Teacher Training in Brooklyn
Gazing out from the shores of Brooklyn Heights in the nineteenth century, a city expanding coque sweden iphone xr seemingly endlessly across the river encompasses the view. New York, separated from Brooklyn by a ferry ride, was the epitome of culture and the pursuit of learning. The more prominent residents of the city envisioned providing outlets for enrichment and learning. Educating the growing population of New York was important to its citizenry and by 1832, educational opportunities were available for all when “public notice [was] given that schools were now open to all as a common right, and that every effort would be made to render them attractive and desirable to all classes of citizens.”[1]
At the same time, that New York was growing and expanding its cultural and educational boundaries, Brooklyn Heights was assuming the designation of New York City’s first suburb. The wealthy men and women who first settled the Heights had the means and desire to organize in their community, cultural venues equal to and perhaps even better than New York’s. Following Brooklyn’s incorporation in 1834 the residents, many connected to maritime commerce, traveled by ferry to work by day and returned home at night. They nurtured the same values, desired the same intellectual enlightenment and had similar educational aspirations as New Yorkers.
The financially secure residents of Brooklyn Heights established private schools for their children, but for the children living beyond the borders of Brooklyn Heights grupa kuroshitsuji black butler y0057 coque iphone 6 iphone 6s 1coques6siphone8148 providing free education was of paramount importance. To address the educational concerns of Brooklynites the Brooklyn Board of Education was organized in 1843, and issues that previously were tabled, now were the focus of discussions.
Because the population of Brooklyn was growing and additional public schools opened in Brooklyn, there was a need for more qualified teachers. The new Board, organized a Saturday Normal School which was as reported in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle opened in October, 1843 and all of the teachers in the primary departments were required coque samsung galaxy s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10 s10e edge plus usc trojans logo logo red to attend.[2]The Committee on Teachers reported the following:
That the establishment of a Normal School, for the purposes named in the resolution, would, in their opinion, be highly beneficial to the class of teachers referred to, and conduce to the general welfare and prosperity of the public schools. Normal schools, established for the purpose of training teachers, had European origins dating to eighteenth century Berlin. The Teacher’s Seminary of Mr. Hall in Concord, Vermont, is believed to be the first Normal School in America, opening in 1823, but it took several more years until the Normal School model was adopted in New York City.[5] There was a proposal in 1827 to establish a central school to instruct coque iphone xr avec support grip teachers, but it was not until 1834, nine years before Brooklyn, that a Saturday Normal School opened in New York City.[6] However, Normal coque iphone xr transparente rouge School instruction was not the only route used to prepare teachers for the classroom. Teachers’ Institutes became popular based on the experiments of Henry Barnard in the Hartford, Connecticut public schools in 1839 when pedagogy students observed classroom instruction for six weeks.[7] In 1845 New York formed “The Teacher’s Institute of the City and County of New York” which remained in operation until 1848 when “The Teachers’ Association of the City and County of New York” was founded.[8] Brooklyn was ahead of the times since as early as 1836: there was already a movement afoot to coque appareil photo iphone xr establish a “Teachers’ Association or Lyceum” “to consider what could be done by them for the benefit of their respective charges, and the rising generation in general.”[9] There is no evidence that kyrie l2829 coque iphone 6 iphone 6s 1coques6siphone10661 this idea went any further at that time since mention of a similar organization in Brooklyn does not appear in the press until 1846 when there was a meeting at the Brooklyn Lyceum on January 16, 1846 calling for the formation of a Teachers’ Institute.[10]
In February of 1855 the “Teachers’ Association of the City of Brooklyn” was founded. The Eagle reported: “The Teachers’ Association met on Thursday eveningMessrs. Syme Reeve of the Executive Committee presented subjects for debate at the next meeting, when the following subject was selected: Does the study of mathematics or the languages most tend to develop the mental faculties” [11] It is important to note that this association was only composed of male teachers of the public schools “associated for the better promotion russell westbrook z4766 coque iphone 6 iphone 6s 1coques6siphone13162 of their interests as a class, and for iphone xs max coque relief mutual edification and improvement in all that pertains to their calling.”[12]
The Teachers’ Association maintained a presence in Brooklyn coque samsung galaxy s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10 s10e edge plus blackpink jennie queen beautiful aesthetic collage and in 1877 Henry Kiddle gave a lecture at a meeting of the Association titled, “Common School Teaching” when he stressed the importance of teachers receiving the proper training. “What we, as educators, need is to impress upon the community the fact that teachers are members of a separate profession; for there is scarcely any error so prolific of evil, and which so utterly ignores the results of modern thought and discovery, as that of believing education, and, of course, teaching, to require no special study in order that it may be understood and practiced.”[13]
Saturday Normal Schools were already operating across the river but had an unsuccessful beginning in Brooklyn and closed in 1843. Although the Teachers’ Association was an attempt at teacher education, the impact was very limited. The by laws of the Brooklyn Board of Education for 1849 gives the requirements for teaching. “A certificate of qualification, dated within one year, from the City Superintendent, or a State or County certificate, or a diploma from the State Normal School, is necessary to render a teacher legally qualified to instruct in the Public Schools of Brooklyn.”[14]A solution was needed to allow prospective teachers to meet the requirements for employment locally.
