The term Normal School is an unfortunate misnomer, and its general
adoption has led to much confusion of ideas. The word "Normal," from the
Latin _norma_, a rule or pattern to work by, does not differ essentially
from "Model." A Normal School, according to the meaning of the word,
would be a pattern school, an institution which could be held up for
imitation, to be copied by other schools of the same grade. But this
meaning of the word is not what we mean by the thing. When we mean a
school to be copied or imitated, we call it a Model School. Here the
name and the thing agree. The name explains the thing. It is very
different when we speak of a Normal School. To the uninitiated, the term
either conveys no meaning at all; or, if your hearer is a man of
letters, it conveys to him an idea which you have at once to explain
away. You have to tell him, in effect, that a Normal School is not a
Normal School, and then that it is something else, which the word does
not in the least describe.
What then do we mean by a Normal School? What is the thing which we have
called by this unfortunate name?
A Normal School is a seminary for the professional education of
teachers. It is an institution in which those who wish to become
teachers learn how to do their work; in which they learn, not reading,
but how to teach reading; not penmanship, but how to teach penmanship;
not grammar, but how to teach grammar; not geography, but how to teach
geography; not arithmetic, but how to teach arithmetic. The idea which
lies at the basis of such an institute, is that knowing a thing, and
knowing how to teach that thing to others, are distinguishable and very
different facts. The knowledge of the subjects to be taught, may be
gained at any school. In order to give to the Teachers' Seminary its
full power and efficiency, it were greatly to be desired that the
subjects themselves, as mere matters of knowledge, should be first
learned elsewhere, before entering the Teachers' School. This latter
would then have to do only with its own special function, that of
showing its matriculants how to use these materials in the process of
teaching. Unfortunately, we have not yet made such progress in popular
education as to be able to separate these two functions to the extent
that is desirable. Many of those who attend a Teachers' Seminary, come
to it lamentably ignorant of the common branches of knowledge. They have
consequently first to study these branches in the Normal School, as they
would study them in any other school. That is, they have first to learn
the facts as matters of knowledge, and then to study the art and science
of teaching these facts to others. Instead of coming with their brick
and mortar ready prepared, that they may be instructed in the use of the
trowel and the plumb-line, they have to make their brick and mix their
mortar after they enter the institution. This is undoubtedly a drawback
and a misfortune. But it cannot be helped at present. All we can do is
to define clearly the true idea of the Teachers' School, and then to
work towards it as fast and as far as we can.
A Normal School is essentially unlike any other school. It has been
compared indeed to those professional schools which are for the study of
law, divinity, medicine, mining, engineering, and so forth. The Normal
School, it is true, is like these schools in one respect. It is
established with reference to the wants of a particular profession. It
is a professional school. But those schools have for their main object
the communication of some particular branch of science. They teach law,
divinity, medicine, mining, or engineering. They aim to make lawyers,
divines, physicians, miners, engineers, not teachers of these branches.
The Professor in the Law School aims, not to make Professors of law, but
lawyers. The medical Professor aims, not to make medical lecturers, but
practitioners. To render these institutions analogous to the Teachers'
Seminary, their pupils should first study law, medicine, engineering,
and so forth, and then sit at the feet of their Gamaliels to be
initiated into the secrets of the Professorial chair, that they may in
turn become Professors of those branches to classes of their own. Nor
would such a plan, if it were possible, be altogether without its value.
It surely needs no demonstration to prove, that in the highest
departments, no less than in the lowest, something more than knowledge
is needed in order to teach. An understanding of how to communicate
one's knowledge, and practical skill in doing it, are as necessary in
teaching theology, metaphysics, languages, infinitesimal analysis, or
chemistry, as they are in teaching the alphabet. If there are bunglers,
who know not how to go to work to teach a child its letters, or to open
its young mind and heart to the reception of truth, whose school-rooms
are places where the young mind and heart are in a state, either of
perpetual torpor, or of perpetual nightmare, have these bunglers no
analogues in the men of ponderous erudition that sometimes fill the
Professor's chair? Have we no examples, in our highest seminaries of
learning, of men very eminent in scientific attainments, who have not in
themselves the first elements of a teacher? who impart to their students
no quickening impulse? whose vast and towering knowledge may make them
perhaps a grand feature in their College, attracting to it all eyes, but
whose intellectual treasures, for all the practical wants of the
students, are of no more use, than are the swathed and buried mummies in
the pyramid of Cheops!
