XIX. RHODE ISLAND STATE NORMAL SCHOOL

AT BRISTOL.

1. PRELIMINARY MEASURES.

THE following extracts from the Report of the Commissioner of Public Schools for 1845, will show the steps which were taken from 1843 to 1848, to improve the qualifications for teachers, and make their labors more serviceable to the schools.

BOOKS ON EDUCATION.

"As a permanent depository of the most valuable books and documents relating to schools, school systems, and particularly to the practical departments of education, I have nearly completed arrangements, to establish a library of education in every town, either to be under the management of the school committee of the town, or of some district or town library association, and in either case to be accessible to teachers, parents, and all interested in the administration of the school system, or the work of the more complete, thorough and practical education of the whole community. Each library will contain about thirty bound volumes, and as many pamphlets. To these libraries, the Legislature might from time to time hereafter, forward all laws and documents relating to the public schools of this state, and at a small annual expense, procure the most valuable books and periodicals which should be published on the theory and practice of teaching, and the official school documents of other states, and thus keep up with the progress of improvement in every department of popular education."

MODEL SCHOOLS.

"Whenever called upon by school committees, and especially in reference to schools which from their location might become, under good teachers, models in all the essential features of arrangement, instruction and discipline, for other schools in their vicinity, I have felt that I was rendering an essential service toward the improvement and better management of the public schools,' by aiding in the employment of such teachers. If but one good teacher could be permanently employed in each town, the direct and indirect influence of his teaching and example would be soon felt in every school; and his influence would be still more powerful and extensive if arrangements could be made so as to facilitate the visitation of his school by other teachers, or so as to allow of his making a circuit through the districts and towns in his vicinity, and give familiar and practical lectures and illustrations of his own methods of instruction. It is necessary to the rapid progress of education that parents, committees and teachers, should see and know what a good school is, and feel that 'as is the teacher so is the school.""

TEACHERS' INSTITUTE, AND ASSOCIATIONS.

"By Teachers' Associations as now generally used, is understood the permanent organization of teachers among themselves; and by Teachers' Institutes, a temporary meeting, under the appointment of themselves, or the school officer of the state, for professional improvement. Teachers in every town have been urged to hold occasional meetings, or even a single meeting, for the purpose of

listening to practical lectures and discussions, or what would in most cases be better, of holding familiar conversation together on topics connected with the arrangement of schools, or methods of instruction now practised, or recommended in the various periodicals or books which they have consulted, and on the condition of their own schools. But something more permanent and valuable than these occasional meetings, has been aimed at by an organization of the teachers of the state, or at least of a single county, into a Teachers' Institute, with a systematic plan of operations from year to year, which shall afford to young and inexperienced teachers an opportunity to review the studies they are to teach, and to witness, and to some extent practice, the best methods of arranging and conducting the classes of a school, as well as of obtaining the matured views of the best teachers and educators on all the great topics of education, as brought out in public lectures, discussions and conversation. The attainments of solitary reading will thus be quickened by the action of living mind. The acquisition of one will be tested, by the experience and strictures of others. New advances in any direction by one teacher, will become known, and made the common property of the profession. Old and defective methods will he held up, exposed and corrected, while valuable hints will be followed out and proved. The tendency to a dogmatical tone and spirit, to one-sided and narrow views, to a monotony of character, which every good teacher fears, and to which most professional teachers are exposed, will be withstood and obviated. The sympathies of a common pursuit, the interchange of ideas, the discussion of topics which concern their common advancement, the necessity of extending their reading and inquiries, and of cultivating the power and habit of written and oral expression, all these things will attach teachers to each other, elevate their own character and attainments, and the social and pecuniary estimate of the profession."

ITINERATING NORMAL SCHOOL AGENCY.

"With the co-operation of the Washington County Association, the services of a well-qualified teacher were secured to visit every town in that county, for the purpose, among other objects, of acting directly on the schools as they were, by plain, practical exposures of defective methods, which impair the usefulness of the schools, and illustrations of other methods which would make the schools immediately and permanently better."

NORMAL SCHOOL.

