Student publications

Horace Mann also has a significant number of student publications. Many of them have won national awards. Prominent publications include:
'''The Record''', established in 1903, is the weekly, student-run newspaper of the Horace Mann School. Throughout its history, ''The Record'' has won national journalism awards and has been staffed by students who went on to become distinguished journalists and authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Lewis (class of 1944), Richard Kluger (class of 1952) and Robert Caro (class of 1953). In 1954, Horace Mann made national headlines for translating a copy of ''The Record'' into Russian and distributing it in the USSR. The purpose of the exercise was to show Russian schoolchildren what life in America was like. The staff purposely kept in an article about the Horace Mann soccer team's losing one of its games to demonstrate the operation of an independent free press.^[3][4] The American Scholastic Press Association twice honored ''The Record'' as the "Best High School Weekly Newspaper" for 2001-2002 (Volume 99) and 2003-2004 (Volume 101). It was also named a National Pacemaker in 2004 (Volume 101) and in 2006 was a Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Medalist (Volume 103). ''The Record'' is published every Friday during the academic year^[5] and can be found online here.
'''The Mannikin''' is the Horace Mann yearbook. With 560 pages, the Mannikin is the largest yearbook in the state of New York. The sections include Student Life, Underclassmen, Seniors, Sports, Arts, Faculty and Ads. Each senior gets half a page to design as they wish in the yearbook, and seniors can also pay to place ads with family and friends at the end of the book. The Mannikin is a tradition at Horace Mann; celebrating the various theatrical, sports, and entertainment events throughout the school year.
'''The Horace Mann Review''', now in its sixteenth volume, is a quarterly journal of opinion on current events, politics, public policy, and culture. The Review strives to cover issues from unique and otherwise unexamined perspectives. The publication has paying subscribers throughout the nation and abroad and has been the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in journalism. In April 2001, the American Scholastic Press Association honored the Review with its award for Best Magazine. The Review's 2005-2006 volume was honored with a first place finish in the American Scholastic Press Awards critique. The Review is a finalist for the National Scholastic Press Association's Magazine Pacemaker of the Year award for 2007, the highest honor in high school journalism. American Scholastic Press Association
'''The Horace Mann Business Report''' is the school's business and economics magazine. It is published each trimester by the HM Business League. The HM Business League was founded in 2002 by current Harvard, Stanford, and University of Wisconsin–Madison students.
Other publications include '''Lola's Kitchen''', a one-page periodical published by the Gay Straight Alliance, '''The Score''', a sports newspaper, '''La Plume''', a French magazine, '''The Voyager''', a new travel magazine, '''Amplified''', a music publication, '''Folio 51''', a magazine produced by the Women's Issues Club, and the '''Thespian''', which is a theatre publication talking about each student production as is performed.

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 for each grade. Because there are significantly fewer faculty members, each voting faculty representative is granted two votes. Over the years the Council has removed the once-strict dress code (this was accomplished in 1969, when the structure was known as the Community Council), instituted an honor code, begun a debit card system to pay for items at the cafeteria and bookstore, and revised the school's constitution.
There is also a student body president (SBP) and a student body vice-president (SBVP), the two top positions in the Horace Mann student government apparatus. These two students are elected to office by grades 8-12. The winning ticket must collect 25 signatures in each grade and then garner at least 50% of the vote. The first SBP was Dr. Jeremy Leeds, a current Horace Mann teacher, who was elected when the Governing Council replaced the former Community Council in the school year 1971-72. The current SBP/VP elect for the 2007/08 school year are Charles Stam and Jed Feiman.

Athletics

Interscholastic leagues

Horace Mann School is a part of the Ivy Preparatory School League, a division of the greater New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS), which comprises all the private schools in the New York State.
Fieldston, Riverdale, and Horace Mann together are known as the "hill 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.

