THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 



53 



cocoons, cotton bolls, samples of grain, and specimens of pottery 

 and glass. 



In 1859 a new course for the primary schools was introduced 

 at Oswego, in which lessons on form, color, size, weight, animals, 

 plants, the human body, and moral instruction were prominent. 

 But his teachers knew little about the subject matter of such les- 

 sons, and less about methods of teaching them. The superintend- 

 ent was forced to become the teacher and trainer of his teachers. 

 Without training himself, he sadly felt the inadequacy of his in- 

 structions, and determined to try to obtain a training teacher from 



OLD NORMAL SCHOOL BUILDING. 



the Home and Colonial School. The Board of Education con- 

 sented, " on condition of its not costing the city a single cent." To 

 assist in providing the means, some of his teachers resigned, for 

 one year, half their salaries, which ranged from three to five hun- 

 dred dollars. Their names should be recorded among the found- 

 ers of the school, and written in letters of gold on its walls. 

 To begin this work, Miss M. E. M. Jones was obtained, for one 

 year, from the Home and Colonial School. After school hours 

 each day, Mr. Sheldon, his most interested teachers, and a few 

 from abroad, sat for two hours in a small, obscure room to receive 

 the instruction which had been brought from over the sea at so 

 much personal sacrifice. For one year these men and women be- 

 came as little children, that they might enter and win the king- 

 dom of childhood through the door opened by Pestalozzi, for Miss 

 Jones was a disciple of that master. The work thus begun was 

 continued by some of her pupils, and by Prof. Hermann Kriisi, 

 who also had taught in the Home and Colonial, and was a son of 

 one of Pestalozzi's most trusted helpers. 



For two years, this training class was maintained by the city. 



