CHAPTER |
Beginnings
1844 to 1848
n December 18, 1844, twenty-nine students from around
the State of New York, two instructors, and a group of
educational and civic dignitaries gathered in an abandoned
railroad depot on the north side of State Street between
Lodge and Eagle streets in Albany. With workers hammering in the
background making last-minute changes in the building, dignitaries,
faculty and students officially opened the newly authorized New York
State Normal School.
The speaker for the occasion was Col. Samuel Young, Superinten-
dent of Common Schools, and one of the people principally respon-
sible for the creation of the school. His remarks, replete with the
oratorical flourishes characteristic of the age, extolled the high calling
of teaching, described the new curriculum, advised the students to
develop good health habits, and urged them to “diffuse throughout the
state a... fund of moral and intellectual wealth.” A half century later,
William Phelps, one of those original students, characterized himself
(Opposite) David Perkins Page, the Normal
School's visionary founding Principal.
il
Gideon Hawley, lawyer, businessman, and
educator, had been New York’s first superin-
tendent of public instruction. In 1844, as
a member of New York’s Board of Regents,
he was instrumental in the founding of the
Normal School, and became a member of
its first Executive Committee.
and his cohorts as “young people who had left their
rural homes in distant parts of the State and journeyed
to the capital to gather, if possible, some inspiration of
the new gospel of education . . . They were teachers
actuated by a high and noble ambition.”
Immediately after the ceremonies, Principal David
Page and faculty member George Perkins divided the
twenty-nine students into two sections and conducted
the first drills in reading and arithmetic. The new
Normal School was officially launched.
The New York State Normal School was New York’s
response to the universal American enthusiasm for com-
mon school education in the 1830s and 1840s, Public
expectations matched the public enthusiasm. Commu-
nity leaders never tired of emphasizing the importance
of an educated electorate in a democracy. “The schools
are the pillars of the republic,” asserted one author.
Such schools were expected to eradicate almost every
vice in American society: crime, vagrancy, unemploy-
ment, alcoholism, prostitution, and political radicalism, to name a few.
Ultimately, said one observer, the schools were “the grand lever, which
is to raise up the mighty mass of this community. . .”
In New York the Legislature in 1795 began offering matching funds to
communities willing to tax themselves to maintain common schools.
Between 1812 and 1814, lawmakers created a complex system for sharing
the costs of supporting these schools, School districts provided buildings,
towns hired and paid the teachers, and the state distributed funds from a
“permanent school fund.” The principal result: attendance burgeoned,
and by 1844 nearly two-thirds of New York's children under age nineteen
were enrolled in schools for at least part of the year.
Most teachers in the common schools were temporary, ill-paid, and
ill-prepared by any standard, In rural upstate New York, common:
school education was a seasonal activity. Older students attended dur-
ing the winter months when there was little farm work to do, and men
did much of the teaching in these “winter schools.” Younger children
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often attended during the summer and were frequently taught by
women, since the male teachers, like their students, often farmed in the
summer. Many teachers, often barely older than their students, had
little more than a few years of common school education, often gained
in the very school in which they taught. Male teachers generally viewed
ill-paid teaching positions as a form of temporary employment until
“something better” came along. Women, with fewer career alternatives,
stayed longer but after marriage often left teaching for “another line of
work.” The rapid turnover of teachers had become a serious problem
by the 1840s.
Those who saw the common schools as the salvation of the nation
concluded that something must be done to better prepare teachers for
their important task. Some turned to existing private secondary acad-
emies. These wete basically college preparatory schools, but the Regents
in 1828 saw them as “fit seminaries . . . for the training of teachers.”
From 1834 to the end of the century, some academies received state.
funds for teacher education, but many supporters of the common schools
believed that teacher training was only an afterthought for the academies
and turned instead to the idea of a normal school devoted solely to that
purpose. Not until the 1840s, however, did they achieve success.
The principal champion of a state-supported normal school was
Colonel Young, an experienced politician who became state superinten-
dent in 1842, won support from two successive governors, William
Seward and William C. Bouck, and found a powerful ally in Calvin T.
Hulburd, the chair of the Assembly Committee on Colleges, Academies
and Common Schools.
