The New Student's Reference Work/Normal Schools

Nor′mal Schools.  From time to time throughout the history of education, the need of special training for teachers has been emphasized.  This training aimed, however, until comparatively modern times, at better mastery of subjects to be taught, and was not obtained in schools especially devoted to the science and art of teaching.  The Jesuits were famous for the care with which their teachers were selected, for the thoroughness of their training in subject matter and for their system of apprenticeship in teaching.  Mulcaster (1548–1611), an English schoolmaster, urged that the universities provide professional courses for teachers.  In 1685 La Salle, the founder of the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, established at Rheims an institution for the training of elementary teachers, very likely the first of the kind.  Special training of teachers was begun at Halle by the educational reformer, Francke, in 1697.  His plans were further developed by his pupil, Hecter, and fostered by Frederick the Great of Prussia.  The present normal school system of Prussia was established in 1819.  Elementary teachers in Prussia are to-day nearly all graduates of these normal schools.  In France the National Normal School was founded in 1795.  Normal schools became general after 1832, and to-day about two thirds of the elementary teachers of France have graduated from them.  In both Prussia and France students are supported while in attendance upon normal schools.  After graduation they are required to teach.  Both countries maintain two grades of schools for teachers.  The lower one gives to graduates of the elementary schools a three years’ course that prepares them for elementary teaching.  Upon graduation they are appointed, at first on probation, when, if successful, they receive permanent certificates.  In Germany most of the secondary teachers are trained in the teachers’ seminaries, which are connected with gymnasiums or universities and as a rule give a course of one year’s teaching and one year of practice.  France possesses two higher normal schools, giving courses of two and three years respectively, which prepare teachers for the primary normal and the superior normal schools.  The normal schools in Great Britain sprang out of an effort to improve the teaching done in the schools of the great charitable public school societies.  In 1839 money was granted by the government to be used by them in establishing training colleges.  From these are derived a large part of the teachers in the public elementary schools of England to-day.  They still remain, as originally, under denominational control.  In the United States the first public normal school was established at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839.  It was the result of agitation in behalf of better training for teachers begun by James G. Carter in 1820 and continued by Charles Brooks and especially by Horace Mann.  To-day every state but Delaware contains one or more normal schools.  In 1905 there were in the United States 179 public and 89 private normal schools.  The majority of these admit students who have graduated from the elementary schools, giving them a four years’ course in preparation for elementary teaching.  A great many, however, admit only those who have completed a high school course or its equivalent, and offer to these a course of two years.  In general it may be said that the drift is toward the latter type of school.  The normal school is thus enabled largely to withdraw its attention from purely academic subjects and to devote it to professional ones.  It is necessary, of course, to review the subjects in the elementary curriculum.  But this review can be obtained in connection with the study of methods of teaching them or from actual practice in teaching them, in practice schools.  The tendency toward making the normal school a purely professional school has been going on ever since its establishment.  At first it was for the sake of securing better informed rather than better trained teachers, and this may be said of the normal schools in Europe as well as of those in the United States.  Eventually, as the general system of schools is rendered more efficient, it becomes possible to hand over to this the responsibility for such general information as the teacher needs, reserving for the normal school such study as is specially aimed toward fitting for teaching.  It is to be noted that practice teaching under a critic teacher is probably the most valuable part of such work, and most normal schools in the United States as well as in Europe control elementary schools in which this teaching is done.  In this respect the normal schools possess an advantage over the departments of education that have come to exist quite generally in the American colleges and universities, very few of which have any facilities for practice teaching.  It is true that college graduates who teach go especially into secondary and higher schools, needing in consequence much more knowledge of subject matter than is required of elementary teachers.  But although familiarity with his subject is the prime essential for any teacher, knowledge of how to teach is scarcely less important, and this holds of the teacher in high schools and colleges as well as of those in the primary schools.  The failure to realize this is doubtless the cause of the increase of bad teaching as we go from the primary school to the university.  The lack of opportunities for professional training for secondary and college teachers has caused some normal schools intended originally for the training of elementary teachers to undertake the preparation of secondary ones as well.  It is probable that such work can not be done in teachers’ colleges connected with universities or in universities the departments of education of which possess practice schools.  The committee on normal schools of the National Educational Association recommends the following program for a four years’ course: arithmetic, elementary algebra, plane geometry, English grammar, English, elements of rhetoric, zoology, botany, physiography, physics, chemistry, nature-study, penmanship, drawing, manual training (either domestic science or sloyd or both), reading, music, fine arts, sociology, history, civics, economics, folk-lore, general physical education, gymnastics, games, school sanitation, psychology, pedagogy, observation and teaching in the training-school.  The last four should be taken for a year each, and together they should amount to one fourth of the entire course.  Many of the other subjects would disappear in case the school admits only high-school graduates.  Compare Modern Education, Elementary Schools and Secondary Schools.