Sports teams

'Interscholastic Athletic Teams'

Sport	Level	Season	Gender
Baseball	V, JV, MD	Spring	Boys'
Basketball	V, JV, MD	Winter	Boys', Girls'
Crew	V, JV	Spring	Boys', Girls', Coed
Cross-Country	V, JV, MD	Fall	Boys', Girls', Coed (MD Only)
Field Hockey	V, JV, MD	Fall	Girls'
Fencing	V, JV	Winter	Boys', Girls'
Football	V, JV, MD	Fall	Boys'
Golf	V	Spring	Coed
Gymnastics	V, JV	Winter	Girls'
Lacrosse	V, JV, MD	Spring	Boys', Girls'
Soccer	V, JV, MD	Fall	Boys', Girls'
Sailing	V	Spring	Boys', Girls'
Skiing	V	Winter	Boys', Girls'
Softball	V, JV, MD	Spring	Girls'
Squash	V	Winter	Boys'
Swimming	V, JV, MD	Winter	Boys', Girls'
Tennis	V, JV, MD	Fall (Girls'), Spring (Boys')	Boys', Girls'
Track (indoor)	V, JV	Winter	Boys', Girls'
Track (outdoor)	V, JV, MD	Spring	Boys', Girls', Coed (MD Only)
Ultimate (Frisbee)	V	Spring	Coed
Volleyball	V, JV, MD	Fall	Girls'
Water Polo	V, JV, MD	Fall	Coed
Wrestling	V, JV, MD	Winter	Coed

★ V = Varsity, JV = Junior Varsity, MD = Middle Division

Athletic accomplishments

Horace Mann's Boys Varsity Tennis team has won the New York City Mayor's Cup Team Competition four times since 1994; its most recent victory was in 2007, where they defeated Cardozo 3-2.^[6] In 2006, the Boys Varsity Tennis team placed 5th in the All-American Invitational Boys Team Tennis Tournament beating the defending champions Santa Barbara High School. In 2007, the Boys Varsity Tennis team placed 9th in the tournament, winning the consolation round. They also won the sportsmanship award.^[7]
Pedro Alvarez (class of 2005) was drafted as the 438th overall pick of the 2005 Major League Baseball draft by the Boston Red Sox.^[8] He currently attends Vanderbilt University, where he was named a First Team All-American and National Freshman of the Year in 2006.
Charles Altchek (class of 2003), of the Harvard Varsity Men's Soccer Team, was named Ivy League Player of the Year in 2005 and 2006.
The Girls' Varsity Gymnastics Team has won the AAIS Championships 7 times since its first win in 1999. In 2000, the team placed second by a margin on 0.025 points. The following year, the girls regained their title and have had 6 consecutive wins since then.
In 2005-2006, the Boys' Varsity Swimming Team completed their first undefeated season in the history of the Ivy League with a 6-0 league record (6-1 overall, including a loss to St Benedict's). They have now won the league championship three consecutive years (04-06), also for the first time in the history of the league.
The Horace Mann Wrestling team has won the Mayor's Cup all three years of its existence. The team has also won the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) Championships six of the last seven years.
The Horace Mann Girls' Cross-Country Team has had an exceptional record since the appointment of Coach Kevin Nicholas. In their first year under his guidance, the girls were Ivy League champions and New York State Federation qualifiers. The year before, they won the NYSAIS championships. Last year, they took 2nd at the Ivy League Championships, 3rd at NYSAIS, and qualified for Federation yet again.
Horace Mann Girls' Indoor Track won the Ivy League Championships for 2006. Horace Mann Girls' Outdoor Track and Field won Ivy Championships as well as NYSAIS Championships for 2006. They also placed 2nd at Croton Harmon relays.
In 2007, the 4x200 meter relay team of Girls' Indoor Track dominated the Ivy League as well as the entire New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS). They advanced to the New York State Indoor Track & Field Championships, a remarkable feat for a private school, where they placed third overall in the state. The girls then qualified for the 2007 National Scholastic Indoor Championships, where they placed fifth in the United States.^[9][10]
The Girls' Outdoor Track Team won the Ivy League Championship in 2007, dominating the league for the fourth straight year. They went on to win the 2007 NYSAIS Championship as well. That same year, the 4x200 meter relay team also placed ninth at the Nike Outdoor Nationals and earned fifteenth in the 4x100 meter relay and twelfth in the 800 meter medley. The Boys' Outdoor Track & Field Team also had an exceptional season in 2007, placing second to nationally-ranked Collegiate in both the Ivy and NYSAIS Championships.

