Michigan State Normal College was the founding site of Alpha Sigma Tau, one of the 26 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) sororities. Michigan State Normal College is now Eastern Michigan University. Virginia’s Longwood University, the founding home of the Farmville Four (Alpha Sigma Alpha, Kappa Delta, Sigma Sigma Sigma, and Zeta Tau Alpha), was once called the State Female Normal School. When we moved to Carbondale, I learned that Southern Illinois University Carbondale was once a Normal School. Frankly, at that time, more than 20 years ago, I had no clue what that meant. What was so normal about it?
In 1825, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a Common School law which established a system of tax-supported public schools from the first through the eighth grade. In 1837, Horace Mann, one of the early supporters of the law, was made Secretary to the Massachusetts Board of Education which held oversight authority over the emerging system of public education.
Horace Mann, who would likely be mortified to know that his name is being used to sell insurance.
The passage of such laws required a growing cadre of trained teachers. At the time, only a few four year colleges offered courses in pedagogy and most teachers learned on the job. Recognizing this deficiency, Massachusetts chartered normal schools at Lexington, Barre, and Bridgewater. These schools were to cover the geographic regions of the northeast, central, and southeastern parts of Massachusetts. The pattern of establishing state normal schools on a geographic basis was now a precedent. Lexington was the first to open under the principalship of the Reverend Cyrus Peirce, formerly high school superintendent on the island of Nantucket.
The curriculum of the school sought to cover the “common” branches taught in the elementary grades: spelling; reading; writing; grammar; geography; and arithmetic. In addition to ensuring competence in these core subjects, the students were lectured to on the art and science of teaching (pedagogy), the art of school government (organization of the school day), the physical, mental, and moral development of children (educational psychology), and practice teaching in the model school. Peirce personally taught all of the classes and supervised the model school. In 1844, the school was moved to West Newton and in 1853 to its current location in Framingham, about 25 miles west of Boston.
Normal schools got their name from their counterparts in France which had been organized in the Napoleonic era and provided teachers for the “ecole normale,” or common school curriculum. The “superiore,” or advanced curriculum, was to be taught in French secondary schools by graduates of the university. This same sort of division was established in the United States. Teachers for the elementary schools needed only to be eighth grade graduates with, preferably, some normal school training. Secondary school teachers were to be graduates from the universities.
This distinction became clouded after the American Civil War when state normal schools instituted four-year degree programs which trained secondary school teachers. They continued to train elementary teachers with a two-year program of studies well into the next century.
In the twentieth century, most of the states moved to upgrade requirements for teaching in the public schools. Eventually, the states would require a high school diploma to enter the normal school and a bachelors degree to teach at all grade levels.
The normal schools, having been organized on a regional basis for supplying teachers, often served as a cultural oasis for persons who resided in remote areas of sparse population and lengthy distances from large cities.
Normal schools grew and prospered and added programs beyond the scope of pedagogy. As such, they became true colleges offering courses and degrees in a variety of areas. With the passage of the G. I. Bill of Rights in 1944, many states found it economical to allow their regional normal schools to become full-fledged universities rather than to build new institutions. Today, most former normal schools are comprehensive universities.
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