class of the fourth year. But could the isolated or State normal school, drawing its pupils from the rural districts, and these pupils appointed by political persons or otherwise, act as independently as the cities? We think not. What those schools can now attempt in the way of exacting high requirements for admission it is not our purpose to inquire. In all probability three conclusions will be reached by the critical reader of the following pages. It will appear that the utility of the early normal school was based on the theory that the acquisition of knowledge is only a preliminary step to the ability to impart it, and that the function of the normal school was to give the pupil an opportunity to digest what he had elsewhere learned. It will also appear that in practice the function of the early normal school was, in the beginning, to review and perfect the elements of a common school education and the elements of science including a great deal, perhaps too much, of higher mathematics, but that the curriculum eventually widened out until it contained subjects which are not taught in the common schools, though properly appearing in an institution for classical secondary education. And, finally, it will be very apparent that, whereas the theory of the normal school required it to train its pupils to impart knowledge to unlettered persons in the common schools, it was in the first terins of its course compelled to become a common school itself and to teach the future teacher not only what he would be called upon to teach, but also to train him to impart the knowledge that in the proper sense of the word he hardly knew himself. The theory of Mr. Dix and especially of Mr. Mann, seems very sound, and those who encouraged the drift of the normal school curriculum towards a high school curriculum have brought upon their successors the condition of affairs that in Prussia led to the interference of the state and the Drei Preussischen Regulative of October, 1854. Their only excuse can be that the studies of the elementary school are by themselves insufficient to give the intellectual development that an elementary school teacher must have, and that to secure not only this intellectual development but also maturity in years the State or isolated normal school was compelled to model its program after that of an academy. This explanation, however, is such a covert attack upon the program of the elementary school, "where," according to Mr. Mann, "the mass of children must look for all the aids of education they will ever enjoy," and so favorable to that of the secondary school, that its justification must rest upon the result of those still very unsettled questions, what shall the common school teach? what the high school? THE NAME "NORMAL." The name normal school came from France. The guiding light of the innovators was, at least in New York, M. Cousin's once celebrated report or series of reports on public instruction in several states of Germany and particularly in Prussia.' The full work in French seems to have been read by the New York board of regents in 1834, but the book was undoubtedly more widely read in a translation of the portion relating to Prussia, of which one-half was given to the subject of "primary normal schools" (a literal but inexact translation of écoles normales primaires, which was the Gallic term for the expressive name of Schullehrer-Seminarien, by which these schools were then and are now known),3 66 Thus our school teachers' seminaries" became known as normal (literally model or proper) schools-a school with a French name and a Prussian curriculum. With this brief preface we now turn to the first effort, inaugurated at public expense, to provide our public schools with teachers. PUBLIC NORMAL CLASSES IN NEW YORK. As has been remarked above it is proposed to treat only of the curriculums of public schools for the training of teachers and the object for which they were founded by the several States or cities that possess them. Such an investigation must begin with the act of the legislature of New York, in 1834, for the distribution (if the regents of the university of the State should deem it expedient) of the excess of the annual revenue of the library fund, or portions of it, over $12,000, among the several acade mies subject to their jurisdiction. These sums were to be expended by the acade De l'instruction publique dans quelques pays de l'Allemagne et particulièrement en Prusse, París, 1st ed., about 1832. 2 Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, etc., London, 1834. Professor Sander, in his exhaustive article on Volksschullebrerseminar in Schmidt's Encyklopädie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens, opens his essay thus: Public school teachers' seminaries, or simply seminary (Seminar), a training institution (Bildungsanstalt) for public school teachers. The Latin word seminarium properly indicates a nursery for young trees or seedlings. Even in antiquity the use of the word in a figurative sense as indicating training was current. Cicero calls the forum the nursery of orators; Livy, calls the equites the nursery of senators. During the middle ages and Renaissance the word was readily adopted to indicate a classical school." mies1 severally in maintaining classes in their institution, in which pupils were to be educated for teaching in the public schools.1 In presenting his report as chairman of the committee of the board of regents, to which body the proposition of the legislature had been referred, Mr. Dix said that he and his colleagues were deeply impressed with the feeling that the result of the deliberation of the board would ameliorate the "leading and acknowledged defect in our common school-the want of competent teachers;" for "the position is indisputable that without able and well-trained teachers no system of instruction can be considered complete." These sentiments have ever been maintained, and the question is "by what means are competent teachers to be provided?" We will, therefore, examine Mr. Dix's report with this intent, premising that it is in a normal class or school that such work is to be performed. "In determining the course of study," says the report, "the committee have thought it proper to designate as subjects to be taught all which they deem indispensable to be known by a first-rate teacher of a common school." These subjects were 1. The English language. 