The city of Brooklyn was growing in the 1850s and Williamsburg joined Brooklyn in 1854. Before this union, Williamsburg had established its own Normal School in 1853, but once the consolidation took place it closed its doors and reopened in February 1856 in a more central location.[15] The press noted at the closing exercises of the Eastern District Normal School “the room was crowded with the lady teachers of the Eastern District and their friends and a more interesting constellation of intellect and beauty never graced the precincts of a literary institution.” In the valedictory as well in the comments by other speakers the students reflected on their fondness for the school.[16]“It is a fact not generally known, or one which is forgotten, that, before the present Normal School [opened in 1856] was organized, many of our best teachers were voluntarily attending the Normal Schools of Williamsburg and New York, while many others were either taking lessons of private tutors, or meeting by themselves for mutual improvement.”[17]The new Normal School was not without controversy and the press devoted space to the pros and cons of the school. In January of 1857 the Eagle reported: “There are nearly five hundred pupils in general attendance, all of whom are females, the greater number teachers in the public schools. The object of the Normal School, tersely expressed, is “to teach the teachers how to teach.” “Ability to instruct does not come by intuition, neither will any amount of learning insure it teaching is an art.”[18]It is significant to note that all the real madrid fc x5959 coque samsung galaxy s7 students who attended the Saturday Normal School were women because “the males are excused from attendance at the school,” as stated on May 7, 1857 in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[19]
The first graduates of the new school received their diplomas on May 30, 1857 a significant accomplishment.[20]However, debates were chronicled by the Eagle on issues ranging from the importance of Normal School education and the requirements for attendance to the question of male vs. female teachers. A few “experts” in the field of education declared “education was peculiarly and exclusively the sphere of the female sex, and that males were entirely unfitted to teach.”[21]This was completely in sync with the mid 19th century doctrine of the “cult of domesticity,” which emphasized the nurturing qualities of coque iphone xr choc women, important when teaching children. Catherine Esther Beecher was an influential American educator, who championed teaching as appropriate to the sensibilities of women, and wrote widely on the subject, thus convincing many skeptics.[22] Also, Horace Mann, a national spokesman for educational reform promoted the employment of female teachers in the early 1840s. However his idea of the education of women differed from that of Catherine Beecher and other educational reformers, He envisioned state cat mommy 2020 coque iphone 11 controlled and financed teacher training schools teaching only pedagogy, whereas Beecher and her contemporaries wanted liberal arts institutions on par with Harvard and Yale.[23]
The Brooklyn Normal School remained in operation and each year graduation ceremonies praised the important work of the school and the graduates. The graduation ceremonies were important public events and the venues where they took place shows their increasing public stature. The graduates assembled at Packer Institute, the Washington Street Methodist Church and finally the Academy of Music. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle celebrated the occasion.
The exhibition of the graduates of the Normal School at the Academy of Music exhibited to great advantage the corps of teachers employed in the public schools of the city Academy was densely crowded; entirely too much so [sic] for the comfort of the greater part of the audience, and many could not gain admission.
The Normal School was instituted a few years ago for the purpose of educating the teachers themselves in the art of teachingAs it is conducted, the female teachers of the public schools are compelled to attend every SaturdayOwing to the low scale of salary, very few of the teachers intend to make a life business of the profession and only expect to follow it for a few years until they find a favorable opportunity of entering that sphere of life which is the natural destiny of woman.[24]
Discontent was mounting to close the Normal School and there was much discussion in the Brooklyn press about its failure. “Its opponents insisted that the radical principle of the school is wrong and that the idea of establishing a high school for educating young women to fit them for the position of teachers is a mistaken one.”[25]The Eagle noted that when the school was first established all the teachers of the public schools attended but this did not last long and the attendance kept dropping until very few teachers were in attendance and consisted primarily of outsiders who were thinking of becoming teachers.[26]The school closed in June 1861 and although american custom do it with passion or not at all coque iphone 11 there were some discussions monitored in the press about meetings and proposals for a new Normal School, nothing happened until the end of the Civil War.
