Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
From the late nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth century, New York City housed two contrasting models of professional education for teachers. In 1870, the Normal College of the City of New York opened in rented quarters. Founded to prepare women to teach in the city's public schools, in just ten weeks the tuition-free, all-female college “filled to overflowing” with about 1,100 enrolled students. Based upon a four-year high school course approved by the city's Board of Education, the “chief purpose” of the college was to “encourage young women… to engage in the work of teaching in elementary and secondary schools.” Vocationally oriented and focused on practical skills, the Normal College stood in contrast to the School of Pedagogy at New York University and Teachers College, Columbia University founded in 1890 and 1898, respectively. The Normal College's neighbors situated their work within the academic traditions of the university. According to a School of Pedagogy Bulletin from 1912, faculty sought to,
meet the needs of students of superior academic training and of teachers of experience who are prepared to study educational problems in their more scientific aspects and their broader relations.
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11 On this point, I am especially grateful for the wise insights of an anonymous reviewer.Google Scholar
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18 For more on the history of the Normal College and Hunter College, refer to Grunfeld, Katherina Kroo, “Purpose and Ambiguity: The Feminine World of Hunter College, 1869–1945,” (Ed.D. dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1991).Google Scholar
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23 New York University School of Pedagogy Bulletin, 1900; New York University Archives. Not alone in their focus, university-based education faculty around the nation framed their work through the rhetoric of the academy. In his report to the president on the 1920–1921 academic year, Dean Henry Holmes of Harvard's Graduate School of Education noted, “we are deeply concerned to develop research, for which there is even greater need in Education than in other subjects.” “The Graduate School of Education,” Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College 1920–1921, 177; Harvard University Archives.Google Scholar
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40 Teachers College, School of Education, School of Practical Arts Announcement, 1916–1917; Gottesman Libraries. Such trends were hardly unique to New York City. During the 1920–1921 academic year, 70% of candidates for a degree in Harvard's Graduate School of Education were men, but 75% of special students were women. That year the school conferred five Doctor of Education degrees, all to men. “The Graduate School of Education,” Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College 1920–1921, 179; Harvard University Archives.Google Scholar
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43 “Report of the Dean of the School of Education for the Years 1920–1921 and 1921–1922,” NYU Report of Officers; New York University Archives. Faculty at Harvard echoed similar concerns. “As against training, of whatever sort, stands research,” Dean Holmes noted in his report. “The two are of course neither incompatible nor unrelated, although they are at times in conflict.” “The Graduate School of Education,” Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College 1922–1923, 161; Harvard University Archives.Google Scholar
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50 For more on the role of the state in teacher professionalization, refer to Preston, “Gender and the Formation of a Women's Profession.” Also refer to Barbara Beatty, “Teaching Teachers in Private Universities,” in Places Where Teachers Are Taught, eds. John I. Goodlad, Roger Soder, and Kenneth A. Sirotnik (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990). 224.Google Scholar
51 Ludmerer, Kenneth M., Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 237; Rothstein, William G., American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 107 and 143; Konefsky, Alfred S. and Schlegel, John Henry, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Histories of American Law Schools,” Harvard Law Review 95, no. 4 (February 1982): 833–51; Johnson, William R., Schooled Lawyers: A Study in the Clash of Professional Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 121; Stevens, Robert Bocking, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2001), 176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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53 A critical difference between teachers and other professions is the extent to which members of these groups control and establish the standards that shape the field. To a degree, the difference stems from the history of the institutional development of these occupations. Doctors, for example, existed and worked independently before the advent of hospitals; the cornerstones of the profession were in place before medicine was institutionalized. Rothstein, American Medical Schools; Ludmerer, , Learning to Heal. The institution of public schooling, in contrast, predated the occupation of public school teaching and thus set the parameters around teachers’ work lives. Indeed, teaching is an old profession. But the invention of public schooling transformed the nature of that work in significant ways. Mattingly, Paul H., The Classless Profession: American Schoolmen in the Nineteenth Century, New York University Series in Education and Socialization in American History (New York: New York University Press, 1975); Perlmann, Joel and Margo, Robert A., Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). This dynamic is explored more fully in my forthcoming book manuscript, “The Failure of Reform: A History of Teacher Professionalization Policies.”Google Scholar
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100 While applied learning has come to characterize university-based schools of education across the nation, not all programs followed the New York model. Schools like Stanford, for example, were founded to “meet the legitimate demands of the State in the matter of the preparation, training, and certification of teachers and school officers” and thus did not experience a stark period of transformation. Refer to “School of Education,” Announcement of Courses, 1918–1919, 35; Leland Stanford Junior University. Boston University followed a similar pattern. Refer to Beatty, “Teaching Teachers in Private Universities.” Harvard followed yet another trajectory. With the safety net of a large endowment, during the Depression years the Graduate School of Education resisted expansion. As circumstances became more dire, the program opted to curtail programs rather than shift mission. “The Graduate School of Education,” Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College. 1931–1932, 175–76; Harvard University Archives.Google Scholar
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