"Although much can be done toward improving the existing qualifications of teachers, and elevating their social and pecuniary position, by converting one or more district schools in each town and county, into a model school, to which the young and inexperienced teacher may resort for demonstrations of the best methods; or by sending good teachers on missions of education throughout the schools of a county; or by associations of teachers for mutual improvement,―still these agencies can not so rapidly supply, in any system of public education, the place of one thoroughly-organized Normal School, or an institution for the special training of teachers, modified to suit the peculiar circumstances of the state, and the present condition of the schools. With this conviction resting on my own mind, I have aimed every where so to set forth the nature, necessity, and probable results of such an institution, as to prepare the public mind for some legislative action toward the establishment of one such school, and in the absence of that, to make it an object of associated effort and liberality. I have good reason to believe that any movement on the part of the state, would be met by the prompt co-operation of not a few liberalminded and liberal-handed friends of education, and the great enterprise of preparing Rhode Island teachers for Rhode Island schools, might soon be in successful operation."

ADDRESSES AND PUBLICATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF EDUCATION,

The following extract from Remarks of the Commissioner before the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, will exhibit his mode of preparing the way for a broad, thorough and liberal system of public instruction, by

interesting all who could be reached by the living voice or the printed page, in the nature and means of education, the condition and wants of the schools, and the best modes of introducing desirable improvements.

"To this end public meetings have been held, not only in every town, but in every village and neighborhood, more numerous and more systematic in their plan of operations than was ever attempted in any other community, or than could have been carried out in the same time in any state of greater territory, and with a population less concentrated in villages than this. More than eleven hundred meetings have been held expressly to discuss topics connected with the public schools, at which more than fifteen hundred addresses have been delivered. One hundred and fifty of these meetings have continued through the day and evening; upward of one hundred, through two evenings and a day; fifty, through two days and three evenings; and twelve, including the Teachers' Institutes, through an entire week. In addition to this class of meetings and addresses, upward of two hundred meetings of teachers and parents have been held for lectures and discussions on improved methods of teaching the studies ordinarily pursued in public schools, and for exhibitions or public examinations of schools, or of a class of pupils in certain studies, such as arithmetic, reading, &c. These meetings have proved highly useful. Besides these various meetings, experienced teachers have been employed to visit particular towns and sections of the state, and converse freely with parents by the way-side and the fire-side, on the condition and improvement of the district school. By these various agencies it is believed that a public meeting has been held within three miles of every home in Rhode Island, except in sections of a few towns where an audience of a dozen people could not be collected in a circuit of three or four miles.

To the interest awakened by these addresses and by the sympathy of numbers swayed by the same voice, and by the same ideas, must be added the more permanent and thoughtful interest cultivated by the reading of books, pamphlets, and tracts on the same topics at home. More than sixteen thousand pamphlets and tracts, each containing at least sixteen pages of educational matter, have been distributed gratuitously through the state; and in one year, not an almanac was sold in Rhode Island without at least sixteen pages of educational reading attached. This statement does not include the official school documents published by the state, nor the Journal of the Institute, nor upward of twelve hundred bound volumes on schools and school systems, and the theory and practice of teaching, which have been purchased by teachers, or which have been added to public or private libraries within the last four years. In addition to the printed information thus disseminated, the columns of the different newspapers published in the state have always been open to original and selected articles on education, and to notices of school meetings."

The author of the Remarks above quoted was obliged, from impaired health, to resign his office of Commissioner of Public Schools, before he could organize these various agencies into a complete and permanent system for the professional training and improvement of the teachers of Rhode Island. His plan contemplated a thoroughly-organized and equipped Normal School, and ultimately two Normal Schools-one to be located in the city of Providence, having a connection, under the auspices of the school committee, with a Public Grammar, Intermediate and Primary School, or Schools of Observation and Practice, and also with Brown University, under a distinct professorship, and with access to libraries, apparatus, and courses of lectures, so far as the same could be made available; -and the other in the country. The Normal School at Providence was to receive two classes of pupils-young men, whose previous studies and talent fitted them for the charge of the most advanced classes in public schools in the cities and villages, and the other for female teachers. The plan of a Normal School in the country, was modeled in some of

its features after the institution of Verhli, at Kruitzlingen, in Switzerland of which an account was published in the Journal of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, in 1846, and of the Training School at Battersea, in England. In this school the teachers were to support themselves in whole, or in part, or at least the expense of board was to be reduced, after the plan of the Seminary at Mount Holyoke, in Massachusetts. In both institutions, the course of instruction was to embrace the principles of science as applied to the leading industrial pursuits of the people of the state; and in this department of the plan, the co-operation of the "Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry," was anticipated. No state in the Union possesses such facilities. As was remarked by the Commissioner, in taking final leave of the Legislature, and the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, in 1848:

"Her territory is small, and every advance in one town or district, can easily be known, seen and felt in every other. Her wealth is abundant,-more abundant, and more equally distributed, than in any other state. Her popula tion is concentrated in villages, which will admit of the establishment of public schools of the highest grade. The occupations of the people are diverse, and this is at once an element of power and safety. Commerce will give expansion; manufactures and the mechanical arts will give activity, power, invention and skill; and agriculture, the prudence and conservatism which should belong to the intellectual character and habits of a people. Rhode Island has a large city, to which the entire population of the state is brought by business or pleasure every year, and which should impart a higher tone of manners, intelligence and business, than can exist in a state without a capital; and fortunately, Providence has set a noble example to the rest of the state in her educational institutions,-in the provision of her citizens for schools, libraries, and institutions for religion and benevolence."

PROFESSORSHIP IN DIDACTICS IN BROWN UNIVERSITY.

In the reorganization of the course of instruction in Brown University as presented in the Report of President Wayland, on the 19th of July, 1850, provision is made for a course in "Didactics, or the Theory and Practice of Teaching." The following explanation is given in the Report.

"The course in Didactics is designed at present especially for the benefit of teachers of common schools. There will be held two terms a year in this department, of at least two months each. It shall be the duty of the professor of Didactics to review with the class the studies taught in common schools, and then to explain the manner of communicating knowledge to others. The other professors in the University will be expected to deliver to this class such lectures in their several departments as may be desired by the Executive Board."

The course as thus explained, if entrusted to a competent professor, will accomplish much good to a limited number of teachers, who shall bring a suitable preparatory knowledge, and be able to meet the expenses of a residence in Providence. But unless greatly enlarged, and accompanied with opportunities of observation and practice in the public schools of the city, it will fall far short of meeting the wants of the female teachers of the state, and much the larger portion of the male teachers. It is to be hoped that the plan will be so far extended, as to embrace a Normal School under the auspices of the School Committee of Providence, and in connection with a Grammar, Intermediate and Primary School, as Schools of Practice, for female teachers, like that in successful operation in Philadelphia.

Soon after the preceding account and suggestions were published, it was announced that instruction in the Normal Department of Brown University would be given by Prof. S. S. Greene, who had been appointed to the Professorship of Didactics, and at the same time held the office of Superintendent of Public Schools in the city of Providence. Aside from the different branches of the usual academic course of the University, which were open to the normal students, the exercises of the course were purely didactic, consisting of lectures and drill exercises at the lecture-room of the Providence High School, with an aggregate attendance during the winter of 1851-2 of about eighty, mostly ladies from Providence and the surrounding towns.

In the autumn of 1852, several gentlemen in Providence contributed a sum sufficient for defraying the expenses of a room centrally situated, and providing the same with fixtures suitable for the accommodation of a class of normal pupils, who might desire to attend at a moderate charge, for instruction in the methods of teaching common schools. A circular was issued by Prof. Greene, and eighty-five pupils attended a course of instruction given by him and Messrs. William Russell, Dana P. Colburn, and Arthur Sumner. The average attendance from Nov. 1, 1852, to April 18, 1853, was seventy-five. This was the commencement of the

RHODE ISLAND NORMAL SCHOOL.

In the fall of 1853, a second class was formed under the instruction of the same teachers, Messrs. Greene, Sumner, and Colburn, assisted by lectures on Physical Geography by Prof. Guyot. The attendance was about sixty, mostly females. The success of the school during both these sessions was such, that the City Council made an appropriation in March, 1854, for the establishment of a permanent City Normal School, of which Mr. Colburn was appointed Principal, and arrangements were made to open it on the 29th of May following. This plan was, however, abandoned in favor of the State Normal School, which the General Assembly established at its May Session of the same year, on the recommendation of the Commissioner of Common Schools, Hon. E. R. Potter, with an appropriation of $3,000 a year for its expenses-thereby virtually adopting the private institution, and converting it into the

RHODE ISLAND STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

From the 29th of May, 1854, till July, 1857, the school was continued at Providence, in the hall of the Second Universalist Society, with Mr. Colburn as Principal, and with an aggregate attendance of 308 pupils, and an average annual attendance of 67. By action of the General Assembly, the school was removed in September, 1857, to Bristol, and the annual appropriation reduced to $2,500, where it continued under the management of Mr. Colburn until his death on the 15th of December, 1859. In February, 1860, the school was placed under the control of a Board of Trustees elected by the General Assembly, and on the 17th of