2. Writing and drawing. 3. Arithmetic, mental and written, and bookkeeping. 4. Geography and general history combined. 5. History of the United States. 6. Geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, and surveying. 7. Natural philosophy. 8. Chemistry and mineralogy. 9. Constitution of the United States. 10. Select parts of the revised statutes [of New 12. Principles of teaching." After stating that no scholar should be permitted to follow the normal course who had not passed the regent's examination in the common-school studies, the committee take up and discuss each of the above-named subjects seriatim. In regard to English language the report says: "This branch constitutes the most extensive and perhaps the most important field of instruction for a teacher. Unless a teacher is thoroughly master of his own language he can not be a competent instructor." The language course of the Kinderhook Academy is commended, or, at least, instanced, as showing what such a course should be. This course was as follows: * As to writing and drawing, the second subject for pupils of the normal school, it was boldly maintained that "every pupil must be able, before he leaves the institution, to write a good hand. For beginners, slates may be used with great advantage, as suggested in Taylor's District School. Drawing is only to be taught so far as it may be necessary for the purpose of mapping." In arithmetic Daboll's work was to be thoroughly mastered and "mental arithmetic might be advantageously resorted to, and, indeed, be deemed indispensable as a discipline of the mind." In geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, and surveying, the work should be practical, and the committee knew of no book that would answer this purpose, those in use being too extensive. To teach geography to the pupils of the class, maps and globes must be obtained; for even with their aid the pupils would have difficulty in acquiring distinct concep tions of geographical facts. "The laws which should govern all men, both with respect to the investigation of truth and to the discharge of the duties resulting from the relations which they bear to one another, and to the Author of their existence, should be familiar to every teacher, particularly as his own moral character is subject to a periodical examination by the inspectors." Abercrombie's treatise and the moral philosophy part of Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy were recommended. This brings us to the discussion of the principles of teaching, a subject that calls for a less summary mode of treatment than the foregoing heads have either required or have been given. The report reads: "In this branch, instruction must be thorough and copious. It must not be confined simply to the art of teaching or the most successful methods of communicating knowledge, but must embrace also those rules of moral government which are as nec It may be well to observe that eight academies were selected in each of which a normal class was to be formed. It was not until 1844 that a State normal school was established. essary for the regulation of the conduct of the teacher as for the formation of the character of those who are committed to his care. "Although this branch of instruction is mentioned last in the order of subjects, it should in fact run through the whole course. All the other branches should be so taught as to be subservient to the great object of creating a facility for communicating instruction to others. In teaching the principles of the art, it would be desirable to make Hall's Lectures on School Keeping a text-book; and Abbott's Teacher, Taylor's District School, and the Annals of Education should be used as reading books for the double purpose of improvement in reading the English language and for becoming familiar with the most improved modes of instruction and the best rules of school government. "The pupils in the departments should be practiced in all that can devolve on a teacher. It is of the first importance that they should be made, each in turn, to conduct some part of the recitations, to prepare proper questions on the particular subject of study, and to illustrate it by explanations for the purpose of improving their colloquial powers, and thus giving them a facility for explaining whatever they may be required to teach in the future office of instructor. The tutor should then go over the whole ground after them, pointing out their errors or defects, and giving them credit for whatever may appear to merit commendation. "It has been customary in the examination of teachers, with a view to determine their qualifications, to ascertain only whether they possess a proper knowledge of the subject in which they are expected to give instruction. But although this is in general the only object of inquiry, it is in fact a very erroneous criterion of their ability to teach. The possession of knowledge does not necessarily carry with it the faculty of communicating knowledge to others." Pausing to consider the purport of the several paragraphs of the last quotation, the first two would seem to declare that the object of the instruction of the normal school should be to instruct its pupils how to communicate knowledge and to mold the moral character of the children subsequently to be committed to their care, the third that the intending teacher should be practiced in schoolroom procedure, and the fourth that possession of knowledge is quite different from ability to impart it. But in what does this ability consist, and does the committee consider it a heavenborn gift or an acquirable one? As to the first the report continues: "It is for this reason that the best methods of imparting instruction should be made a subject of instruction to those who are preparing themselves for the business of teaching. They should know how to command the attention of their pupils, to communicate