The American State Normal School: "An Instrument of Great Good" (review)

This is a very well researched volume on an important topic in the history of American education—the founding and evolution of state normal schools. The extensive bibliographic notes reflect the substantial primary and secondary literature reviewed. Those involved in teacher preparation today will recognize similarities in vocabulary and practice between teacher education in the 19th century and modern programs. This recognition is, of course, one of the salutary benefits of reading history: Others have trodden the ground of many issues we face today.

There are, however, limitations to the work that must be noted. The writing itself sometimes suffers from an odd sense of organization of the material. Topics are raised, discussed, and then dropped. Frequently, they emerge again some pages later. On a larger scale, the book raises a fundamental question of whether the job of the historian is to describe or to analyze and interpret. This volume offers a high level of description, little analysis, and no obvious theoretical framework for interpreting issues of class, race, and gender. Further, there is no effective analysis of such driving values as Calvinism, nationalism, and capitalism and their effect on 19th-century American education.

The author repeatedly refers rather abstractly to the "middle class" in describing the opportunities for social mobility provided by the normal school experience. Yet she does not clearly explain the ideas, habits, behavior, aspirations, or values this class label entails or the kinds of ideas or behaviors normal students brought with them. Modern scholarship on working class academics is entirely absent, although the issues of class, education, and social mobility are central to Ogren's claims about the importance of the early normal schools.

There is reference to "gender ideology," but little explanation of the social meaning of this term or how normals influenced and were influenced by contemporary thinking on such matters. Although many descriptive elements are included (e.g., many normal alumnae deferred marriage and how many went on to engage in unconventional vocational activities), there is little substantive discussion of the meaning of such description in a larger social context.

A much greater omission relates to issues of race. Even so basic a matter as the atrocious lack of resources that dogged many of the historically Black normals and their subsequent evolution into state colleges is simply not addressed.

Ogren includes extensive descriptions of statements in catalogs and other period documents but provides little sense of actual practice—that is, whether what really occurred matched what was officially described. Normal schools frequently used phrases like "the science of arithmetic," "the science of teaching," or the "science of the mind," and various florid course names characteristic of the 19th century abound. Was the word "science" invoked to communicate the credibility of normal school teaching, learning, and scholarship? I suspect so, but I don't know. At one point, Ogren describes a lesson in which children are encouraged to remember Columbus by observing the cover on a dish (he "dish-covered" the New World) (37). Though Ogren is elaborating on skepticism about the object teaching craze of the time, the story is so absurd to the modern mind that serious questions about the teaching methods of the era must be raised.

A significant number of normal graduates went on to distinguished careers, and Ogren implies that this is because of the quality education they received. Yet the cases described account for a distinct minority of the numbers who studied at normal schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ogren is clearly sympathetic to her subject, and the reader is left to wonder if this is a somewhat romanticized view of the normal school experience.

The author provides little analysis of the "missionary impulse" at the heart of much normal school effort. Missionary zeal would seem related to persistent issues of status that dog teachers to this day. Such a mindset suggests that those who are called...