Keene Evening Sentinel
Monday, September 26, 1910
Page 3
NORMAL SCHOOL OPENING
Second Year of Keene Institution to
Begin Tomorrow With About Fifty Pupils.
The second year of the normal school in Keene opens tomorrow and at the same time New Hampshire’s other normal school at Plymouth, which has been in operation a number of years, begins its sessions.
The Keene school began its work last September with an enrollment of a few less than thirty pupils. The increase this year to probably not less than fifty would appear to be a very satisfactory one.
It may be recalled that two years ago, while the agitation for a second normal school in Keene was before the legislature and the people of Keene, it was claimed that the Plymouth school was crowded, and had a waiting list of perhaps 75 applicants who could not be accommodated there.
This was used as an argument for a second school and it also led to the belief that the Keene school would at once get a lot of pupils who were on the Plymouth waiting list. Doubtless, for geographical and other reasons, a second normal school was needed in New Hampshire, while its establishment has been in the line of true progress, and has resulted in giving the advantages of normal training to a considerably increased number of young women who are teaching or preparing to teach. But inquiries that were made after the Keene school was ready to be opened disclosed the fact that there was really no waiting list of would-be pupils who could not be accommodated at Plymouth and it is understood that there is no waiting list there now, that school not yet having the maximum number of pupils it is planned to accommodate. The Keene school in the light of this information, must be credited with having obtained a very satisfactory number of pupils, considering the time it has been in operation, largely from a field hitherto unworked and legitimately its own.
It was often asserted, also, while the normal school subject was being discussed with a view to establishing a second school in our state, that a large number of New Hampshire girls had been obliged to go to other states to get such instruction. It was true, doubtless, that a good many had done so, but a careful examination of the lists of pupils attending all such normal schools in the United States made last year showed a total of only about 230 who’s homes or places of residence were given as in New Hampshire. The Plymouth school has an attendance of about 120 pupils and Keene enough more to bring the total in the state up to about 150. There are several thousand school teachers in New Hampshire and it would appear that unless a large number of them are from other states, the proportion of normal graduates required among the New Hampshire teachers must be small. Otherwise there would be a demand for such teachers that would send larger classes to the state normal schools.
The Keene school opens its second year with virtually the same faculty as that of last year. Miss Rogers, who had immediate charge of the model schools last year is not here again. Miss Jane Blair, a student of Simmons college, is a new teacher employed to teach domestic science and to assist with other work.
The model and practice schools which the normal school provides with teachers and manages, opened at the same time that the Keene Union district schools did. The teachers employed are all normal school graduates or certificate holders showing their manner of preparation for the work. At the Elliot school the teachers are Miss Jennie Furguson of the Presque Isle, Me., school, Miss Lillian Hapgood of the Fitchburg school, who taught last year, Miss Dorothy Bankart and Miss Helen Moulton of the Plymouth school.
At the Lincoln school are Miss Harriet McDuff of the Plymouth school, in grades 7 and 8; Miss Millkury Shaw of the North Adams school in grades 5 and 6; Miss Alice Ramsdell of he Fitchburg school, a teacher here last year, in grades 3 and 4 and Miss Jane Bond of the North Adams school in grades 1 and 2.