Horace Mann is the person credited with starting government-run education in the United States in 1839.
He learned his techniques {from} Prussia. His motivation was to end education by Christians. Horace Mann was a Unitarian, did not believe in the inspiration of the Bible, or the Trinity. Horace Mann's religion was Secularism.'
John Dewey, in the 1920s and 1930s, really established Horace Mann's principles. He introduced the concept of "Humanistic education as a religion." Dewey was President of the American Humanist Association and a signer of the first Humanist Manifesto. He saw Christianity as a huge problem that needed to be solved. Dewey's religion was Secularism.'
Horace Mann visualized a world where no one would be in the prisons, a virtual utopia, if he could just get Christianity out of education. He has largely succeeded, and the result is horrible in terms of teen pregnancies, abortions, assaults, robberies, murders, rapes, vandalisms, and the list goes on. Horace Mann, in his idiocy, predicted utopia, but he got the currently increasingly awful mess. (
source)