Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/64

54 In 1863 it was adopted by the State, and a grant of three thousand dollars per year was made for its support, on condition of the city's furnishing the necessary buildings and accommodations, and of not less than fifty teachers designing to teach in the common schools of the State receiving free tuition each year. These persons were to be recommended by county commissioners or city superintendents and appointed by the State Superintendent. In 1865 a building was purchased and fitted up by the Oswego Board of Education at a cost of twenty-six thousand dollars. In 1860 a general act was passed by the Legislature, which provided for four additional normal and training schools in various parts of the State, to be governed by local boards, appointed and removable at will by the State Superintendent, and supported by an annual grant of twelve thousand dollars each. On March 27, 1867, the building provided by Oswego was accepted by the State. With the appointment of a local board of thirteen, the Training School's connection with the city schools ended, except that which necessarily arose from the Practice School. So the city teachers' class had in six years grown into a State Normal and Training School, and had produced four other schools fashioned in its own image.

The development from a training class for the primary teachers of one city to a school for the training of teachers for all grades and for all parts of the State, necessitated an enlargement of the curriculum. The one-year course was enlarged to courses of two, three, and four years. The first covered the field of instruction below the high schools; the second included high-school work; and the third added Latin and Greek, with German and French as an alternative for Greek. The last year of each course was devoted to professional work. In these enlargements there was no departure from the original plan. Instruction in the subject matter to be taught, in the history and philosophy of education, in psychology, in general methods of teaching, and methods in detail for special subjects, and practice in teaching have from the first characterized the Oswego school—characteristics which have been reproduced in most of the normal schools of the country. These enlargements were bitterly opposed by the private school interests of the State, represented in the academies; but they were forced upon the normal schools by two facts: most of the appointees were too imperfectly instructed in the subjects to enter at once upon the discussion of methods of teaching them; and if the schools had rejected all such appointees, their duty of furnishing teachers for the public schools of the State would have