Normal school

“ The high schools with a million students, and the universities, colleges, professional and normal schools with three hundred thousand more, constitute an increasingly important factor in education; at the same time, for every seven students in these higher schools, there are ninety-three children in the elementary grades. The proportion is so unexpected that it staggers us—more than nine-tenths of the children who attend school in the United States are in the elementary grades! ”

“ There has been a sharp and at times unfriendly clash between normal schools and colleges in the effort to secure answers to such questions. The normal school often takes the position that it administers only high-grade courses, while the colleges express a frank doubt as to the value of these courses for mature students. ”

“ The normal schools incline to the smallest proportion for practice-teaching, the city training-schools to the largest. It should be borne in mind, however, that city training-schools are a close continuation, usually, of high schools, and that the high-school courses give a more uniform and probably a more adequate preparation than the students entering normal schools have usually had. Their facilities for practice-teaching are much greater than normal schools can secure, and for this reason also practice is made relatively more important. ”

“ While many of the members of the faculty do, and may continue to, give courses in the other colleges, they have a distinct, organic connection with the teachers college. The teachers college is also getting to have, as a vital part of its equipment, a model high school bearing to it the same relationship that the model, or practise, school bears to our normal schools. ”

“ SPREAD OF THE NORMAL-SCHOOL IDEA. The movement for the creation of normal schools to train teachers for the elementary schools has in time spread to many nations. As nation after nation has awakened to the desirability of establishing a system of modern-type state schools, a normal school to train leaders has often been among the first of the institutions created. The normal school, in consequence, is found to-day in all the continental European States; in all the English self-governing dominions; in nearly all the South American States ”

“ Though there is much interest in all these higher institutions of learning, as well as in the normal schools and academies, many of which are prosperous and important, yet the common schools more particularly engage the attention of the people and of the successive legislatures, resulting in a complication of school laws scarcely balanced by the improvement in the school system. ”

“ Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training School, permit the pupil, with the advice of the principal, to make his own combination of subjects. Whether prepared by the school or by the pupil, however, the courses lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, progressive high schools are in absolute agreement,—the course of study must furnish both culture and technical training in a form which meets the needs of high school children. ”

“ Such an institution would present, under one management, a kindergarten, or something like it, a graded school, a normal school, an industrial department, an academy, a college, and in course of time the professional schools.
In favor of such a university several reasons may be given. In the first place, the interests of the higher education would be better served by such an institution than by one devoted to the higher education alone. ”

“ First, the old-time normal school, whose graduates have little more than completed a high school course including some required pedagogy. Second, the largest division, the two-year normal school, which requires two years of college cultural and professional work, high school graduation being required for entrance. Third, the normal college or state teachers' college, which grants the bachelor's degree for the completion of four years of college cultural and professional work. As a rule the graduates of the high school normal course go into the rural or the small-town schools ”

“ The public school has the power, and should exercise it, to bring within its walls all the children physically and mentally competent to attend it. If children are under intelligent observation, departures from the normal can in many instances be recognized in time for training and education according to the particular need. ”

“ Later, for civic purposes, primary education has become compulsory in most states. Following the development of the primary grades, a complete system of secondary schools has been provided. Beyond these are the state schools of higher education, universities, agricultural and mechanical schools, normal schools and industrial schools, so that a highway of learning is provided for the child, leading from the kindergarten through successive stages to the university. ”

“ Sometimes, on the other hand, the students in normal schools have had no direct contact with classroom management, but have gone out into the schools equipped only with the theory of teaching.
The situation with regard to these institutions is set forth in the following paragraphs from a bulletin of the United States Bureau of Education:
Normal schools differ from each other very widely in organization, in admission requirements, in courses of study, and in modes of instruction. ”

“ At present only a portion of this necessary professional training can be given in the normal schools. If, however, as I trust may sometimes be the case, none should be admitted but those who are already qualified in the branches to be taught, the time of attendance might be diminished, and the number of graduates proportionately increased. There are about one hundred high schools in the state, and, within the sphere of their labors, they are not equalled by any institutions that the world has seen. ”

“ With a view to supplying teachers for the secondary schools, the state maintains the École Normale Supérieure, a college in which instruction, board and lodging are given free to a number of scholars selected by competition from the best secondary school boys, though residence in the institution is no longer compulsory. ”

“ Besides the Lycées, every school established by a municipality, or kept by an individual, which gave instruction in Latin, French, geography, history, and mathematics was designated as a secondary school, or Communal College. These institutions usually offered but a partial Lycée course, and were tuition schools, being patronized by many parents whose tastes forbade the sending of their children to the lower-class primary schools. A license from the Government to operate was necessary before masters could be employed. ”

