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The Normal Schools
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Normal School, Platteville, Wisconsin ©2002 - 2004 The Point of Beginnings Heritage Area
Normal Schools, modeled after the teacher training schools in Prussia, Holland, and France, which had existed since the end of the 17th century and called “Normal Schools” after the French “Ecole Normale”, were created in the United States in the early 19th century. Beginning in the 1820’s, education reformers, believing that the success of a republican form of government depended upon an educated populace, advocated universal access to education and publicly funded Normal Schools to train teachers who would teach in the public common schools. The first publicly funded Normal School opened in Massachusetts in 1839. Most Normal Schools in the northeast provided only a two-year, post eighth grade education to prepare teachers to teach in the primary grades. In the Midwest, where educational opportunities were fewer, Normal Schools, in addition to teacher training, provided a broader curriculum including courses in vocational and agricultural training and liberal studies. Since Normal Schools were often located in rural areas they provided affordable higher education to those generally excluded by class, race or gender.
Changes in the public school system at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries—the longer school year and the availability of a secondary education to most students—created a need for better-qualified teachers. As a result, many Normal Schools evolved into four-year teachers colleges and, finally, liberal arts colleges and universities in which teacher training was only one aspect of the broader curriculum.
For more information see:
Burks, Benjamin. What was Normal about Virginia’s Normal Schools: a History of Virginia’s State Normal Schools, 1882-1930. Dissertation, University of Virginia 2002.
Normal Schools:
Tuskegee University
Winston-Salem State University