THE

MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER.

AUGUST, 1860.

Volume XIII. B. G. NORTHROP, Editor for this month. Number 8.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

NORMAL, from the Latin normalis, (norma,) originally meant according to the rule or square used by carpenters. Hence it became an expressive term to denote that which was according to established rule, or to well defined principles, or conformed to a pattern. A Normal School is one in which Didactics, or the principles of teaching, are taught, both as a science and an art in theory and in practice. Teaching here assumes the character of a distinct profession. No profession more imperatively demands a special school for instruction in its appropriate science and methods. The difficulty of the science is equalled only by its importance. It is based on the most comprehensive of all sciences, the philosophy of the mind. It inquires what is the mind? What, more especially, is the juvenile mind? For it is far more difficult to comprehend the mind of the child than of the adult. What are its powers, capacities, and organic laws of growth? These laws are as positive and intelligible as those which regulate the growth of a plant. What is the relation of the mind to the body, and the mutual influence of the highest training and activity of each upon the other? What are the laws of bodily health as to ventilation, posture, school calisthenics and gymnastics? And the conscience—the most important of all our faculties, intel

lectual and moral, designed to harmonize them all — when shall its culture begin, and by what means can it be best secured? What is the primary purpose of all intellectual education, to which all means and methods shall be strictly subservient? What is the order, as to time, in which the different faculties are to be addressed and developed? What the specific purpose and power of each faculty, and what exercises are most conducive to its healthful training? What are the various educational forces and instrumentalities? What are the special adaptations of each school study to particular necessities and faculties of the juvenile mind? The teacher, who has duly pondered this question, will no longer employ any text book or science as an end, but only as a means to the higher end of disciplining some particular faculty or faculties of the mind. A subject or exercise designed to train the percepive faculties, the imagination, memory, or reflective powers, will be much more likely to accomplish its object when both that paramount end, and the adaptation of the means, are distinctly before the mind. What are the incentives to be employed by the teacher? This question includes the philosophy of motive, of influence, and persuasion. What are the sensibilities of the human soul? What emotions should the teacher awaken? What are the natural desires and affections which God has implanted as the impelling forces in our nature, and which are the springs of all action, to which all motives must be addressed and that regal faculty in which all motives terminate, the will, how shall it be trained to assert and maintain its rightful supremacy, loyal to duty, yet superior to doubt, disdainful of ease, and delighting in labor and achievement? These questions point not to theories and abstractions, but to cardinal principles that can be mastered and applied to given cases, and definite results in education, as well as the principles of jurisprudence in the practice of law, or in the administration of justice.

The subject of school economy, organization, classification, programme of daily exercises, method of conducting recitations, the history of education, school laws, and the various modes of superintending and managing schools in the different States also demand consideration in the Normal School.

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The elementary studies should here be reviewed for the purpose considering the best methods of teaching them, and simplifying all

points to the comprehension of the juvenile mind, and also for the more complete mastery of each subject as a whole, instead of a dry study of isolated parts and facts, for such a fragmentary knowledge of any topic is chaotic as different from its comprehension as a totality, as is a confused pile of bricks and lumber from a house. To the superficial, all things seem disconnected, and fragmentary, but the true teacher sees unity in diversity, arranges individuals in classes, and combines facts and details under comprehensive laws, that are at once simple and sublime. A peculiar and invaluable discipline may be gained by the study of any subject with the specific aim of teaching it. The process is a very different one from that usually adopted for the purpose of recitation, or mere information, and furnishes the best culture of the memory, while it directly tasks and disciplines the judgment. The subject must be thoroughly understood in itself—its completeness as a unit-and in all its parts and collateral relations. There is a great variety of processes to illustrate the same lessons, and only the teacher who thoroughly understands both his profession and the subject can happily adapt the countless varieties of method to the various diversities of mind. In this great work, the most exalted talents, even when enriched by all the treasures of science, will find ample employment for all their resources.