Soon after taking office, Young began his campaign at a meeting of
common schools officials in Utica. There he assembled a collection of
educational notables from within the state as well as such national
figures as Horace Mann of Massachusetts. Mann argued passionately
that professional preparation was necessary for successful teaching and
that New York should follow Massachusetts’ example by establishing
one or more normal schools. The gathering followed Mann’s lead and
approved a resolution in favor of such a move.
In 1844 the effort moved into the Legislature. There, Hulburd’s
committee issued a seventy-seven-page report on New York's common
(Top) Alonzo Potter, a member of the
Executive Committee and a professor at
nearby Union College, shared the vision for
common school education and teacher
training espoused by Horace Mann, lawyer
and Massachusetts educational reformer
(bottom). Mann encouraged the organization
of the Albany State Normal School and
recommended David Page as its first Principal,
a recommendation endorsed by Potter. (Potter
photo courtesy of the College Archives,
Schaffer Library, Union College.)
13
schools and introduced a bill to establish a state normal school at
Albany. After some political maneuvering, a substitute bill was passed
on May 7, 1844, and promptly signed by Governor Bouck. The final
measure provided for the establishment and support of a normal school
in Albany “for the instruction and practice of teachers of common
schools in the science of education and in the art of teaching.” To
support the new school the bill provided $9,600 to be followed by five
annual appropriations of $10,000. Supervision was the joint responsi-
bility of the Regents and the Superintendent of Common Schools, but
immediate oversight of the new school fell to a five-person local Execu-
tive Committee which included the superintendent.
Why Albany? Curiously, there seems to have been little competition
for the school. Many of the most important advocates for the Normal
School were from Albany or the immediate vicinity. But the most
compelling argument for the Albany location was political. The Normal
School was, in a sense, an experiment. Locating it within easy view of
the Legislature could generate political support for its continuation. In
addition, Normal School supporters pointed to the educational advan-
tages of training common school teachers where they could observe the
operations of the American republic in the halls of state government.
In any event, Albany in 1844 seemed to be a suitable site. Its
rapidly-growing population was approaching 50,000. Westward-moving
Yankees with their traditional respect for education still dominated the
city, but there were also varying numbers of the older Dutch, newly
arrived Irish and Germans, Jews, and African-Americans. Ninety per-
cent of the population lived within a half mile of the city center at State
and Pearl streets.
Of course, the students who arrived in the 1840s could hardly have
been impressed with the urban amenities: there was no sewage system,
streets were ill-paved, and the inhabitants had to depend on inad-
equate, privately owned water systems. Hogs running loose in the city
streets often outnumbered the people!
Yet Albany was an extraordinarily prosperous city by the 1840s. It
was a major transportation hub. The Hudson River and the Erie Canal
gave Albany superb access to the expanding west as well as New York
Friend Humphrey was mayor of Albany from
1843 to 1845; the city provided use of the
first building occupied by the Normal School.
(Photo reproduced from Cuyler Reynolds,
Albany Chronicles: Albany, 1906.)
(Opposite) The final legislation establishing
the Normal School as New York's first public
instiaition of higher learning: Le wa approved
by the New York State Legislature on May 7,
1844, end promptly signed by Governor
Bouck. (Photo by Gary Gold, '70, of original
document in the New York State Archives.)
15
City and its overseas trade, and by
1842 Albany had rail connections
both to Buffalo and Boston. The
city bustled with activity. Goods
passed through Albany headed for
the west or for New York City and
overseas destinations; immigrants
headed into the interior to carve
out farms. Wealthy merchants such
as the first Erastus Corning
expanded into banking and
manufacturing. Workers manu-
factured iron stoves and rails, brewed
beer, printed books, and sawed logs
into lumber.
Albany was politically powerful
as well. It was the capital of the
most populous state in the Union,
but its political influence reached
into the entire nation through the
Democratic party faction known as
the “Albany Regency,” dominated
by Martin Van Buren.
Yet New York’s capital was not
solely concerned with the nitty gritty
of economic existence or political
power; it was also interested in the
“higher things” of human life. The
community counted some twenty-
five churches of nine denominations
to conduct its religious life. The
Albany Institute of History and Art
had begun its distinguished esthetic
and historical career in the 1790s.
The pages of the Albany Argus showed numerous advertisements for
The cover of the 1847 Annual Register and
Circular showing the School's building, a
former train depot at 115-121 State Street.
“amusements,” including theater, museums, a circus, and art exhibitions.
16
William Franklin Phelps”
Albany also had a long tradition of interest in education.
i The Albany Academy was chartered in 1813 and by the Tee tany ofthe 43 Normal Scheel students, William
time of the establishment of the Normal School had =< Phelps, 45; had experience ag a teacher when he began :
~ his studies in Albany. Phelps began teaching at age sixteen
: in Aubutn, New York, and his exceptional veputation as
his path-breaking experiments in electro-magnetism. The a pedagogue spread across Cayuga County, Iteatned him
a spot as one of the county's st. OWO sttidents atthe new
. , Albany Normal School: 3
1814, the Albany Medical College in 1838, and the > : Recosnieing Phelps’: ae S David’ Page “enbniseed
Albany Law School in 1851. The newspapers were filled | him with the task of starting the School’s practice reaching
program. Phelps believed that a superior teacher emerged:
from a blend of scholar
already seen its physics professor, Joseph Henry, conduct
Albany Academy was joined by its female counterpart in
* with notices of private schools, and Albany's common
school system was beginning to grow.
observation of exp rt teachers. a avo!
experience, Phelps’
Starting a new normal school from scratch was no
easy task, but in the Summer and Fall of 1844 the
Executive Committee energetically attacked the problem.
The City of Albany proposed in August that the new
school occupy the upper floors of a building in the heart
of the city on State Street which had been used as a : Bees
his patterns
railroad depot by the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad eo Pla _additio
rl and “serving ae
5 ¥ * 2 organizations, Phelps
agieeds The-city paid the $1,200 anthual-lease'fee for five aE Lee hitisell a an’ ead freputation as an ‘educational:
years, provided $500 more to rehabilitate the building, -. * « theorist. His Book, The Teacher 's Hand: Bool was sii Be
from 1833 to 1841. The Executive Committee promptly
and later paid another $3,000 for the use of land adjoining
the structure. Nearby well-to-do residents paid for painting
the State Street side of the building. The first home of the
Normal School contained eight rooms: two study rooms
accommodating about one hundred students each, four ie m ULE generations. of
“students would not
recitation rooms, a lecture hall seating about 350, and a
exper fence the teacher
toom for the library and storage of apparatus.
Meanwhile, Francis Dwight, the secretary of the Executive
Committee, prepared a list of necessary apparatus based : 4 ‘ ce fv western
2 : : New York,
on an examination of the nation’s first normal school in
Massachusetts. A primitive library was built from two
sources. School book publishers gave the Normal School
sets of textbooks, and by 1846 the textbook library had
over 5,000 volumes. James L. Wadsworth donated nearly
600 additional volumes; it was the School’s first
18
philanthropic experience, Subsequent reports of the Executive Committee
suggest that while textbooks were periodically replaced, the entire
collection grew very little over the years.
A school, however, needed faculty and students. The principalship
fell to a thirty-four-year-old Massachusetts teacher, David Perkins Page.
Page was one of five candidates for the position and came highly
recommended by Horace Mann. The Executive Committee dispatched
one of its members, Union College professor and Episcopal clergyman
Alonzo Potter, to Newburyport to interview the young man. Potter was
so impressed that he immediately reached an agreement with Page to
appoint him Principal at an annual salary of $1,500. It proved to be an
admirable decision.
Page had been born and raised on a prosperous New Hampshire
farm, and his father for many years pressed him to remain at home to
operate it. But the young man developed a strong taste for education.
He attended district school and, over the objections of his father, spent
about a year at Hampton Academy, teaching during the winter to help
pay for his education. Page’s formal education was very limited, but he
developed a lifelong enthusiasm for self-education.
For about fifteen years, Page taught, first in a small district school
in Newbury, Massachusetts, then in a private school and in the
Newburyport High School. By age thirty-four he had become a successful
classroom teacher. When he left for Albany his students in a letter to
the Newburyport Herald obsetved that Page’s “loss will be greatly felt in
town both as a man and a christian [sic].” But it was the delivery of
several lectures before the Essex County Teachers’ Association that
brought Page to Horace Mann’s attention (and ultimately to the atten-
tion of Albany’s Executive Committee), Mann was so impressed with
the lectures that he printed and distributed some of them at his own
expense.
Page shaped both the curriculum and educational practices of the
new Normal School, and they would: change little for several decades.