A Teachers' Seminary, if it were complete, would include in its
curriculum of study the entire cycle of human knowledge, so far as it is
taught by schools. Our teachers of mathematics and of logic, of law and
of medicine, need indeed a knowledge of the branches which they are to
teach, and for this knowledge they do not need a Teachers' Seminary. But
they need something more than this knowledge. Besides being men of
erudition, they need to be teachers, no less than the humbler members of
the profession, who have only to teach the alphabet and the
multiplication table; and there is in all teaching, high or low,
something that is common to them all--an art and a skill which is
different from the mere knowledge of the subjects; which is not
necessarily learned in learning the subjects; which requires special,
superadded gifts, and distinct study and training. There is, according
to my observation, as great a lack of this special skill in the higher
seminaries of learning, as in the lower seminaries. Were it possible to
have a Normal School, not which should undertake to teach the entire
encyclopaedia of the sciences, but which, limiting itself to its one main
function of developing the art and mystery of communicating knowledge,
should turn out College Professors, and even Divinity, Law, and Medical
Professors,--men who were really skilful teachers,--it would work a
change in those venerable institutions as marked and decisive as that
which it is now effecting in the common schools. Of course, no such
scheme is possible; certainly, none such is contemplated. But I am very
sure I shall not be considered calumnious, when I express the
conviction, that there are learned and eminent occupants of Professors'
chairs, who might find great benefit in an occasional visit to a good
Normal School, or even to the class-room of a teacher trained in a
Normal School. I certainly have seen, in the very lowest department of
the common school, a style of teaching, which, for a wise and
intelligent comprehension of its object, and for its quickening power
upon the intellect and conscience, would compare favorably with the very
best teaching I have ever seen in a College or University.
I come back, then, to the point from which I set out, namely, that a
Normal School, or Teachers' Seminary, differs essentially from every
other kind of school. It aims to give the knowledge and skill that are
needed alike in all schools. To make the point a little plainer, let me
restate, with what clearness I can, some of the elementary truths and
facts which lie at the foundation of the whole subject. Though to many
of my readers it may be going over a beaten track, it may not be so to
all; and we all do well, even in regard to known and admitted truths, to
bring them occasionally afresh to the mind.
As it has been already said, a man may know a thing perfectly, and yet
not be able to teach it. Of course, a man cannot teach what he does not
know. He must first have the knowledge. But the mere possession of
knowledge does not make one a teacher, any more than the possession of
powder and shot makes him a marksman, or the possession of a rod and
line makes him an angler. The most learned men are often unfortunately
the very men who have least capacity for communicating what they know.
Nor is this incapacity confined to those versed in book knowledge. It is
common to every class of men, and to every kind of knowledge. Let me
give an example. The fact about to be stated, was communicated to me by
a gentleman of eminent commercial standing in Philadelphia, at that time
the President of one of its leading banks. The fact occurred in his own
personal experience. He was, at the time of its occurrence, largely
engaged in the cloth trade. His faculties of mind and body, and
particularly his sense of touch, had been so trained in this business,
that in going rapidly over an invoice of cloth, as his eye and hand
passed in quick succession from piece to piece, in the most
miscellaneous assortment, he could tell instantly the value of each,
with a degree of precision, and a certainty of knowledge, hardly
credible. A single glance of the eye, a single touch, transient as
thought, gave the result. His own knowledge of the subject, in short,
was perfect, and it was rapidly winning him a fortune. Yet when
undertaking to explain to a younger and less experienced member of the
craft, whom he wished to befriend, by what process he arrived at his
judgment, in other words, to teach what he knew, he found himself
utterly at a loss. His thoughts had never run in that direction. "Oh!"
said he, "you have only--to look at the cloth, and--and--to run your
fingers over it,--thus. You will perceive at once the difference between
one piece and another." It seems never to have occurred to him that
another man's sensations and perceptions might in the same circumstances
be quite different from his, and that in order to communicate his
knowledge to one uninitiated, he must pause to analyze it; he must
separate, classify, and name those several qualities of the cloth of
which his senses took cognizance; he must then ascertain how far his
interrogator perceived by his senses the same qualities which he himself
did, and thus gradually get on common ground with him.
Let the receiving-teller of a bank be called upon to explain how it is
that he knows at a glance a counterfeit bill from a genuine one, and in
nine cases out of ten he will succeed no better than the cloth merchant
did. Knowing and communicating what we know, doing and explaining what
we do, are distinct, separable, and usually very different processes.