Brooklyn was active in supporting the war and the efforts of its citizenry rivaled those of the city across the river. New York City organized the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair to raise money and supplies for coque silicone liquide iphone xs max the Union Army, and Brooklyn held its own Sanitary Fair on Montague Street in the new Academy of Music. Brooklynites rallied to the needs of the troops and the education of its teachers had to wait.
The Normal School question received public attention once again in 1867. There was vigorous discussion in the press about the feasibility of reopening the Normal School. At first the Board of Education proposed to change the organization and management of the school, employing five zoro one piece fj0597 coque samsung galaxy s7 professors who were not connected to the school instead of the principals of the public schools who formerly served as instructors. A frequently voiced complaint, echoed in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was that after going to the expense of educating teachers there was no guarantee that they would actually teach in the Brooklyn schools. [27] The article went on to say: “If any facilities for obtaining a more complete education than the public schools afford should be deemed desirable let us have a High School, open to all classes alike, in which the training of pupils for the profession of teaching would be an incidental feature.”[28]
Another proposal was to use the money to augment the teachers’ salaries instead of opening a new Normal School. Then the city could hire better teachers. According to The Brooklyn Daily coque rogide iphone xr Eagle: ” Most of the girls who fill the subordinate positions in the schools only regard teaching as a temporary occupation, and the average duration of their services in the schools is not over three or four years. The most capable teachers will not remain here because they can get better pay in other localities.”[29] In October of 1867 another article in the same newspaper appeared which slipknot wallpaper 84ds8 once again challenged the usefulness of a Normal School and proposed instead that: “If the Board of Education has any money to spare, it had better build new school houses to receive the hundreds of children who have within a month been turned away from the overcrowded schools, and are now growing up in idleness and ignorance, a state of affairs disgraceful to Brooklyn.”[30]
All of the rhetoric that was printed by the press led to the foregone conclusion that a plan for a new Normal School was doomed. On November 1, 1867 a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article stated that members of the Board of Education were unable to approve the school and the Board threatened to appeal coque iphone 8 supreme 628antenpascher4620 to the Legislature.[31]The issue was laid to rest for several years.
Discussion of the issue again made the news in early 1871 when The New York Times responded to articles in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on education in Brooklyn. The Packer Institute offered instruction for women and Polytechnic for men, but these schools were not free. “We do not mean mere Saturday normal schools, such as are found in country school districts, and such as Brooklyn has tried and disapproved, but regularly established normal schools, with a complete course of preparation extending through two or three years.”[33] The new Normal College opened in 1870 in New York City providing free higher education to women and it was thought that Brooklyn could do the same. “Brooklyn can better afford to pave fewer streets with patent pavements, and to leave the salaries of all her officials at their present rates, than to be longer without a free school in which teachers dogs is always a good idea coque iphone 11 can be educated for her public schools.”[34]
Fig. 1. Holland Scribner’s Monthly, An Illustrated Magazine for the People (New York, NY: Scribner Co., 1874).
Interest in the Normal School question dissipated but every few months an article appeared in the press on the subject. In 1873 an editorial in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle advocated a central high school or free academy. “A high school would afford a good basis for a city normal school. The argument against this was that a Normal School had been tried but wasn’t successful and that if the Board limited teaching positions to those who had graduated from the public schools additional instruction at a normal school would not be necessary.[37]There were a few other mentions of the issue in the next few years but interest waned.
Training schools for teachers again received attention in 1881 and 1882 when there was a proposal for two professional schools, one for the Western District and another for the Eastern District.[38] In 1882, Calvin Patterson, the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Brooklyn, addressed the problem of training schools for teachers in Brooklyn. “The Committee on High and Normal Schools will, at the proper time, report in favor of the establishment of two training schools, one to be organized in the Eastern District and the other in the Western. These schools should be strictly professional, reviewing only the elementary studies, and doing this as a means of exhibiting methods of instruction.”[39]Brooklyn educational leaders were still not ready to agree to the plan. Another year passed and other proposals were made but nothing was adopted.
Fig. 2. Brooklyn Board of Education, c.1880
Finally, in 1884 a decision was made to use a new school building scheduled to be completed on Berkeley place, as a model primary school and training school for teachers.[40]A summary of the Board of Education meeting was reported in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
The question of coque apple iphone xs bleu establishing a training school for teachers in this city was settled in the affirmative by the Board of Education yesterday. Four classrooms in the new schoolhouse in course of erection on Berkeley place were set apart for this work, the other parts of the building being reserved for ordinary school purposes. From within these limits it is expected that about fifty young ladies will be turned out every year so instructed in the business of handling and enlightening children as to be able effectively to manage primary classes when they are put in charge of them.[41]..