Public Education in the United States; A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History; An Introductory Textbook Dealing with the Larger PR

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X THE REORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION I. The Rise of the Normal School Beginnings of the teacher-training idea. The first training class for teachers organized in the world was a small local school organized by Father Démia, at Lyons, France, in 1672. Stimulated into activity by the results of the Protestant Revolt, he had begun schools in his parish to teach reading and the catechism to the children of his parishioners. Not being satisfied with the volunteer teachers he could obtain, he organized them into a class that he might impart to them the ideas he had as to teaching. The first real normal school was that founded at Rheims, France, in 1685, by Abbé de la Salle, to educate and train teachers for the schools of the order he had founded -- "The Brothers of the Christian Schools" -- to give free religious primary education to the children of the working classes of France. He later founded a second school of the kind in Paris, and called each institution a "Seminary for Schoolmasters." In addition to imparting a general education of the type of the time and a thorough grounding in religion, his student teachers were trained to teach in practice-schools, under the direction of experienced teachers. The beginning of teacher-training in German lands was Francke's Seminarium Prœceptorum, established at Halle, Prussia, in 1697. In 1738 Julius Hecker, one of Francke's teachers, established the first regular seminary for teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established a private Lehrerseminar in Berlin. In these two institutions he first showed the German people the possibilities of special training for teachers. It was not, however, until 1819 that the Prussian Government established normal schools to train...