“ There must always be a place for classical schools, scientific schools, professional schools, which, in their respective courses of study, either anticipate or follow, in the career of the student, his four years of college life. With these conditions and limitations stated, the point I seek to establish is that a public high school can do the work usually done in such institutions more faithfully, thoroughly, and economically, than it can be done anywhere else. ”

“ Very many of the schools of to-day are under the charge of young girls from eighteen to twenty years of age who have had little more than a common elementary education. Some have just finished the eighth grade and have had a smattering of pedagogy or what is sometimes called "the theory and practice of teaching." This they could have secured in a six weeks' summer school, while reviewing the so-called "common branches." These teachers are holders merely of a second grade elementary, or county, certificate, which requires very little education. ”

“ Take the special student problem. When a college or university is founded, it needs students: they are the life-blood of the institution. Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and some students: buildings are not indispensable, but students the school must have. Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrance requirements flexible. Special students, often mature men and women, who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted on the recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they are well fitted to take. ”

“ Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional training for lawyers, doctors, ministers, engineers, librarians, is manifestly the work of the university or the technical school, and not the function of the college. Neither is it, in my opinion, the work of the college to prepare its students specifically to be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. ”

“ Remembering that out of a total enrollment in the schools of our land of all grades, public and private, of 14,512,778 pupils, 96-1/2 per cent are reported as receiving elementary instruction only; that not more than 35 in 1,000 attend school after they are fourteen years of age; that 25 of these drop out during the next four years of their life; that less than 10 in 1,000 pass on to enjoy the superior instruction of a college or some equivalent grade of work, we begin to see the unlimited field before an Institution like this. ”

“ Every person presenting himself as a candidate must be more than 13 years of age, and, having attended a common school for 12 months, he must produce a certificate from the principal that he has passed a good examination in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, arithmetic, geography, elementary book-keeping, history of the United States, and algebra. This institution extends to the pupils in the common schools the advantage of a free education in those higher departments of learning which cannot be acquired without considerable expense in any other college. ”

“ College sits in excelsis. The topmost turn of the educational system, it sets the standards and defines the ideal both of knowledge and conduct. Secondary-school students consequently prepare for college in a far completer way than is recognized. They emulate and reproduce the whole pattern and structure of “college life,” with its fraternities and other societies, its athletics, its hidden sex interests, and all the rest. ”

“ No teacher can do justice to twenty-seven classes per day, and an average recitation period of thirteen minutes is so short as to be almost unworthy of mention.
Most consolidated schools, in addition to the ordinary rooms, have an assembly room in which lectures, festivals, socials, public meetings, and farmers’ institutes are held. Acting as a center for community life, the consolidated school takes a real place in the instruction of the community. ”

“ I should be much happier working out theorems in a class-room. And it was also possible that I might have said something that some one had overheard—at any rate, I was not going to risk it. I sat silent at my desk and accepted meekly the common lot.
From the outside a Preparatory School looks very much like a miniature Public School. It presents the same features, the same routine, the same curriculum; there is even some attempt at a prefectorial system. Superficially they have much in common. But there the resemblance ends. The scale of values is altogether different. ”

“ Every new school, not a college, makes the demand for the college course greater [Pg 352] than it was before; and the advance made in our public schools increases the students in the colleges and the university. We build from the primary school to the college; and without the primary school and its dependents,—the grammar, high school, and academy,—the colleges would cease to exist. ”

“ The primary school and the university are the alpha and omega of education. Whether institutions intermediate between these (so-called secondary schools) should exist, appears to me to be a question of practical convenience. If such schools are established, the important thing is that they should be true intermediaries between the primary school and the university, keeping on the wide track of general culture, and not sacrificing one branch of knowledge for another. ”

“ It seems, also, that the examinations are so managed, doubtless partly in deference to public sentiment, that men of higher education are not encouraged to enter. In 1891, 629⁄10 per cent of those who took the examinations on the basis of a common-school education passed, 773⁄10 per cent f those who had been through high school, and only 671⁄10 per cent of the college men. ”

“ The change from the old to the new lines of education is even more marked in the common schools than in the colleges and universities. The practical begins in the free kindergarten and runs with more or less directness through all the grades. Millions are expended upon industrial training. The business high schools are a great feature of the free school system. ”

“ The second encourages mental activity at the expense of physique. The entrance of a child into school, the promotion from one class to another, the entrance into college, are thus determined either by the purely artificial test of age or by the individual teacher's discretion. There is nothing to prevent the ambitious teacher or the ambitious parent from pushing a child into kindergarten at four, high school at twelve, college at fifteen. If this cannot be done at the public school, a private school is resorted to. A community of college professors once started a school for faculty children. ”

“ The university is coming to have greater respect for and more confidence in the high school and its work. Whereas in the earlier days all entrance work was rigidly prescribed, now, in nearly all of our higher institutions, several units are open to free choice from a list of accepted subjects. In a goodly number these units may be chosen from any subjects offered by an approved high school. ”