Abstract
Until approximately the first third of the nineteenth century, the notion that prospective schoolteachers needed formal preparatory training for their work, apart from whatever regular academic studies they might have pursued, would have attracted scant attention and even less popular support. Even after the mid-1800s, the overwhelming majority of people would have found anything much resembling the modern idea of teacher education wholly unnecessary and likely incomprehensible. It is helpful to recall, perhaps, that throughout the colonial and early republican periods, only a minuscule proportion of the population attended any school whatsoever. Among those who did, attendance was apt to be both brief and irregular; and formal learning beyond the most rudimentary level was rarely deemed important to success in the trades and agrarian occupations most people were destined to pursue. Hence, the thought or expectation that a classroom pedagogue might require formal preparation for the lowly task of instructing schoolchildren would have been quite unthinkable.
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Notes
Lawrence A. Cremin, “The Heritage of American Teacher Education,” Journal of Teacher Education 4 (June 1953): 163–164. See also, for example, Jon Teaford, “The Transformation of Massachusetts Education, 1670–1780,” History of Education Quarterly 10 (Fall 1970): 287–307; and Robert T. Sidwell, “‘Writers, Thinkers and Fox Hunters’—Educational Theory in the Almanacs of Eighteenth-Century Colonial America,” History of Education Quarterly 8 (Fall 1968): 275–288.
Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 187.
See Wilson Smith, “The Teacher in Puritan Culture,” Harvard Educational Review 36 (Fall 1966): 394–411; and David F. Allmendinger, Jr., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), pp. 91–93.
R. Freeman Butts and Lawrence A. Cremin, A History of Education in American Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1953), p. 133.
Guy F. Wells, Parish Education in Colonial Virginia (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1923), p. 20.
Cited in Willard S. Elsbree, The American Teacher, Evolution of a Profession in a Democracy (New York: American Book Company, 1939), p. 32.
Walter H. Small, Early New England Schools (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1914), p. 93.
William H. Kilpatrick, The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial New York (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Bureau of Education Bulletin No. 12, 1912), pp. 170, 174.
John H. Crippen, Character of the School Master in the Colonial Period. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Columbia University, 1907, p. 104; cited in Elsbree, p. 30.
Quoted in David B. Tyack, Turning Points in American Educational History (Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell Publishing, 1967), p. 413.
Consult James P. Wickersham, A History of Education in Pennsylvania (Lancaster, Penn.: Inquirer Publishing, 1886), p. 60; and quoted in Francis N. Thorpe, Benjamin Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Bureau of Education Circular of Information No. 2, 1889), pp. 245–246.
Cited in Cremin, American Education, pp. 187–188. See Norwood M. Cole, “The Licensing of Schoolmasters in Colonial Massachusetts,” History of Education Journal 8 (Winter, 1957): 68–74.
Caleb Bingham, The Columbian Orator … (Hartford, Conn.: Lincoln and Gleason, 1807), pp. 158–165; reprinted in Tyack, pp. 421–425. The perfunctory character of teacher interviews by local selectmen often inspired commentary. From the Civil War period comes an account of the school superintendent of Oxford, Ohio, crossing a muddy street with a prospective teacher candidate in hand while conducting an interview. The superintendent asks, “What is the gender of boy?” The candidate answers, “Masculine.” “Of girl?” “Feminine.” “Box?” “Neuter.” “Children?” “Common.” The superintendent concludes, “Well, I guess you know enough to teach, so I’ll write you out a certificate.” Cited in C. Neale Bogner, “Teaching—Progress?” Journal of Teacher Education 29 (May–June 1978): 59.
Donald Warren, “Learning from Experience: History and Teacher Education,” Educational Researcher 14 (December, 1985): 6.
Samuel Hall, Lectures on Schoolkeeping (Boston: Richardson, Lord & Holbrook, 1829), p. 16.
Cited in Charles A. Harper, A Century of Public Teacher Education (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Teachers Colleges, National Education Association, 1939), p. 13.
James Bowen, A History of Western Education, Vol. 3 (London: Methuen & Company, 1981), p. 359.
Ibid., p. 361.
Cremin, “The Heritage of American Teacher Education,” p. 164. Note the discussion in S. Alexander Rippa, Education in a Free Society, An American History, 2nd ed. (New York: David McKay, 1971), pp. 102–118, and in Jonathan C. Messerli, “Controversy and Consensus in Common School Reform,” Teachers College Record 66 (May 1965): 749–759.
Catherine Beecher, Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education, Presented to the Trustees of the Hartford Female Seminary (Hartford, Conn.: Packard and Butler, 1829), p. 7.
Catherine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon and Webb, 1841), p. 9.
Quoted in G. Lerner, ed., The Female Experience (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), pp. 235–236; and also cited in Warren, p. 9.
E. W. Knight and C. L. Hall, eds., Readings in American Educational History (New York: Greenwood Press, 1951), p. 415.
Edward H. Reisner, The Evolution of the Common School (New York: Macmillan, 1930), pp. 384–388.
Walter S. Monroe, Teaching-Learning Theory and Teacher Education, 1890–1950 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1952), p. 42.
Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 398.
Jurgen Herbst, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 21.
