The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1917-03-13
THE NORMAL SCHOOL.
Object Is to Impart Culture, Discipline
Skill and Learning.


The opening of the first state normal
school in Massachusetts, .quickened the
movement in other states. New York
Connecticut, Michigan and Pennsylvania
followed. Scarcely, however, was the
new movement for state normal schools
born when aggressive opposition APP
peared. Within less than year after
the first school was established, the
House of Representatives of Massachu-
sets directed its committee ON education
to consider the eKpediency of abolishing
the board OF education and the state nor
NAL schools. The arguments of the com
mittee are worthy of more than pass
ing notice inasmuch as they contain the
germ of all that has since been said in
opposition to the normal school move
ment.
|. Normal schools are limitations from
France and Prussia, political rather than
educational in influence. A.
2. Academies and high schools are
fully adequate to furnish competent
supply of teachers.
8. There is no need of professional
instruction. every person who has
himself undergone process of instruc-
ton must acquire by that very process
the art of instructing others"
4. 1t is impossible and undesirable
that the business of keeping these (dis-
trict) schools should become distinct
and separate profession.
D. There is no assurance that the
teachers so educated will remain in the
state.
9. These normal schools do not appear
to have stronger claims on the public
treasury than many of our academies
and high schools.
7. State control of education is
great departure from the spirit of our in
situations. Any attempt TO form all our
schools and all our teachers upon one
model would destroy all competition, all
emulation and even the spirit of i'm
provement itself.
Such were the arguments in support
of the bill to abolish normal schools. But
Carter and Brooks and Mann believed in
them and their convictions lent them
power. The bill was lost by vote of
245 to lS2.
The victory was due even less to the
great leaders than to the nature of the |
cause. The normal school idea is not an
exotic growth. 1t is inherent in any
complete system of education. normal |
school is school established for the |
academic and professional preparation of |
teachers. 1t is a technical school differ |
ing from academies, colleges and univer- |
sites in its objects and methods of work. |
The objects of the academy and college |
are general culture and the acquisition |
of knowledge; the object of the normal |
school is to impart culture, discipline,
skill and learning to its students for the
specific technical purpose of fitting them |
to teach others. And, as Prof. Searson |
OF the Kansas Agricultural college de- |
clares:
"The university is gold mine in which
its professors are at work far down in
the depths close to the heart of the
worlds truth. The normal school is a
mint preparing the nuggets to pass cur
rent among men. Both institutions must
exist without conflicting claims, for each
has its own peculiar function to per
form"
An opponent of the normal school
idea, when the question was up TO estab-
lish one additional state normal school
in one of the progressive states of the
central West which at that time had
only one state normal school situated in
one corner of the state, in support of his
argument said:
at is urged by some old-fashioned
people that there is something peculiar
in the normal school to commend il be-
yond well equipped university, because
il teaches people how to teach other peo-
pie, while the university merely teaches
people and stops there"
This argument against normal schools
was written by the editor Of great
daily newspaper, who was himself a
graduate of a great state university.
But thanks TO the progressive people Of
that state the normal school idea I
marched onward and upward until now
here are four great normal schools there !
literally supported by the state. and, in
addition thereto. over 200 teacher-trsin-
ng high schools in which for the school ]
year ending June 80, 1916. over $500
teachers were trained in these I
teacher training high schools alone.
Gladstone says IN one OF his lectures on
Modern Training for Life.
an aff-rT rrasL ~r~,-F.aaes-,- I