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Abstract
This article examines the ways in which the very idea of teacher education in the United States was transplanted from foreign lands. Teacher education, particularly normal school training, was based on a model imported from despotic Prussia, a model that was popularised by French and American visitors to the northeastern German land. Although normal schooling naturally was altered in the American context, the subsequent forms of teacher training, particularly in the emerging universities, owed a great debt to international models as well. This article also explores the ideology of the common school movement, which sought social cohesion, because that ideology helps explain why the Prussian model of teacher training became so attractive to conservative educational reformers in a democratic society.
Acknowledgements
Different aspects of this article were presented at the Indiana University International Programs Committee Conference (“Toward a Research-based Approach to International Teacher Education”, Bloomington, IN, 21–23 May 2009) and at the annual meeting of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (Geneva, Switzerland, 27–30 June 2012); the author would like to thank the attendees for their invaluable feedback, as well as that of the reviewers and editors of Paedagogica Historica. The article was greatly facilitated by a research grant from the Eastern Michigan University Office of the Provost in 2012.
Notes
1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, trans. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 2003), 266–267.
2 J. Orville Taylor, “Preface”, in M. Victor Cousin, Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia; Addressed to the Count de Montalivet, Peer of France, Minister of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs; with Plans for School of School Houses, trans. Sarah Austin (New York: Wiley and Long, 1835), vi; John Lukacs, “American nationalism”, Harper’s Magazine 324, no. 1944 (2012): 56–58.
3 Taylor, “Preface”, vi.
4 John Higham, “Changing paradigms: The collapse of consensus history”, Journal of American History 76, no. 2 (1989): 460466; Paul J. Ramsey, “Histories taking root: The contexts and patterns of educational historiography during the twentieth century”, American Educational History Journal 34, no. 2 (2007): 350–354; Lukacs, “American nationalism”, 56–58.
5 Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958, 3rd edn. (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004); Kevin J. Brehony, “From the particular to the general, the continuous to the discontinuous: Progressive education revisited”, History of Education 30, no. 5 (2001): 413–432; Hermann Röhrs, “Progressive education in the United States and its influence on related educational developments in Germany”, Paedagogica Historica 33, no. 1 (1997): 45–68. For a brief survey of the US scholarship on progressive education, see David F. Labaree, “Progressivism, schools and schools of education”, Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 1–2 (2005): 275–288.
6 James C. Albisetti, “German influence on the higher education of American women, 1865–1914”, in Henry Geitz, Jürgen Heideking and Jurgen Herbst, eds. German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 227.
7 Jurgen Herbst, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Henry Geitz, Jürgen Heideking and Jurgen Herbst, eds. German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jurgen Herbst, “Teacher preparation in the nineteenth century: Institutions and purposes”, in Donald Warren, ed. American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 213–236.
8 “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, in Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1888–89 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1891), 278.
9 Although organised and worded differently, much of this section on the development of common schooling in the US is drawn from my recent monograph; see Paul J. Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling in the United States: A History of America’s “Polyglot Boardinghouse” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). While the title suggests that the monograph is a focused study on bilingual instruction, the text is context heavy and posits my interpretation not only of dual-language instruction, but also of American public education.
10 Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 63–66; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1946), 144–158, 177–189, 334–349; Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-nineteenth Century Massachusetts (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 5–11, 222–223; Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 309–311.
11 Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 63–67; Katz, Irony, 222; Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), 139–160; Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-century America (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1975), 3–17; US Immigration Commission, Statistical Review of Immigration, 1820–1910 – Distribution of Immigrants, 1850–1900 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911), 4–5, 8–11; John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 64.
12 Horace Mann, “Tenth and Twelfth Annual Reports to the Massachusetts Board of Education”, in James W. Fraser, ed. The School in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 54.
13 Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 30–74; Katz, Irony, 224; William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From the Common School to “No Child Left Behind” (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 26, 4344; John L. Rury, “Social capital and the common schools”, in Donald Warren and John J. Patrick, eds. Civic and Moral Learning in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 77–80.
14 Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, rev. ed. (Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1959), 101–168; James W. Fraser, Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), 23–47; John Wakefield, “‘Whosoever will, let him come’: Evangelical millennialism and the development of American public education”, American Educational History Journal 39, no. 2 (2012): 289–306; Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 75–103.
