Page:A history of the Michigan state normal school (now Normal college) at Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1849-1899 (IA historyofmichiga00putniala).pdf/52

 36 HISTORY OF THE

(12) The elements of Latin, together with the German, French, and Spanish languages.’’ (Barnard on Normal Schools.)

In other propositions provision is made that, in order to enter a normal school, students must not be under sixteen years of age, and must be ‘‘well versed in all the branches usually taught in common schools;’’ that the studies should be arranged into a regular course of three years; that model or training departments should be established, and that the senior class should teach in the model school under the immediate direction and oversight of their instructors.

This may be regarded as a sketch in outline of the ideal normal school as it appeared in anticipation, sixty years ago, to the most earnest friends of popular education. It provided for the study of education as a science, and of teaching as a correlated art; for the study of mind in a philosophical aspect and direction, and for the study of children and of childhood in all directions; for a most exhaustive and fruitful study of educational history; for proper attention to physical development and training; for fitting moral and religious instruction, and for a fair degree of intellectual culture. An institution which should embrace in its curriculum of study and courses of instruction all this could not be created at once by an act of a Legislature or by the zeal, however intelligent, of a few leaders of educational thought. The beginnings must of necessity, be very humble, a long way below the ideal. Immediate surroundings, means, and the educational needs of the State and of the times, must be taken into account. Circumstances demanded the best that was practically possible; the ideally desirable and beautiful must wait for more favorable conditions, and a higher stage of educational development.

In their courses of study and instruction, and in their general arrangements, the newly established normal schools in the East could not be expected to approximate very closely to the ideal just described.

At the opening of the first normal school in Massachusetts, at Lexington, on July 3, 1839, no formal course of studies had been prepared. Mr. Pierce, the Principal of the school, writes: