Page:A history of the Michigan state normal school (now Normal college) at Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1849-1899 (IA historyofmichiga00putniala).pdf/56


 * * and train them in the best methods of teaching and conducting common schools.’’

The trustees were also axfhorized, but not required, ‘‘to make provision for a Model Primary School * * * * in which the pupils of the normal school shall have opportunity to practice the model of instruction and discipline inculcated in the normal school’’.

The course of instruction included: ““(1) A thorough review of the studies pursued in the lowest grade of common schools. (2) An acquaintance with such studies as are embraced in the highest grade of common schools, authorized by law, and which will render the teaching of the elementary branches more thorough andinteresting. (3) The art of teaching and its methods, including the history and progress of education, the philosophy of teaching and discipline, as drawn from the nature of the juvenile mind, and the application of those principles under the ordinary conditions of our common schools."' '

The provision for professional instruction is stated a little more definitely than in Massachusetts.

In place of providing a model school of their own, the trustees made an arrangement by which the several schools in one of the districts of New Britain, where the normal school was located, were to be used as schools of observation and practice by the students of the normal. These schools were attended by about four hundred children who were classified ‘into three Primary, one Intermediate (Grammar), and one High School.’’ ‘This plan was, in theory at least, the best that could have been made, at that time, and possibly with proper arrangements for oversight and criticism, the best for any time.

‘The normal school opened at Albany, N. Y., in December of 1844, of which D. P. Page was the first Principal, began with a course of studies essentially the same as that of the Massachusetts schools. ‘The course in the normal schools for female teachers, opened at Philadelphia, in 1848, was of the same general character, but a little less extensive.

With the example of these pioneer institutions before them,