History Of Normal Schools Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

State normal schools were established in the middle of the nineteenth century to provide standardized and regulated teacher preparation and produce an assemblage of trained educators to meet the needs of a growing “common school” movement. Educational reformers based the ideas of the normal school on the French école normale and the Prussian teacher seminary. The state-supported system of teacher training that Prussia established in 1819 gained worldwide interest, including from reformers in the United States.

Key advocates of the normal schools included Horace Mann, who was appointed the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and worked to assure the success of the common schools and teacher-training institutions. William Channing Woodbridge published information about Prussian teacher education in the American Annals of Education and Instruction and also helped to spread the word about normal schools in the United States. In addition, Charles Brooks, a Unitarian minister and school reformer, learned about the Prussian system and thereafter promoted state-supported normal schools in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

The first state normal school was established in Lexington, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1839. Edmund Dwight, a leader in industry, donated $10,000 to the state of Massachusetts for teacher training, which was matched by the legislature and used to support this school. The first principal was Cyrus Peirce, a former Unitarian minister and teacher, who was recruited from Nantucket. Two other normal schools subsequently were established in Massachusetts, in Barre in 1839 and in Bridgewater in 1840.

The first groups of normal school students, who called themselves normalites, were small in number. The school in Lexington initially was open only to women, whereas other institutions, such as the normal school in Barre, were open to both men and women. The curriculum included natural philosophy, moral philosophy, arithmetic, algebra, and teaching methods. Religion also was a component of the prospectus, as Scripture often was recited at the start of a school day. Model schools connected with normal schools were where aspiring teachers worked with and taught children.

Normal schools initially were considered experimental in nature and their futures were uncertain. However, they expanded in number. After Massachusetts established the first state normal schools, Connecticut and New York followed suit. By 1870, eighteen out of thirty-seven states had at least one state normal school. By 1890, there were 103 state normal schools in thirty-five out of the forty-four states. Normal schools evolved into four-year teacher training colleges.

Supporters of the normal schools ultimately wished to have a more careful process of selecting teachers, greater oversight of teachers, as well as a decrease in the teacher turnover that was characteristic of the eighteenth century.

Bibliography:

Nash, M. A. (2005). Women’s education in the United States, 1780–1840. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ogren, C. A. (2005). The American state normal school. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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