380 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



Two States only of our Union have yet established State 

 normal schools : Massachusetts and New York. Massa- 

 chusetts has three, educating; in all about two hundred 

 pupils : and New York has one, containing about the same 

 number of students ; the sole object of both being, to edu- 

 cate teachers of common schools. The experiment has been 

 signally successful. The report for 1844 of the Massachu- 

 setts Board of Education, says of one of their schools, (that 

 at Lexington) : 



" Sueh is the reputation of this school, that applications have been made 

 to it from seven of our sister States for teachers." 



And Mr. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts 

 Board of Education, writes to me : 



" When first opened in Massachusetts normal schools were an experi- 

 ment in this country. Like all new ideas, they have had to encounter 

 serious obstacles ; but they have triumphed over every species of opposition, 

 have commended themselves more and more every year, to the good sense 

 of our people, and we now have the pleasure, not only of seeing ihem 

 firmly established here, but of knowing that their success has given birth 

 to a similar institution in the State of New York, and promises ere long to 

 do the same in other States." 



The normal branch of the Smithsonian Institution is in- 

 tended not by any means to take the place of State normal 

 schools, but only in aid of them ; as an institution in the 

 same department, supplemental to these, as they may 

 gradually increase throughout the Union, but of a higher 

 grade, and prepared to carry forward young persons who 

 may have passed through the courses given in the former, 

 or others who desire to perfect themselves in the most use- 

 ful of all modern sciences, the humble yet world-subduing 

 science of primary education; an institution, also, in which 

 the improvement and perfecting of that republican science 

 shall be a peculiar object; an institution, finally, where we 

 may hope to find trained, competent, and enlightened teach- 

 ers for these State normal schools. 



As an essential portion of this normal department, pro- 

 fessorships of the more useful arts and sciences are to be pro- 

 vided for. The character of common school education, 

 especially in the northern Atlantic States, is gradually chang- 

 ing. Twenty 3-ears ago, De "Witt Clinton, in his annual 

 message, expressed the opinion that in our common schools 

 " the outlines of geography, algebra, mineralogy, agricul- 

 tural chemistry, mechanical philosophy, astronomy, &c., 

 might be communicated by able preceptors, without essen- 

 tial interference with the calls of domestic industry." This 

 opinion is daily gaining strength, and has been partially 