15 Katz, Irony, 27–50, 159–160.
16 Robert H. Wiebe, The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 31. In Europe, virtue also came to be associated with external attributes, so much so that the physiognomic “scientists” claimed that they could determine the status of people’s morality from their outward appearance; see Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006), 47.
17 B. Edward McClellan, Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 26.
18 By-laws of the School Officers and Trustees of the Nineteenth Ward, and Rules for the Government of Schools (New York: J. Youdale, 1863), 4, 27, 30; Marcius Willson, The Fourth Reader of the United States Series (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1872), 21–22, 55–57, 117–118; Benjamin B. Comegys, ed. A Primer of Ethics (Boston,MA: Ginn and Company, 1891), 48, 124; Asa Fitz, The American School Hymn Book (Boston, MA: Crosby, Nichols and Company, 1854), 94; Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 41–48, 226.
19 Elson, Guardians of Tradition, 47.
20 Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 75–103; Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling, 11–20.
21 Catharine E. Beecher, “An essay on the education of female teachers for the United States, 1835”, in The School in the United States, 62; Wakefield, “‘Whosoever will, let him come’”, 289–306; Annemieke van Drenth and Mineke van Essen, “‘Shoulders squared ready for battle with forces that sought to overwhelm’: West-European and American women pioneers in the educational sciences, 1800–1910”, Paedagogica Historica 39, no. 3 (2003): 275–276.
22 Katz, Irony, 19–62, 80–93, 115–160; Maris A. Vinovskis, The Origins of Public High Schools: A Reexamination of the Beverly High School Controversy (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 79–82, 104–108; Fraser, Between Church and State, 49–65; Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The State and the Non-public School, 1825–1925 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 57–85; Ellwood P. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States: A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), 115–160.
23 See, for example, Johann Heinrich Pesatlozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, trans. Eva Channing (Boston, MA: D.C. Heath, 1907); Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, How Gertrude Teaches Her Children: An Attempt to Help Mothers to Teach Their Own Children and an Account of the Method, trans. Lucy E. Holland and Frances C. Turner (Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen, 1894); Henry Barnard, ed. Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism: Life, Educational Principles, and Methods, of John Henry Pestalozzi, with Biographical Sketches of Several of His Assistants and Disciples, 2 vols. (New York: F.C. Brownell, 1859); Maarten Bullynck, “The transmission of numeracy: Integrating reckoning in Protestant North-German elementary education (1770–1810)”, Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 5 (2008): 563–585; Maria A. Laubach and Joan K. Smith, “Transatlantic dialogue: Pestalozzian influences on women’s education in early nineteenth century America”, American Educational History Journal 39, no. 2 (2012): 365–382.
24 Michal Soëtard, “Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi”, Prospects 14, no. 1–2 (1994): 297–310; Barnard, Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, vol. 2, 223; Katz, Irony, 115–160.
25 Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 12–56.
26 Cousin, Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, v–xvii, 62–67; “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 278; B.A. Hinsdale, “Notes on the history of foreign influence upon education in the United States”, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), 622–624; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 21–24, 32–50; Donald Warren, “Waiting for teacher education”, Teacher Education Quarterly 25, no. 4 (1998): 90–95.
27 Hinsdale, “Notes on the history of foreign influence”, 621–622; Barnard, Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, vol. 1, 150; Karl-Ernst Jeismann, “American observations concerning the Prussian educational system in the nineteenth century”, in German Influences on Education, 21–41; Christopher J. Lucas, Teacher Education in America: Reform Agendas for the Twenty-first Century (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), 16–28; Egbert R. Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 1849–1965 (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1971), 2–3.
28 Barnard, Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, vol. 1, 150; Hinsdale, “Notes on the history of foreign influence”, 622; Jeismann, “American observations concerning the Prussian educational system”, 21–41; Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 2–3; Horace Mann, “Seventh Annual Report”, in Lawrence A. Cremin, ed. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men (New York: Teachers College Press, 1957), 54–56.