Notable alumni

Famous graduates of Horace Mann include:

★ William Barr, Former US Attorney General.

★ Robert Caro, class of 1953, author and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner^[11].

★ Elliott Carter, composer and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner^[12].

★ Peter Cincotti, class of 2001, jazz pianist.

★ Roy Cohn, conservative, and lawyer in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Trial^[13].

★ Peter Deutsch, former congressman

★ Martin Duberman, class of 1948, author and gay rights historian.

★ Alan Furst, novelist.

★ Henry Geldzahler, class of 1953, Art critic, curator, New York City Cultural Affairs Commissioner, (1977 - 1982).

★ Alison Gertz, early AIDS activist.

★ E.J. Kahn, class of 1933, pillar of The New Yorker, author and journalist.

★ Richard Kluger, class of 1952, author and Pulitzer Prize-winner.

★ Tom Lehrer, acclaimed 1960s political satirist and math professor.

★ Ira Levin, author of Rosemary's Baby and the Stepford Wives.

★ Anthony Lewis, class of 1944, journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.

★ Allard K. Lowenstein, civil rights leader and former congressman.

★ James Murdoch, media executive and son of Rupert Murdoch.

★ Samuel Newhouse, media executive; one of the top 25 richest Americans.

★ Generoso Pope, founder of the National Enquirer and American Media, Inc.

★ Bob Rafelson, film director, writer, and producer; one of the creators of The Monkees.

★ Paul Rapoport, co-founder of New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center and Gay Men's Health Crisis.

★ Renee Richards, class of 1952 (graduated as Richard Raskind), professional tennis player, author, ophthalmologist, and well-known transsexual.

★ Evan Rosen, journalist, strategist, author of The Culture of Collaboration.

★ James Salter, class of 1942, writer.

★ Barry Scheck, class of 1967, member of legal team that defended successfully O.J. Simpson, attorney and founder of the Innocence Project.

★ James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense.

★ Larry Schwarz, creator of Kappa Mikey.

★ Gil Shaham, class of 1989, violinist.

★ Orli Shaham, pianist.

★ Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times

★ Eliot Spitzer, class of 1977, former Attorney General of New York, current Governor of the State of New York.

★ Paul Francis Webster, Academy Award-winning and Grammy Award-winning songwriter.

★ William Carlos Williams, class of 1903, medical doctor and poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner.

★ Ben Yagoda, journalist and author.

★ Dr. Z (Paul Zimmerman), senior football writer for Sports Illustrated.
Writer Jack Kerouac attended Horace Mann for one year of high school as part of the class of 1940 and played on the football team. Hollywood agent and Broadway producer Leland Hayward also attended the school for a time. Lizzie Grubman, publicist, best known for a 2001 incident in which she backed her car into a group of people, attended for a time but did not graduate.

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 Varsity Swim Team has adopted the Sealion as its unofficial mascot, as has the Varsity Ski Team with the Mountain Lion.
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, with at least 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 and Nursery Divisions, there is no community service requirement, although there is an annual "Caring-in-Action" day dedicated to community service that students and their families can attend.
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''.

See also

★ Education in New York City

External links

★ Official website

★ Official athletics website

★ Official alumni website

★ School Constitution

★ Official newspaper website

★ College Admissions Process at Horace Mann

References

1. http://www.pacificridge.org/staff.php
2. A break down of which universities HM graduates attend. [1]
3. http://www.horacemann.pvt.k12.ny.us/general/history/history_the_record.html
4. New York Times. "A Student Paper Savors Its Past, and Its Stars." by Seth Kugel. October 13, 2002. http://www.highschooljournalism.org/Content.cfm?mode=1&newsid=107&id=65
5. "About Us", ''The Record''
6. St. Francis Prep Captures Girls Mayor's Cup Tennis Crown
7. No Sea King surprises on Saturday James Lee
8. Sox Try Alvarez Aaron Fitt
9. 2007 National Scholatic Indoor Championships
10. All-American Relay 5th at Nationals
11. http://www.horacemannalumni.org/authors.htm
12. http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/piece.pl?pid=99
13. http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Fellows/cohn-per-lang.html