Our Founders
"As Is The Teacher, So Is The School'
M. Ci.ABic:r Brnsc.u
©v ini. ohku.vvl thirteen State* Maryland was
the seventh, in point of time, to engage in the
“enterprise" of training teachers. Previous to
tifit its policy in support of education for any purpose
as to grant some form of “aid"’ to existing institutions,
his policy was vigorously and successfully opposed in
ne Constitutional Convention of 186-1 by such friends
f a State system as Henry Stockbridge. William Dan
■], and Joseph M. Cushing of Baltimore City and
lines I.. Ridgely of Baltimore County. The Constitu-
ional revisions of that year authorized the appointment
f a Stale Superintendent of Public Instruction who
hould immediately draw up a plan for a uniform sy.s-
eni of free public schools and submit it to a special
-ession of the General Assembly to be. called for its
onsideralion. Accordingly. Governor
Л.
W. Bradford
ppointed Reverend I.ibcrtos Van Bofckcleti Slate Su-
icrintendcnt on November 12. 186?. Mr. Van Bokkc-
cn. a rector, also direc tor of a private school in Gitons-
afle since 28-15, proceeded at once to acquire such in-
uimatiun as could be had concerning educational coa¬
litions in the counties of the State, in her sister States,
nd from visits to Normal Schools in the North Atlantic
hates. 11c submitted his plans on December 30, 1865,
iroviding enthusiastically for a system of public cduca
ion “beginning with the Primary School and progress-
itg through a Normal School." which vs as more clab-
iratc Ilian that devised by any other Stale in the Union.
Mr. Van Rokkelen in submitting his plan enclosed
he plan “of operations” as submitted by Professor \1.
\. Newell for the new Normal School to be created.
Said Mi. Van Bokkelen: "I ask attention to Professor
Newell’s report . . . because it conveys to our minds a
dear idea of what ,i Normal School is designed to ac¬
complish, and the important relation it bears to a
(borough system of Public Instruction. The importance
cannot lx exaggerated. Without such an institution,
liberally sustained and efficiently conducted, no State
can establish and maintain Public Schools which will
be uf any real advantage tu the community. The subject
no longer needs argument. It is a maxim universally re¬
ceived that 'as is the teacher, so is trie school’; and we
may add. the teacher is what his training makes him.”
Professor Newell's report, made after ' biting several
Normal Schools, states: "It is now about forty years
since some bold thinkers in the Eastern States began to
preach a new and startling doctrine respecting Educa¬
tion: that a person requires special training to make him
a good teacher, just as a man needs special training in
order to become a good lawyer, a good physician, or a
good mechanic. This truth, so obvious and so impor¬
tant. met with such a reception as the world generally
accords to great and simple imlhs, when first presented.
Some derided it as a truism, some branded it as false;
many accepted it in theory and rejected it in practice.
Fourteen years afterwards, in the year 1830, the State
of Massachusetts, urged by one of her private citizens
who offered to defray half the expense, set on foot, as
an experiment, three schools for the training of teach¬
ers. These wcie the pioneer Normal Schools of the
United Stales.
“The Normal School, in its highest development,
embraces three leading features: first, an academical de¬
partment where the students have the opportunity of
reviewing the elementary studies, as well as of pursuing
•in advanced course; second, a professional school, where
they learn theoretically how to organize, classify, teach,
and govern a school; third, the model school, and school
of practice, where they see the various operations of
a school conducted after the best methods, and begin
themselves to leach and govern under the direction of
competent instructors. Some institutions give greater
prominence to one, and some to another of these de¬
partments, bid all agree that the co-existence and coop¬
eration of the three are necessary to a Normal School in
its highest stale of efficiency.”
Mr. Van Bokkelen, in support of his plans for "our
Temples of Science” (school buildings!) “ventures to
appropriate an editorial from the Baltimore bun. winch,
since the unifurm system of Public Instruction was
announced, lias been earnest in advocating General Ed
ueatiun on the most liberal basis." The editor states:
“’Инге
is more to be effected than convenient buildings
to the comfort and health of pupils — the tastes and
habits of children are to be formed, their ideas of the
beautiful, their whole moral natures are to be influenced
in the school mom — and all these are colored by ex
tcrnal objects. If the boy looks for years upon ill shaped
apartments and gloomv walls, upon the externals and
the interim of a school room from which harmony of
proportion, of blight ness, of coloring and variety of out¬
line have been banished, his character will proportion i-
JfiNUARY
1941
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