Normal school

A normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. Most such schools are now called teachers' colleges.In 1685, Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.In 1834, the first teacher training college was established in Jamaica by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton under terms set out by Lady Mico's Charity ""to afford the benefit of education and training to the black and coloured population."" Mico Training College (now Mico University College) is considered the oldest teacher training institute in the Western Hemisphere and the English-speaking world.The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont, by Samuel Read Hall in 1823, which was dedicated to training teachers. In 1839, another Normal School was established in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It operates today as Bridgewater State University. In the United States teacher colleges or normal schools began to call themselves universities beginning in the 1960s. For instance, Southern Illinois University was formerly known as Southern Illinois Normal College. The university, now a system with two campuses that enroll more than 34,000 students, has its own university press but still issues most of its bachelor's degrees in education. Similarly, the town of Normal, Illinois, takes its name from the former name of Illinois State University.Many famous state universities—such as the University of California, Los Angeles—were founded as normal schools. In Canada, such institutions were typically assimilated by a university as their Faculty of Education, offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education program. It requires at least three (usually four) years of prior undergraduate studies.