It is also an appropriate aim of the Normal School to advance its pupils in the higher branches of learning. The teacher should be emphatically a scholar; and "the more he knows of everything, the better he can teach anything." But the Normal School does not properly come in competition with High Schools and Academies. It would take their graduates, and give them professional training and additional culture. As a matter of fact, those who have had the fullest previous instruction most highly appreciate the advantages of the Normal School, while the greatest hindrance to its more complete success is the want of adequate preparatory training on the part of candidates, and the consequent necessity of turning aside from Didactics and Teaching Exercises, to supply their deficiences in the elements of knowledge. In some of the schools, the standard of admission is advancing, and it must be raised still higher in all, before the Normal School can fully answer its mission. Great and happy as are the results already accomplished, its capacities far exceed its achievements.

HISTORY OF NORMAL SCHOOLS.

THEIR origin has sometimes been traced to certain schools, established in Germany, nearly three hundred years ago. But those Institutions seem to have had no specific method for training teachers in distinction from other schools. The first seminary with a distinct plan for the preparation of teachers, was established in Stetten about eighty miles north of Berlin in 1735. Among his various efforts to render his capital more worthy of his extended dominions, Frederic the Great founded a Normal School in Berlin in 1748. Another was organized at Halle in Hanover, in 1757. Since the beginning of the present century, Normal Schools have rapidly multiplied in number, and advanced in character. In some of the German States the great majority of the teachers are graduates of the Normal Schools. The first regularly organized Normal School in France was established in 1810, and in Holland in 1816, and, since that day, they have been introduced into all the countries of Europe, that have any system worthy of the name of free public schools. According to the most recent authorities, there are more than 90 in France, 40 in England, nearly 50 in Prussia, 13 in Switzerland, 11 in Austria, and a proportionate number in Saxony, Hanover, and Bavaria. Sardinia has lately established Normal Schools, including one for female teachers, and introduced a system of public instruction, unsurpassed by any other country in Europe, which has already exerted a marked influence upon the public mind, and perceptibly lessened pauperism and crime. No country of Europe has experienced so great and happy a change within the last ten years. The elevated position which Sardinia has acquired among the nations of Europe, and the rapid development of her financial, commercial, agricultural and military resources, are due to the regenerating influence of her free institutions of government and of education. Her progress is without precedent or parallel in Europe, and she is now acknowledged to be the moral centre of the Italian States. Among the most efficient agents in this great achievement was Antonio Rosmini, the eminent philosopher, teacher, and founder of their Normal Schools.

A Normal School for females is an American institution, and

still a novelty in Europe. One has been established in Belgium, one in Saxony, and another is munificently supported in Athens, Greece. This school owes its origin to the well-directed efforts of Rev. J. H. Hill, D. D., for more than thirty years an American missionary in Athens. But, hitherto, female teachers have not been employed to any considerable extent in Europe, either as principals or assistants, even in the smallest village or country schools. In the American Normal Schools, probably nearly three-fourths of the members and graduates are females. The whole number of Normal Schools in Europe is now about three hundred.

Some valuable suggestions on the training of teachers were made by Elisha Ticknor, in the Massachusetts Magazine, in 1789; but to Professor Dennison Olmstead seems to belong the credit of first publicly advocating in America the necessity and advantages of a seminary devoted exclusively to the training of teachers. In 1816, while a tutor in Yale College, he delivered one of the Masters' Orations" on the State of Education in Connecticut," in which he aimed to show that the secret of the great defect in our school education was the ignorance and incompetency of the teachers, and the only remedy was a "seminary for schoolmasters." Eight years before, he had been a teacher in the common schools of Connecticut, and, for the two preceding years, principal of the New London Union Academy. His views, original with himself, were formed from a personal knowledge of the defects of common school instruction. His plan involved a two years' course, admission upon examination, and free tuition. He took all opportunities to explain his project, and urge it upon the attention of public men and prominent friends of education. He had just matured a plan for an extended series of newspaper articles on the subject, when he received the appointment of Professor of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina. His hesitation in accepting this situation arose solely from his reluctance to abandon this long-cherished scheme for the establishment of a seminary for schoolmasters.

But nine years later, there seems to have been an almost simultaneous, though unconcerted movement for a teachers' seminary on the part of several of the most earnest friends of education. That eminent legislator, De Witt Clinton, evinced his true statesmanship