i. State Normal Schools.
ii. City Normal and Training Schools.
iii. Departments of Pedagogy in Universities and Colleges.
It will be seen that I make constant references to methods of Science taught in the training schools, and adopted in their connected model schools. This is due to the fact that my observations were made with especial regard to that branch of training. I have not reported on the training of Kindergarten teachers, for although the question of Kindergarten instruction is one of great interest and importance at present in America, I had little opportunity of seeing and judging the methods employed in the preparation of teachers in that department.
I wish to record my grateful thanks to those who so readily helped me in my work; and to express my appreciation of the great kindness and hospitality shown everywhere throughout my visit. I should also like to take this opportunity of thanking the Gilchrist Trustees, through whose liberality I have been enabled to gain much that will be very valuable to myself, and possibly something that may be of interest or help to other teachers.
STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS.
The State Normal Schools are schools supported wholly by a particular State, to provide trained teachers for the public schools of that State. They are under the management of State Boards of Education, which determine the length of the Normal School Course, and arrange the studies. Much discretionary power is, however, given to the principals or presidents of the respective schools. Instruction is usually free to those who pledge themselves to teach in the State, and, as a further inducement, students attending non-resident schools are allowed to come in by train at reduced fares, or lodge and board in houses near the school at a very low rate. Students of resident schools have rooms and board in the school building, or in separate smaller halls, or “dormitories,” at a rate of 150-180 dollars a year. To very needy students the State makes extra grants. Most of the Normal Schools are co-educational institutions; but a few admit only women. In the co-educational schools, the men and women have classes and meals in common, and reside in different parts of one building, or in adjacent buildings. It is a noticeable fact, however, that in most of the co-educational Normal Schools the women students outnumber the men. In the two Pennsylvanian Schools I visited—those at Westchester and Millersville—the discrepancy between the numbers of men and women students was not so great as in the Normal Schools of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, which devote themselves more strictly to professional training, i.e. to pedagogical instruction and teaching practice. Having enquired as to the cause of the greater number of women students, I was told it was due to the fact that teaching, as a profession, offers few attractions to men in the United States, and that in those few Normal Schools where the attendance of men and women students is almost equal the courses are such as to allow of their being used by the men as preparatory courses for college. Such an explanation seems to be corroborated by the relative numbers of men and women teachers in many of the States. In Massachusetts, the number of teachers is 10,965, and of these only 992 are men. In Illinois, there are 23,033 teachers in the Common Schools, and among them only 7,091 men. In New York, of the 32,161 teachers in the State schools, 26,869 are women.
The first Normal Schools were established in Massachusetts in 1839. The particular needs which these early schools were intended to satisfy, and their early aims, have influenced the courses of instruction and lines of work of most of the Normal Schools since established, whether in Massachusetts, or in other States. The purpose of the early schools at Lexington and Barre was to provide more competent teachers for the lower grades of schools, and their course of training embraced:—
i. The subjects of an ordinary school curriculum, known as “academic studies,” as distinguished from pedagogical or “professional studies.”
ii. Instruction in the Art of Teaching and Governing.