The academy and college take young men
from the district and high schools, and furnish them with additional
aids for the business of life; but the Normal School is truly the helper
of the common schools. It receives its pupils from them, fits these
pupils for teachers, and sends them back to superintend where a few
months before they were scholars. The Normal Schools are sustained by
the common schools; and these latter, in return, draw their best
nutriment from the former. This institution stands with the common
school; it is as truly popular, as really democratic in a just sense,
and its claim for support rests upon the same foundation.
In Massachusetts we have abandoned the idea, never, I think, general,
that instruction in the art of teaching is unnecessary.
The Normal School is, with us, a necessity; for it furnishes that
tuition which neither the common school, academy, nor college can. These
institutions were once better adapted to this service than now. There
has been a continual increase of academic studies, until it has become
necessary to establish institutions for special purposes; and of these
the Normal School is one. Its object is definite. The _true_ Normal
School instructs only in the art of teaching; and, in this respect, it
must be confessed we have failed, sadly failed, to realize the ideal of
the system. It is not a substitute for the common school, academy, or
college, though many pupils, and in some degree the public, have been
inclined thus to treat it.
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