The Upward Road to Professionalism

The education of teachers for their profession has made great strides since the colonial period, when often the only real criterion was that a teacher had to know more than the students. In the nineteenth century, the expansion of the common schools called for larger numbers of teachers, and the development of public high schools required that the quality of elementary teaching be improved. By the 1900s, new theories about psychology, learning, and the nature of teaching made professional training even more necessary. Normal schools, colleges, and universities began to take more seriously the needs of those who would teach society's children.

The Colonial Period

Qualifications Although much emphasis was placed publicly on the religious, political, and moral worthiness of teachers, the public had very low expectations concerning teachers' professional training. There were no specialized schools to train teachers; the only educational training any teacher had was simply having been a student. Generally, a teacher was expected to know just enough about the subject matter to be able to pass along this knowledge to the pupils. Thus began the teacher's revered tradition of being only one page ahead of the students.

Throughout the colonial period, much attention was paid to ensuring that teachers lived up to the expectations of the people who controlled education. In New England, teachers were approved by town meetings, selectmen, school committees, and ministers. In the Middle Colonies and the South, governors and religious groups issued teachers' certificates. Before the American Revolution, teachers were required to sign oaths of allegiance to the crown of England; once the revolution started, they had to sign loyalty oaths to the various states. Salaries and Status The highest salaries and status were granted to college teachers, the next highest to secondary school teachers, and the lowest to elementary school teachers. Salaries were often paid irregularly and were frequently supplemented with payment in produce or livestock. Essentially the colonial teacher received wages equivalent to those of a farmhand.

Teaching was hardly considered a profession in colonial America. Schools were poorly equipped, and students attended irregularly. The school term was short, in many cases making teaching a part-time occupation. Many patrons of education believed teaching was a fairly undemanding task, and they would add to the duties of the teacher such custodial chores as cleaning out the church, ringing the assembly bell, providing for the baptismal basin, running errands, serving as messenger, digging graves, assisting the pastor in reading the Scriptures, leading the singing at church services, keeping records, issuing invitations, writing letters, visiting the sick, and generally making themselves useful. The teacher was often "boarded round," living with a different family every few weeks to stretch out meager school funds. As a result of these and other indignities, the turnover rate among teachers was high, and this turnover contributed to keeping the status and quality of teachers low. In many ways, the idea of teachers being a professional group, with a "calling" to their vocation, did not develop until the 1800s.

The Nineteenth Century

Teachers for the Common Schools The common school movement of the early nineteenth century (described in Chapter 9 of your textbook), with its consequent demand for better-trained elementary school teachers, was one of the most exciting periods in the history of American education. Speeches and pamphlets called for placing education at the center of the endeavor to maintain democracy and for raising the professional qualifications for teaching as well as teacher salaries. The vocation of teaching was put forth as an intellectual, religious, and patriotic calling. In the period between 1820 and 1865, educators began to urge special training for teachers that coupled academic secondary education for teachers with education in the principles of teaching.

Women Teachers As in colonial times, teachers' salaries were quite low. Wages continued to reflect a general attitude that teachers were people who were unable to hold a regular job, or were a bit eccentric, or had nothing much else to do anyway. Indeed, it was at this time that a shift from men to women teachers began in the elementary schools. The result of that trend is still evident today, since more than two out of three teachers are women. Among the reasons women were actively recruited into the teaching ranks was the clear financial benefit to the community. Women could be hired for less than men-in some places, for only about one-third the salary paid to male teachers.

Other factors also encouraged the greater involvement of women in education from the 1830s on. In formerly handcrafted production, such as embroidery, industry was gradually replacing housewives with machines. The arrival of the machine decimated the handicraft industries such as embroidery, displacing large numbers of women. Seeking a higher standard of living, men began to move either westward or to the industrializing cities. As a result, when the common schools began to require better-quality teachers, the female academies, seminaries, and normal schools began to provide them.

Normal Schools and Colleges The first true teacher education institutions were called normal schools. The idea of the normal school originated in Europe. The term normal referred to teaching teachers the norms, or rules, of teaching. The first two normal schools in the United States were established in 1823 in Vermont and in 1827 in Massachusetts. The normal schools were essentially private academies that offered additional training in teaching methods and classroom discipline. A decade later, in 1837, Catharine Beecher became a full-time advocate of normal schools to train women for teaching. In addition, Beecher established the National Board of Popular Education, which sent more than 400 eastern women teachers to the West. (You can read a biography of Catharine Beecher in chapter 9 of this web site.) Besides these newly developing normal schools, there were informal teachers' institutes offered for six-week sessions between teaching schedules, and colleges even began to offer an odd course or two on teaching methods.

Growing Professionalization Following the Civil War, the greater demand for public secondary education carried with it the inherent demand for more highly trained teachers. At the same time, new educational theories and techniques and the development of the field of child psychology required that teachers receive greater training if they were to use the new strategies in the classroom. It became less and less tolerable that many reasons other than educational criteria were used to judge applicants for teaching positions.

By the end of the nineteenth century, balanced teacher-training programs had been developed that included instruction in the academic content the teacher was going to teach, the foundations of educational theory, the administrative aspects of teaching, child psychology, and pedagogical strategies. Every state had at least one public normal school. Most schools accepted students who had about two years of high school background. Most graduates became elementary school teachers after two years, although some took a four-year program to become high school teachers and administrators.

College-level teacher training grew with impetus from two directions. One was the expansion of normal school course offerings into four-year curricula; the other was the development of university courses in education and, eventually, entire departments of education. Both were stimulated by the increasing demand that high school teachers have some college training. Thus, by 1900 and well into the new century, there were several ways to acquire teacher training: normal schools, teachers' colleges, university departments of education, and the less formal teachers' institutes.

The Twentieth Century

After World War I, normal schools continued to evolve into four-year colleges, which quadrupled in number between 1920 and 1940 from about forty-five to more than two hundred. The Great Depression of the 1930s actually helped to raise the standards for teachers, simply as a function of supply and demand. With more people than jobs available, school districts could require additional training for teachers.

A number of major changes in teacher training can be traced over the first fifty years of the twentieth century. The most important change was the move from teacher training to teacher education. This change in labels was not merely empty symbolism. It signaled a change in the substance of what teachers were expected to know. By 1950, most teachers had at least a four-year college degree, with a specific content area of instruction; professional courses in teaching methods and educational psychology; and some period of practice through observation, laboratory experience, and student teaching. It was also recognized that elementary as well as secondary school teachers needed four years of college. The four-year time period has been the norm until the present. Today only a small percentage of states require teachers to have five years of college education before they can be licensed. But many teacher educators, believing that adequate teacher preparation cannot be accomplished in four years of college, are calling for extended teacher preparation programs that combine a baccalaureate degree in a discipline with a master's degree in professional coursework. This is not a totally new idea, since many of the nation's best universities have had master of arts in teaching (MAT) programs for many decades. These MAT programs typically are designed for liberal arts graduates who are preparing to be high school teachers. The new effort is to make all teacher education extend into the graduate level.

While the work of the teacher has, from its beginnings, been among the nation's most important and most noble, this brief historical account shows that the career of teaching has been a bumpy road for many. In earlier times, the low status of teachers hindered their ability to do their work with children. But in recent years, this condition has led to a drive to make elementary and secondary school teaching not just a job or a career but a profession.