The 1906 Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction Henry Clinton Morrison recognized the problem and recommended the establishment of more normal schools.
REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION (Henry C. Morrison)
BEING THE FIFTY-FOURTH REPORT UPON THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE
1906
(P.196)
CHAPTER XII.
THE RECRUITMENT OF THE TEACHING FORCE
Our facilities for the training of teachers are the normal school at Plymouth, maintained by the state, and the training schools at Concord, Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth, maintained by the respective cities. The annual graduation from the five institutions may be taken as about 80; the average annual number of vacancies to be filled by inexperienced teachers as about 350.
(P. 197)
The Normal School.
The state normal school is the only institution of its class which we maintain. The school is at present in a state of efficiency which will compare favorably with that of any in the country….
The public schools of the village of Plymouth serve as the model school of the institution, and in them the whole elementary program is worked out in a completeness not excelled, if indeed it is equaled at any other point in the state…
The model school is also the training school and there the students have opportunity for actual teaching in application of the principles which they have learned under the eye of an experienced teacher….
The standard of admission to the normal school is the same as that to college, namely, graduation from an approved high school or equivalent institution. The length of the regular course is two years. Students are admitted in February and in September, and graduated in January and in June, diplomas being conferred in June only, however.
Tuition is free to students who agree to teach in New Hampshire for at least a period equal to that of their course at the school….
The Need of More Normal Schools
There is scarcely any need more pressing than that of enlarged means for the training of teachers. To demonstrate the need it is not necessary to do more than cite again the fact that there were reported last year as teaching for the first time, three hundred and seventy-six persons, while our normal school graduates in June of this year were fifty-four. The superintendent has many times received assurances from school boards that normal school graduates would be employed as teachers if they were to be had. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that many girls in localities remote from Plymouth would go to normal school if such a school were situated nearer home.
(P.199)
Two courses are open, either to enlarge the present school or to build additional schools. It seems to the superintendent that the latter is manifestly the correct policy.
In locating a normal school, one of the first things to be considered, if not indeed the very first, is public schools sufficiently extensive to provide adequate means for practice work. The broad intellectual foundation derived from the study of the principles of pedagogy and of education is essential to the capacity of the future teacher for growth and for independent work. Practice in applying those principles under the eye of the best teachers obtainable is essential to the right knowledge of the principles themselves, and still more essential to the practical efficiency of the teacher when she takes her first school. As in all other workers, so in the teacher, theory is a necessary foundation, but practical knowledge is essential to success. Now if you increase the attendance at a normal school above and beyond the capacity of the model school to provide opportunity for practice, you lay the axe at the root of the power of the whole school to turn out practical teachers. A normal school must then in its location be in connection with a system of public schools large enough to afford sufficient opportunity for practice….