The training of teachers in the United States of America

John Stuart Mill · en
State Universities, founded in accordance with the resolution,
“Schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged,”
have naturally been looked up to as the institutions more fitted than
any other to supply higher instruction in the science and art of
teaching. The first was established as the result of the Ordinance
of 1787, by which two townships of land were appropriated from the
North-West Territory for the support of a State University. Since then,
twenty-eight States of the Union have set apart funds, derived from the
sale of State lands, for the founding and endowing of institutions for
higher education. These universities, gradually increasing in number
and influence, and spreading from their origin in Ohio both west and
east, are dependent for the most part for their students upon the
city High Schools and other secondary schools; and the efficiency of
their work depends greatly upon the efficiency of the preparatory work
done in these schools. It is, therefore, to the interest of the State
Universities to secure that the secondary schools are well equipped and
well taught, and from this point of view one of the distinctive lines
of work of a State University should be the professional preparation
of secondary teachers. The University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, was
the first State University to recognise the necessity of this work.
In 1879 it established a Chair to give instruction in science and
art of teaching, and since then, Training and Normal departments, or
courses in pedagogy, have been established in the State Universities of
Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, N. Dakota, Ohio, Washington
and others.