the results of their own researches and experience in the manner best calculated to make a lasting impression on the mind, to lead their pupils into the habit of examining for themselves. At every step the mind should be taught to rely upon its own powers. The pupils should be required to assign reasons for every position assumed in their various studies." "To almost every species of instruction the inductive method may be applied to great advantage, for nature herself teaches this." As to the question of acquiring the ability of holding the attention, or of studying it as a psychological phenomenon, the report does not speak, perhaps deeming that the necessary information would be picked up by the intending teacher in an empirical way from self-inspection when under instruction, or while in a model school instructing others. Of the organization of the school the report relates: "In determining the proper organization of the departments, the committee bave fully considered the question whether the studies and recitations should be distinct from the ordinary academic exercises [in the school of which each teacher's training class formed a department]; and although they are disposed to leave this in some degree to the discretion of the academies, yet they are decidedly of the opinion that convenience coincides with good policy in requiring that pupils who are in a course of training for teachers should be taught in connection with the other students. So far as mental discipline is concerned, both classes of pupils require the same mode of training, and to a certain extent the same studies will be pursued. Whenever the peculiar duties of teachers are the subject of study and examination, separate recitations will become necessary." The course recommended was of three years, and the boards of control of the academies were strongly urged to grant diplomas with the utmost caution, since "a single individual educated in one of the proposed departments and going forth to teach with a diploma, but without the requisite moral and intellectual qualifications, would do much to bring the whole system into disrepute." The eight academies selected for this initiative were Erasmus Hall, Montgomery, Kinderhook, Middlebury, St. Lawrence, Fairfield, Oxford, and Canandaigua. It should be mentioned, however, before leaving the discussion of this beginning of training teachers at public expense that in 1827 an act was passed in compliance with the repeated recommendations of several of the governors of the State, adding $150,000 to the capital of the literary fund for the express purpose of promoting the education of teachers. But the only academies that had devoted the amounts received to the establishment of teachers' training classes were the last three mentioned above. Of the success attained by the St. Lawrence Academy class the committee speak in high terms. Almost all the public-school teachers of the vicinity had been educated within its walls and the average salary of the teacher had risen from thirty to forty dollars above the average that obtained before the school had been established. CURRICULUM OF THE FIRST PUBLIC NORMAL SCHOOL. On the 12th of March, 1838, the secretary of the Massachusetts board of education notified the legislature of the State that "private munificence has placed conditionally at my [his] disposal the sum of $10,000* to be disbursed under the direction of the board of education, in qualifying teachers of our public schools." The condition was that the State should contribute an equal amount. The agitation of the question had been commenced eleven years before. The question before the board, when the State had accepted Mr. Dwight's "munificence," was, "Should the board concentrate its efforts and expend its funds upon a single school? Should it attempt to engraft a department for the qualification of teachers, upon academies in different parts of the State? Should it attempt to obtain the cooperation of public-spirited individuals and establish private institutions in the center of convenient sections of the Commonwealth?" "If existing academies were selected," says Mr. Manu, "and a new department engrafted upon them this department would be but a secondary interest in the school; the teachers would not be selected so much with reference to the incidental, as to the principal object, and as the course of instruction, proper to qualify teachers, must be essentially different from a common academical course [compare the opinion of the New York committee above] it would be impossible for any preceptor duly to superintend both." In another connection he remarks on this subject: "The course of studies commonly pursued at the institutions which are worthy to be called academies consists rather in an extension of knowledge into the higher departments of science than in reviewing and thoroughly and critically mastering the rudiments or elementary branches of knowledge. Yet the latter is the first business of the normal pupil. Few intel lectual operations are more dissimilar than those of acquiring and imparting. The art of imparting is the main portion of the normal pupil's qualification; while acquisition, as our academies are generally conducted, is the main object of the academ ical student." The deliberations and the smallness of the appropriation resulted in the establishment of three schools in different parts of the State and that municipal "munificence" was invoked, and invoked not in vain. To the honor of the Commonwealth seven towns [townships] responded, and many made generous offers with a view to partaking in the benefits. Two schools were immediately provided, that at Lexington and that at Barre, and a third about the same time at Plymouth. Mr. Mann, speaking of the term "normal school," says that France, having copied to some extent the Prussian system, has "borrowed the name" from that country, "where schools for the qualification of teachers have long been in successful operation," and where "they are universally known by the epithet normal." "A normal school." he continues, "signifies a school where the rules of practice and the principles of guidance and direction