State-funded normal schools—designed to provide standardized training of teachers—first emerged in Massachusetts in the early 19th century. By the 20th century, they had morphed into state colleges. In the 21st century, they all became state universities.
Old Deluder Satan
Massachusetts has been a leader in education since the English founded Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Initially, parents or skilled tradesmen gave lessons so children and apprentices could read the Bible and colonial laws. Notably, the Old Deluder Satan Act (1647) in Massachusetts Bay ordered that towns with 50 or more households had to hire a schoolmaster. He taught white boys aged 5 to 7 years – including apprentices and servants – to read and write. These town/petty schools were the forerunner of the common school movement of the early 19th century.
Funding came from a mixture of parental tuition payments, nonmonetary contributions (e.g., firewood for heating) and town revenues. Girls, Black children and some very poor boys were excluded. The law also required towns with 100 or more households to create Latin grammar schools to prepare privileged white boys for ministry and law careers.
In the 18th century Vermont began to require school districts that educated both boys and girls. By the early 19th century Samuel Reed Hall (1795-1877) had observed that elementary schools were in deplorable condition. The school districts were often poorly funded by the town. Thus, the school buildings were often overcrowded and inadequately maintained. More importantly, the teachers were poorly paid and insufficiently prepared to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic.
The First Normal Schools
Having observed these conditions, Hall, a Congregational minister, decided to create the first private normal (model) school in the U.S. to train teachers. He opened his Columbian School on March 11, 1823 (incorporated that November as Concord Academy). He offered instruction in several subjects to prepare students for teaching, a practice teaching experience, and lectures on “the science of teaching and the mode of governing a school with success.” In 1829, Hall wrote Lectures on School-Keeping, which became the first book on school management and the training of teachers in America. Hall left for Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.—the second private normal school—in 1830. Concord Academy closed in 1832.
In Massachusetts, James G. Carter (1795-1849), Father of the Normal School, was well aware that town schools suffered from the same conditions as in Vermont. He wrote an Outline of a Plan of an Institution for the Education of Teachers in 1825. He then petitioned the state Legislature in 1827 for a normal school, but it was rejected. By 1837 Carter—now a state legislator—succeeded in drafting the first-in-the-nation state board of education. Horace Mann (1796-1859), a progressive state legislator, became the first secretary.
Horace Mann immediately championed the Common School Movement. He said all children should receive a basic, standardized, elementary school education from trained teachers. He also believed that common schools should mainly be funded through local property taxes, not parental tuition. Thus, state oversight (e.g., common curriculum and textbooks) would be needed to ensure that these goals were met. More broadly, common schools would provide more educated workers for the future growth in industrial development.
Coed Normal Schools
In 1839 the Massachusetts Legislature approved the creation of the first three public normal schools in the United States for training teachers. Four men were primarily responsible for the achievement: Carter, then a state legislator; Mann, the education secretary; Rev. Charles Brooks, a noted advocate; and Edmund Dwight, a Boston merchant. Dwight gave a gift of $10,000 that matched the state appropriation.
The first publicly funded normal school opened on July 3, 1839, in Lexington with three female students. The second opened on Sept. 14, 1839, in Barre (near Worcester), and the third opened on Sept. 9, 1840, in Bridgewater (south of Boston). The latter two opened as coeducational entities.
Both male and female students (who had to be 16 or 17 years of age) originally received one year of training. The curriculum included instruction in basic subjects (e.g., algebra, chemistry) and moral principles. They were required to teach in a model school, given their additional training in how to teach and deal with child behavior. Upon graduation, they received a certificate attesting to their competence. Female graduates, then and afterwards, outnumbered males. Notably, Lexington produced the first Black graduate, Mary Elizabeth Miles, in 1843.
Growth, Despite Opposition
These early normal schools encountered significant opposition. Taxpayers, especially the wealthy, objected to state funds being used for this purpose. Religious groups (e.g., Irish Catholics) argued against their Protestant approach to education. Various educators did not like the new teaching methods and state control of local schools.…