As I have understood it, and as indicated in this thread, a “Normal” school was a school intended to train primary and secondary school teachers. It existed outside of the standard academic degree progression of Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree, and Doctoral Degree, and was, from a modern perspective, sort of like a career training school. In many English speaking lands in the 1800’s, attending a normal school was the standard way to become a school teacher.
By sometime in the 20th century, the standard way to become a schoolteacher in the United States had become obtaining a bachelor’s degree. My mother taught elementary school with a BA in the 1970’s and later obtained a master’s degree, which nowadays is on the fast track to becoming the new practical baseline requirement for teaching.
We are starting to see a similar thing happening with other types of career/trade schools. You can now get an accredited Associate’s Degree in Auto Mechanics or Culinary Arts when in days of old these programs were considered outside of the degree track. I also understand that Medical School in the 1700’s and 1800’s was treated more as a career/trade school than an academic program. My 1800’s ancestor Dr. Columbia (no really, I’m really a descendant of an old-time physician) probably didn’t have an MD as we know it today. Pharmacy and nursing too - at one point in the past you went to trade school or apprenticed to become one rather than getting bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degrees.
It seems that many of the old “Normal Schools” either closed or became full academic universities or colleges granting at least a bachelor’s degree. For example, the State Normal and Industrial School for Women in Harrisonburg, Virginia is now James Madison University. The school gained authorization to issue bachelor’s degrees in 1916 - apparently all previous graduates studying education were granted only career certificates. Men were admitted starting after WW2.
Do normal schools or normal school programs/tracks still exist anywhere in any jurisdiction? I would guess that if any still existed in the US by the end of the 20th century, they were effectively killed by the “No Child Left Behind Act” which provides for “highly qualified” teachers that must de jure have at least a bachelor’s degree. When did the bell finally toll for normal schools and normal school graduates in the US, if it ever really did? (e.g. When was the last year that you could expect to get a state teaching license and a position as a public school teacher in Podunkstown with just a Normal School diploma and no bachelor’s degree?) When the transition happened, were existing teachers told that if they didn’t complete a BA or BS by 1947 they will be fired or were they grandfathered until retirement/death and only new teachers had to have a bachelor’s? What about other countries? Can you still become a public school teacher in e.g. Canada, Jamaica, Mexico, or Italy with a trade school diploma and no academic degree?
The Wiki page for Normal Schools says that they transformed into universities, beginning in the 1960’s. I don’t have time to read each entry to find out when the last one changed into a college or university.
The predominant way to get qualified - NO - make that certified to teach in public school today is to enroll in education courses as part of an education major in an undergraduate program of a university. That often translates into enrolling in a particular college of education within a university. Separate, stand-alone normal schools no longer exist. The state boards of education collaborate with the various schools of education to determine the particular requirements for certification. (Collaborate here takes on both meanings). There is some movement toward making a teaching certificate contingent upon satisfactory completion of a graduate degree, such as is standard in, say, Finland, which is light years ahead of the U.S. in its approach to schooling, but it is slow to catch on. State and university finances often trump logic and wisdom, of course. I need to stop here.
Just checking the histories of my state’s schools that had started out as Normal schools, it looks like they started granting Bachelor’s degrees in Education and changed their name to “…College” in the period 1919-1929.
I notice that one of them brags that they had started adding to the traditional Normal school curriculum in 1913, so I’d guess it was an early 20th Century phenomenon.
I remember my aunt was a teacher in parochial schools who went back to college in the early 1960s to get her B.Ed. so I guess the handwriting was on the wall even back then.
A personal note: my grandmother (born in 1900) went to Plattsburgh Normal and Training School to become a teacher. The school is now part of Plattsburgh Campus of the State University of New York.
My alma mater went from Kansas Normal School (founded 1863) to Kansas State Teachers College in 1923, then to Emporia Kansas State College in 1974, and in 1977 to Emporia State University.
I feel I got a very good education there, focused on my major but balanced with other fields.
The New York State Normal School became “The New York State Normal College” in the 1890s, and the “New York State College for Teachers” in 1919. It was folded into the State University system in 1948 and is now The State University of New York in Albany.
Most of the four year University of Wisconsin-[town that isn’t Madison] started out as Normal Schools. My grandparents met at Central State Teachers College which is now UW Stevens Point. Back in the late 60s they were all merged into a common UW System along with Madison.
My grandmother became a teacher by going to a Normal School in Saskatchewan, but it closed down some time in the 50’s or 60’s. I have a WAG as to why. As school curriculums became more advanced, and the subjects became more detailed and complex, the traditional Normal School education wasn’t enough to equip teachers to teach them properly. Just a guess, though.
ETA: I think it only took two years (or maybe even just a year) to get a Normal School certificate.
I recall that when I was in elementary school in Ohio, perhaps about 1960, one of my teachers talked about how when she had started teaching, perhaps forty or forty-five years before, she only had to take a year-long course (probably at some place called a normal school) to be able to teach. She said that as her career went on the law was changed to require that she must have a two-year course, so she had to go back to get the extra year of training. Later still the requirements changed again to make it necessary to do a regular four-year bachelor’s degree, so she went back to college again for two more years. So by 1960 in Ohio it was necessary everywhere to get a bachelor’s degree to teach school. (And I lived way out in the sticks, so I really do mean everywhere in the state.) By that time all the normal schools had changed their names years before to something like “X State University.”
At least one of the buildings still exists in downtown Winnipeg. It’s now apartments. I always wondered as I drove by what it was, this thread reminded me to look it up, THANKS!
Arkansas State Normal School was founded in 1907. It’s now called UCA (University of Central Arkansas). UCA is a good University and still has a strong Teacher Ed program. I know several people that graduated from there.
Definitely true for UW-Platteville. It is actually the fisrt state normal school. For a while the normal school and the mining school were separate, but they eventually merged.
Not 100% accurate. Many (in fact most teachers I’ve met) have a bachelor’s degree in their field and take education classes at a master’s level which may or may not result in a master’s degree in education - typically an MA or MEd.
Or take classes at the graduate level that will give them a teacher certification. I have a friend with both a science and master’s science degrees, and a teacher’s certification.
I work at a former Normal School. It was founded as a Normal School in 1871, previously haven been private school. It became a State Teachers College in 1927 when it began to offer a four-year degree in teacher education. In 1960 it became a State College when it began to offer a liberal arts program. And finally in 1983 it became a University when it expanded its curriculum beyond liberal arts and started a graduate degree program.
This may be true for most of the teachers you’ve met, but the most common route to certification in working teachers today still is the undergraduate education major. Because there were many job lay-offs during the recession, maybe people went back to school to get certified to teach through graduate programs (you know, “anyone can teach”) and there are many of those people in the profession today. Perhaps you’ve met some of those folks.
Which is the way most teachers do it these days. Get your BA in a real subject, then take the necessary Ed classes to get certified. This includes theory and pedagogy classes, observations and time as a student teacher under a master teacher in a real classroom.