in the various departments of education are taught. The name is short, descriptive from its etymology, and in no danger of being misunderstood or misapplied." The curriculum of the schools thus established is given by Mr. Mann, secretary of the board of education, as follows: This costly mistake of New York," says the State superintendent of Connecticut, Mr. Northrop, in his Fourth Annual Report as secretary of the board of education of that State, "did not prevent its repetition in Kentucky and Maine," and after a few lines, The early failure of the experiment both in Maine and Kentucky was no matter of surprise to the intelligent friends of education. When a normal department is a mere suffix to another institution, it must obviously lack that unity and com. pleteness of plan and those professional methods of training which are essential to a true normal school. There remain in certain States a few feeble academies, whose tumid circulars assume the "normal" prefix, while they resemble the thing only in name, and stint in performance as much as they excel in promise." * To enter, candidates-females only at the Lexington school, both sexes at Barremust have attained the age of 17 if males, 16 if females, and have passed an examination in orthography, reading, writing, grammar, geography, and arithmetic. The minimum term of study was fixed at one year. Mr. Mann does not give the reasons for the adoption of each of the studies of the curriculum, but says in general— "The most material point, in regard to the normal schools, relates to the course of instruction to be therein pursued. The elements for a decision of this question are found in the existing wants of our community. We want improved teachers for the common schools, where the mass of the children must look for all the aids of education they will ever enjoy *** In establishing the regulations for the normal schools, and the course of studies to be pursued therein, the idea has not for a moment been lost sight of by the board [of education], that they are designed to improve the education of the great body of the people." Pausing to comment on the normal-school course as above outlined, it is a matter of some surprise to find the subject of bookkeeping introduced here as in the New York course. If it be maintained that it was a practical feature inasmuch as it was one of the qualifications that make a clerk (we hear a great deal nowadays of the propensity a public-school course gives to engage in clerical work), how is navigation or surveying to be justified, especially when it is considered that it was the great body of the children that the normal-school graduates were to teach Touching the sex of the pupils, Mr. Mann maintains the superiority of the female teacher over the male in teaching young children, and he thinks the system of New York, in which but one academy had a class for training female teachers, to be so far faulty, and claims that the Massachusetts board of education had acted wisely "in appropriating their first normal school exclusively to the qualification of female teachers," a proof of its belief in "the relative efficiency of the female sex in the ministry of civilization and the value of female services in the education of the young." In the following year, 1840, a majority of the committee on education which had been directed by the Massachusetts house of representatives "to consider the expediency of abolishing the board of education and the normal schools," reported among others the following conclusions: "Another project imitated from France and Prussia, and set on foot under the superintendence of the board of education, is the establishment of normal schools. * Comparing the two normal schools already established with the academies and high schools of the Commonwealth, they do not appear to your committee to present any peculiar or distinguishing advantages, It is insisted by the board, however, that the art of teaching is a peculiar art, which is particularly and exclusively taught at normal schools; but it appears to your committee that every person who has himself undergone a process of instruction must acquire, by that very process, the art of instructing others. This certainly will be the case with every person of intelligence; if intelligence be wanting no system of instruction can supply its place. An intelligent mechanie, who has learned his trade, is competent, by that very fact, to instruct others in it; and needs no normal school to teach him the art of teaching his apprentices. "Even if these schools did furnish any peculiar and distinguishing advantages, we have no adequate security that the teachers, thus taught at the public expense, will remain in the Commonwealth; and it seems hardly just that Massachusetts, in the present state of her finances, should be called upon to educate, at her own cost, teachers for the rest of the Union. "If it be true that the teachers of any of our district schools are insufficiently qualified for the task, the difficulty originates, as it appears to your committee, not in any deficiency of the means of obtaining qualifications, but in insufficiency of compensation and the want of means or inclination to pay an adequate salary is not a want which normal schools have any tendency to supply." [Compare this last assertion, however, with that made by the committee of the New York Board of Regents respecting the influence exerted by the St. Lawrence school.] We can not give the argument of the majority as to the grave political evils that would arise were the process of centralization inaugurated by the creation of a board of education, public libraries, and the normal schools persisted in; space and our object forbid it. Nor the reply of the minority farther than to say that they treated the "imaginary evils" of the majority with quite as much penetration as their opponents had displayed in fastening on the weak points of the normal schools. In 1846 the course of the Lexington school then at West Newton was given by the circular and register for the period 1839-1846, the earliest annual document of the school that this Office has in its files, as follows: |