Nineteenth-century pedagogy was first analyzed in some detail in Barbara J. Finkelstein, “Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in American Primary Schools, 1820–1880.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1970. An excellent discussion of teaching methodology in the late 1800s is supplied in Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1980 (New York: Longman, 1984)
Quoted in Harper, p. 15; and also cited in Henry Barnard, Normal Schools and Other Institutions, Agencies, and Means Designed for the Professional Education of Teachers (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany and Company, 1851), p. 41.
Quoted in Robert Ulich, A Sequence of Educational Influences (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935), pp. 53–54. See John Albree, Charles Brooks and His Work for Normal Schools (Medford, Mass.: J. C. Miller, 1907); and Henry Barnard, “Proceedings of an Educational Convention in Plymouth County in 1838,” in Barnard, Normal Schools (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Tiffany and Company, 1850), pp. 151–157.
Consult James G. Carter, Letters to the Hon. William Prescott on the Free Schools of New England, with Remarks on the Principles of Instruction (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1824); and Carter, “Outline of an Institution for the Education of Teachers,” reprinted in American Journal of Education 16 (1866): 77–79; and in Carter’s Essays Upon Popular Education (Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1826), p. 46.
Paul H. Mattingly, The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in the Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1975), pp. 62–63.
Samuel N. Sweet, Teachers’ Institutes (Utica, NY: H. H. Hawley and Company, 1848), pp. 48ff.; and Samuel P. Bates, Method of Teachers’ Institutes and the Theory of Education (New York: A. S. Barnes and Burr, 1864), pp. 53–54.
Mason S. Stone, “The First Normal School in America,” Teachers College Record 23 (1923): 263–272; and Raymond B. Culver, Horace Mann and Religion in the Massachusetts Schools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1929), pp. 111–126.
A primary source for the details of the Lexington school in its earliest years is Arthur O. Norton, ed., The First State Normal School in America: The Journals of Cyrus Peirce and Mary Swift (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926).
Consult Benjamin Frazier, “History of the Professional Education of Teachers in the United States,” National Survey of the Education of Teachers (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of Education Bulletin 1933, No. 10, Vol. 5, Part I, 1935), pp. 12, 52ff.
Note the discussion in Joel Spring, The American School, 1642–1993, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 273.
Horace Mann, “Report for 1839,” Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education (Boston: Rand and Avery, 1868), p. 60.
Richard Edwards, “Normal Schools in the United States,” National Education Association, Lectures and Proceedings (Harrisburg, PA: NEA, 1865), pp. 277–282; reproduced in Merle Borrowman, Teacher Education in America, A Documentary History (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1956), pp. 77–78.
S. S. Parr, “The Normal-School Problem,” National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings (Topeka: Kansas Publishing House, 1888): pp. 467–469. See also Edgar R. Randolph, The Professional Treatment of Subject-Matter (Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1924), p. 204.
Quoted in Alpheus Crosby, “The Proper Sphere and Work of the American Normal School,” in American Normal Schools, Their Theory, Their Workings, and Their Results, as Embodied in the Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the American Normal School Association (New York: A. S. Barnes and Burr, 1860), p. 24.
See William H. Payne, Contribution to the Science of Education (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1887), pp. 261–262; and H. S. Tarbell, “Report of the Sub-Committee on the Training of Teachers,” National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings (St. Paul: Pioneer Press, 1895), p. 238.
Thomas J. Morgan, What Is the True Function of a Normal School? (Boston: Willard Small, 1886), pp. 27–28.
Herbst, p. 140. See William F. Phelps, “Normal Schools, Their Organization and Course of Study,” National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings (Winona, Minn.: National Education Association, 1866), pp. 131–139.
See Charles A. Harper, Development of the Teachers College in the United States (Bloomington, Ill.: McKnight and McKnight, 1935), for a detailed discussion of the conversion of normal schools into full-blown teachers’ colleges.
See Otto Walton Snarr, The Education of Teachers in the Middle States: An Historical Study of the Professional Education of Public School Teachers as a State Function (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), pp. 43–95.
Walter L. Hervey, “The Function of a Teachers’ Training College,” National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings (Astor Place, N.Y.: J. J. Little & Company, 1891), p. 736.
Burke A. Hinsdale, “The Teacher’s Academical and Professional Preparation,” National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings (Astor Place, N.Y.: J.J. Little & Company, 1891), p. 717.
Burke A. Hinsdale, “Pedagogical Chairs in Colleges and Universities,” National Education Association Journal of Addresses and Proceedings (Topeka: Kansas Publishing House, 1889), pp. 560–564.
Charles K. Adams, “The Teaching of Pedagogy in Colleges and Universities,” New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, Addresses and Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting (Bedford, Mass: NEACPS, 1888), pp. 17–29. (Hereafter New England Association)
Ibid., pp. 26–29.
Arthur G. Powell and Theodore Sizer, “Changing Conceptions of the Professor of Education,” in James Cornelius, ed., To Be a Phoenix: The Education Professorate (Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa, 1969), p. 61.
James Carter, “On the Development of the Intellectual Faculties and on the Teaching of Geography,” quoted in James R. Robarts, “The Quest for a Science of Education in the Nineteenth Century,” History of Education Quarterly 8 (Winter 1968): 431.
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© 1999 Christopher J. Lucas
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Lucas, C.J. (1999). Origins and Development of Teacher Education in America. In: Teacher Education in America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07269-6_1
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