A normal school is an institution created to train high school graduates to be teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum.
Most such schools, where they still exist, are now denominated teacher-training colleges or teachers' colleges, require a high school diploma, and may be part of a comprehensive university.
Normal schools in the United States, Canada and Argentina trained teachers for primary schools, while in continental Europe, the equivalent colleges educated teachers for primary, secondary and tertiary schools.
In 1685, St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims, Champagne, France.
The term normal herein refers to the goal of these institutions to instil and reinforce particular norms within students. Norms included historical behavioural norms of the time, as well as norms that reinforced targeted societal values, ideologies and dominant narratives in the form of curriculum.
The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers.
In 1839, the first state-supported normal school was established by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the northeast corner of the historic Lexington Battle Green; it evolved into Framingham State University.
More information: Heroes, Heroines & History
The first modern teacher training school in China was established by educator Sheng Xuanhuai in 1895 as the normal school of the Nanyang Public School, now Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in Shanghai during the Qing dynasty.
Many comprehensive public or state-supported universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States and Beijing Normal University in China, were established and operated as normal schools before expanding their faculties and organizing as research universities. Some of these universities, particularly in Asia, retain the word Normal in their name to recognize their historical purpose.
In Canada, most normal schools were eventually assimilated into a university as its faculty of education, offering a one or two-year Bachelor of Education degree. Such a degree requires at least three, but usually four, years of prior undergraduate study.
Educating teachers was of great importance in the newly industrialized European economies and their need for a reliable, reproducible and uniform work force.
The process of instating such norms within students depended upon the creation of the first uniform, formalized national educational curriculum.
Thus, normal schools, as the teacher training schools, were tasked with both developing this new curriculum and developing the techniques through which teachers would instil these ideas, behaviours and values in the minds of their students.
More information: Educational Foundations
A good teacher can inspire hope,
ignite the imagination,
and instill a love of learning.
Brad Henry
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