The School began operating with winter and summer terms of twenty
and twenty-two weeks with vacations in April and October when teach-
ers’ institutes were normally held. By 1850, however, summer heat
ool to switch to a calendar comparable to the modern Daily class schedule for the Winter 1847-48
m with two terms of twenty-one and twenty weeks begin- term. Note the division of classes into senior,
middle, and junior levels and the instructors
¢ September and late February. The principal classes were 6. each class.
The oldest extant Normal School diploma held between 9:30 am and 1:30 pm with instruction in vocal music and
dating from 1847, George H. Dunham taught
for eight years and also served as school
commissioner of his town for six years. (Gift The curriculum was organized into a two-year program offered in
of Alice Hastings Murphy, MLS, ’40.)
drawing in the late afternoon,
four terms. Students entered the program at various places, depending
20
their preparation. Many dropped out after a term or two to begin or
continue teaching. The subject matter focused on “the common branches”
nowledge’taught in the common schools. William Phelps, a student
é first class, recalled later that some students thought they had
lvanced beyond such elementary knowledge until their teachers with
ching questions and criticisms persuaded them they had much to
Jearn. Instruction in pedagogy and subject matter were closely tied; an
eatly description of the classwork noted that students were thoroughly
tilled in the subject matter taught in the common schools and were
ncurrently instructed in “the best modes of communicating a knowl phoebe Ann Barnard, '47, was typical of many
19th-Century female graduates. She taught a
total of fourteen years before the Civil War,
ow” as well as “what” to teach. Classroom instruction was supplemented and then during that conflict she served for
nine months as a nurse in the U.S. Hospital in
7 Frederick, Maryland. She married in 1866, had
1845 included appearances by physicist Joseph Henry and educator one daughter, and lived as a widow after 1882.
: ‘edge of these branches . . .” Students soon realized that they would learn
ith lectures by leading academic and educational figures. One term in
Henry Barnard, The educational program cul-
tninated in student teaching in a practice (or
model) school, established in 1845,
©. Page’s widely used textbook, Theory and
Practice. of Teaching, made up of lectures he
gave his classes at Albany over a two-year period,
tells us something of what went on in the
~ school. Page offered a realistic but resolutely
high-minded portrait of the good common school
teacher. He began with motivation. Teachers,
he asserted, had to be moved by lofty ideals
since they could hardly expect to be paid
adequately. Their ultimate reward was the
knowledge that they had done an important
and difficult job well.
Similarly, teachers had to be mindful of
their own and their charges’ character
development. All needed good habits: punctuality,
order, courtesy and neatness. But the teachers
also had to be concerned for the bodily health,
moral training and non-sectarian but forthrightly
“religious training” of their charges.
21
NEW YORK STATE COUNTIES
AND COUNTY SEATS*
&
ett
Pie by
STATE OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Still, the common school teacher was centrally concerned with “the
intellectual growth” of the child. Page emphasized that children should
study “subjects” rather than books and had much to say about proper
“methods and motivation, warning equally against stupefying lectures
and “leading questions.” He was skeptical of reward systems but also
wrote at length about proper and improper discipline. Finally, he
emphasized the importance of good relations between teachers and
their communities. Years later, Jacob Chace, ’46, summed up Page’s
“ approach by observing that he “sought to combine Christian teaching
with intellectual development, and to impress his pupils with the same
sense of responsibility in the pursuit of their chosen profession.”
The Albany Normal School developed quickly, in its first four
years. By the Spring of 1845 nearly 200 students were on hand. Soon,
enrollments reportedly outnumbered the students in the three Massa-
chusetts normal schools combined. Indeed the pressure of numbers
was so great that in 1845 the Executive Committee put a cap on
enrollment at 256 students. There was obviously a strong demand for
the only wholly tuition-free institution of post-primary education in
the state.
Other faculty joined Page. Two full-time teachers as well as part-
time instructors in vocal music and art were quickly added. The in-
structional staff was filled out with advanced students who drilled
younger students in common branch subjects; the old “Lancastrian”
system merged imperceptibly into the modern use of graduate students
as instructors. ,
By 1848 the Albany State Normal School was a success, and surely
David Page was responsible for much of it. He had developed a
national reputation through his enormously popular Theory and Practice
of Teaching and was an indefatigable missionary for common school
education and improved teacher education. The Normal School was
now carrying the gospel of teacher education into the whole community.
By 1848 the Albany State Normal School seemed well-placed to seek
permanent funding from the State Legislature.
