A normal school or teachers college is an educational institution for training teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. The term normal school is now archaic in all but a few countries. In New Zealand, for example, normal schools are affiliated with Teachers colleges. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.

In the United States, the function of normal school has been taken up by undergraduate and graduate schools of education. Many famous universities, such as the University of California, Los Angeles were founded as normal schools. In Canada, such institutions are typically part of a university as the Faculty of Education offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies.

Usage

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The term normal school originated in the early 19th century from the French école normale, because the graduates of these schools, that is, the teachers, were expected to uphold and teach norms, or rules.

The terminology is preserved in the official translations of such schools in both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China since the early 20th century. A Chinese normal university (, abbreviated 師大; shīdà) is usually controlled by the national or provincial government. A teachers' college (師範學院; shīfàn xuéyuàn, abbreviated 師院; shīyuàn) has lower entrance requirements.

The terminology is also preserved in Europe, both in the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and in the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Neither specialize any longer in teacher training, however.

History

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In the United States

The first normal schools in the United States were founded in Massachusetts beginning in the late 1830s, thanks largely to the efforts of education reformers such as Horace Mann. In 1839, a school known simply as Normal School, the first of its kind in the United States, opened in Lexington, Massachusetts; it has since moved and is now known as Framingham State College. Influenced by similar academies in Prussia and elsewhere in Europe, they were intended to improve the quality of the burgeoning common school system by producing more qualified teachers.

The first normal school west of the Appalachian Mountains in the United States was the Michigan State Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University. It was created by legislative action in 1849 and opened in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1853. Harris-Stowe State University, now a state university in Missouri, was founded by the St. Louis public school system in 1857 and claims to be the oldest normal school west of the Mississippi River. The first state-authorized normal college to open west of the Mississippi River was Winona State Normal School, now called Winona State University. Opening in 1858, its creation was one of the first acts of the newly-formed Minnesota Legislature. The first normal school in what is now considered the Southwest was opened in 1879 as Sam Houston Normal Institute (now Sam Houston State University). Finally, the first state-run normal school on the West Coast was the Minns' Evening Normal School, created in 1857 to train teachers for San Francisco's schools. It was taken over by the State of California in 1862 and became the California State Normal School (now San Jose State University).

In Latin America

Early normal schools in Latin America include several in Mexico, such as the Escuela Normal de Enseñanza Mutua de Oaxaca (1824), the Escuela Normal Mixta de San Luis Potosí (1849), the Normal de Guadalajara (1881), and the Escuela Normal para Profesores de Instrucción Primaria (1887). The Mexican normal school system was nationalized and reorganized by the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Department of Public Education) under José Vasconcelos in 1921.

Perhaps the oldest continually operating normal school in Latin America is the Escuela Normal Superior José Abelardo Núñez, founded in Santiago, Chile, in 1842 as the Escuela de Preceptores de Santiago under the direction of the emininent Argentine educator, writer, and politician Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. The first normal school in the Dominican Republic was founded in 1875 by Puerto Rican educator and activist Eugenio María de Hostos.

On 1938 the Escuela Normal Juan Demóstenes Arosemena was founded in Santiago de Veraguas, Panama. It has a rich history and beautiful architecture.

Education by subject | History of education | Teacher training | Education in New Zealand | School types