29 Calvin E. Stowe, “Report on elementary public instruction in Europe”, in The School in the United States, 94–98.
30 Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson, 36–44, 74–87, 210–226; James Oakes, “The ages of Jackson and the rise of American democracies”, Journal of the Historical Society 6, no. 4 (2006): 491–500; Sean Wilentz, “Politics, irony, and the rise of American democracy”, Journal of the Historical Society 6, no. 4 (2006): 537–539; Walter Dean Burnham, “Table I: Summary: Presidential elections, USA, 1788–2004”, Journal of the Historical Society 7, no. 4 (2007): 530–537; David Nasaw, Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 39–43; Beecher, “An essay on the education of female teachers”, in The School in the United States, 62; Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling, 11–20.
31 Stowe, “Report on elementary public instruction in Europe”, in The School in the United States, 94–98; Barnard, Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, vol. 2, 217–227.
32 “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 277–278, 281–284; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 65–86; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 16–28.
33 “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 284–285, 287–288; Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 2–4; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 25–28.
34 Catalogue of the Officers and Members of the Michigan State Normal School, State Teachers’ Institute, and State Teachers’ Association (Detroit, MI: E.A. Wales, Printer, 1853), n.p.; “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 287–288; Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 3–11; Ronald Flowers, The Michigan State Normal School and the Preparation of Teachers: A History and Institutional Analysis (Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co, 2008): 126–138, 166–179; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 94–95; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 26.
35 Catalogue of the Officers and Members of the Michigan State Normal School, 1853, n.p.; “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 287–288; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 94–98; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 22–28.
36 Catalogue of the Officers and Members of the Michigan State Normal School, 1853, n.p.; “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 287–288; Flowers, The Michigan State Normal School, 166–179; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 29–37.
37 Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 92–139; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 25–37; Catalogue of the Officers and Members of the Michigan State Normal School, 1853, n.p.
38 “The inception and the progress of the American normal school curriculum to 1880”, 281288; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 60–86; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 12–15, 22–37.
39 Roberta Wollons, “The immigrant preschool”, History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 2 (2009): 241–243.
40 Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling, 11–20, 56–62; Herbst, And Sadly Teach, 92–106; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 21–29; Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 14–15.
41 Hermann Röhrs, The Classical German Concept of the University and its Influence on Higher Education in the United States (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), 35–60, 75–87; Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (1962; reprint, with an introductory essay and supplemental bibliography by John R. Thelin, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 118–122, 264–286; Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1639 (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1977), 116–139; Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 121–179; Christopher J. Lucas, American Higher Education: A History (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994), 170–174; John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 110–154; Hinsdale, “Notes on the history of foreign influence”, 591–594, 608–613; Paul J. Ramsey, “Building a ‘real’ university in the woodlands of Indiana: The Jordan Administration, 1885–1891”, American Educational History Journal 31, no.1 (2004): 20–28.
42 David Starr Jordan, The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet of Democracy, vol. 1 (Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company, 1922), 290; David Starr Jordan, The Voice of the Scholar, with Other Addresses on the Problems of Higher Education (San Francisco, CA: Paul Elder and Company, 1903), 31.
43 Ramsey, “Building a ‘real’ university in the woodlands of Indiana”, 20–28.
44 Ramsey, Bilingual Public Schooling, 104–134.
45 Geraldine Jonçich Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 47–84; Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, “Whither schools of education? Whither education research?”, Journal of Teacher Education 50, no. 5 (1999): 373–376; Isbell, A History of Eastern Michigan University, 141; Ramsey, “Building a ‘real’ university in the woodlands of Indiana”, 20–28; David F. Labaree, The Trouble with Ed Schools (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 17–38; Lucas, Teacher Education in America, 29–47.
46 Hinsdale, “Notes on the history of foreign influence”, 594–603.
47 Derek S. Linton, “American responses to German continuation schools during the progressive era”, in German Influences on Education, 69–82; Richard Neumann, Sixties Legacy: A History of the Public Alternative Schools Movement, 1967–2001 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 78–80. Linton points to the need for additional scholarship on German-influenced continuation schools, and Neumann’s very brief treatment of the British informal schools suggests a substantial void in the (American) historical literature. Other international influences on education and teacher training, however, have received considerable attention from historians, such as demographic shifts (e.g. the mass immigration during the Progressive Era) and international conflicts (e.g. the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War).