Similar illustrations might be drawn from artists, and from men of
original genius in almost every profession, who can seldom give any
intelligible account of how they achieve their results. The mental
habits best suited for achievement are rarely those best suited for
teaching. Marlborough, so celebrated for his military combinations,
could never give any intelligible account of his plans. He had arrived
at his conclusions with unerring certainty, but he was so little
accustomed to observing his own mental processes, that he utterly failed
in attempting to make them plain to others. He saw the points himself
with perfect clearness, but he had no power to make others see them. To
all objections to his plans, he could only say, "Silly, silly, that's
silly." It was much the same with Cromwell. It is so with most men who
are distinguished for action and achievement. Patrick Henry would
doubtless have made but a third-rate teacher of elocution, and old Homer
but an indifferent lecturer on the art of poetry.
To acquire knowledge ourselves, then, and to put others in possession of
what we have acquired, are not only distinct intellectual processes, but
they are quite unlike. In the former case, the faculties merely go out
towards the objects to be known, as in the case of the cloth merchant
passing his eye and finger over the bales of cloth. But in the case of
one attempting to teach, several additional processes are needed,
besides that of collecting knowledge. He must turn his thoughts inward,
so as to arrange and classify properly the contents of his intellectual
storehouse. He must then examine his own mind, his intellectual
machinery, so as to understand exactly how the knowledge came in upon
himself. He must lastly study the minds of his pupils, so as to know
through what channels the knowledge may best reach them. The teacher may
not always be aware that he does all these things, that is, he may not
always have a theory of his own art. But the art itself he must have. He
must first get the knowledge of the things to be taught; he must
secondly study his knowledge; he must thirdly study himself; he must
lastly study his pupil. He is a teacher at all only so far as he does at
least these four things.
In a Normal School, as before said, the knowledge of the subject is
presupposed. The object of the Normal School is, not so much to make
arithmeticians and grammarians, for instance, as to make teachers of
arithmetic and grammar. This teaching faculty is a thing by itself, and
quite apart from the subject matter to be taught. It underlies every
branch of knowledge, and every trade and profession. The theologian, the
mathematician, the linguist, the learned professor, no less than the
teacher of the primary school, or of the Sabbath-school, all need this
supplementary knowledge and skill, in which consists the very essence of
teaching. This knowledge of how to teach is not acquired by merely
studying the subject to be taught. It is a study by itself. A man may
read familiarly the _Mechanique Celeste_, and yet not know how to teach
the multiplication table. He may read Arabic or Sanskrit, and not know
how to teach a child the alphabet of his mother tongue. The
Sabbath-school teacher may dip deep into biblical lore, he may ransack
the commentaries, and may become, as many Sabbath-school teachers are,
truly learned in Bible knowledge, and yet be utterly incompetent to
teach a class of children. He can no more hit the wandering attention,
or make a lodgment of his knowledge in the minds of his youthful
auditory, than the mere unskilled possessor of a fowling-piece can hit a
bird upon the wing.
The art of teaching is the one indispensable qualification of the
teacher. Without this, whatever else he may be, he is no teacher. How
may this art be acquired? In the first place, many persons pick it up,
just as they pick up a great many other arts and trades,--in a
hap-hazard sort of way. They have some natural aptitude for it, and they
grope their way along, by guess and by instinct, and through many
failures, until they become good teachers, they hardly know how. To
rescue the art from this condition of uncertainty and chance, is the
object of the Normal School. In such a school, the main object of the
pupil is to learn how to make others know what he himself knows. The
whole current of his thoughts and studies is turned into this channel.
Studying how to teach, with an experimental class to practise on, forms
the constant topic of his meditations. It is surprising how rapidly,
under such conditions, the faculty of teaching is developed; how fertile
the mind becomes in devising practical expedients, when once the
attention is roused and fixed upon the precise object to be attained,
and the idea of what teaching really is, fairly has possession of the
mind. For this purpose every well-ordered Normal School has, in
connection with it, as a part of its organization, a Model School, to
serve the double purpose of a school of observation and practice.
Thus, after these pupil-teachers are once familiar with the branches to
be taught, and after they have become acquainted with the theory of
teaching, as a science, it is surprising how soon, with even a little of
this practice-teaching, they acquire the art. If the faculty of teaching
is in them at all, a very few experimental lessons, under the eye of an
experienced teacher, will develop it.
The fact of possessing within one's self this gift, or power of
teaching, sometimes breaks upon the possessor himself with all the force
of a surprising and most delightful discovery. The good teacher does not
indeed stop here. He goes on to improve in his art, as long as he lives.
But his greatest single achievement is when he takes the first
step,--when he first learns to teach at all. The pupil of a Normal
School gains there a start and an impulse, which carry him forward the
rest of his life. A very little judicious experimental training redeems
hundreds of candidates from utter and hopeless incompetency, and
converts for them an awkward and painful drudgery into keen, hopeful and
productive labor.