Normal University

A normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Most such schools are now denominated "teachers' colleges".

In 1685, St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims, Champagne, France. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained teachers for primary schools, while in Europe normal schools educated teachers for primary, secondary and tertiary schools.

In 1834, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton instituted the first teacher training college in Jamaica pursuant to terms that Lady Mico's Charity prescribed "to afford the benefit of education and training to the black and coloured population."

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers. In 1839, another normal school was established in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It operates today as Framingham State University. In the United States teacher colleges or normal schools began to evolve from their initial mission of training teachers to add programs in the sciences, engineering, technology, health, and business. They started to become formal universities in the 1940s. For instance, Southern Illinois University was formerly Southern Illinois Normal College. The University is now a system of two campuses of more than 34,000 students, but still issues most of its baccalaureate degrees in education. Further, the town of Normal, Illinois was named from the former name of Illinois State University.

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