[LINK] Weekend Magazine (Historical Perspective "Chicago School System).

[Tom Koltai]

I found this today, enjoyed it tremendously.

A tale about the exponential growth of the little Red Schoolhouse and
the first teacher training "colleges" (in Chicago Ill.)

(I actually devoured the whole site... http://rerowland.com/ There is
not much not too like.)

So grab a cuppa, get comfy and read on...

Quote/
Epilogue:
"In this year of 2002, from the Holmstad, a retirement community in
Batavia, Illinois where my Oak Park High School friend and husband of
three and a half years and I live in a "cottage" during the summers, I
have researched Francis Parker Practice School, its history and the
present scene. I am most indebted to the Batavia Public Library
Reference staff, and the Interlibrary Loans they have obtained for me,
to the Chicago Historical Society for the pictures of the school, and to
my husband, Robin Rowland for his encouragement and assistance."

http://rerowland.com/parker.html
THE INFLUENCE OF COLONEL FRANCIS W. PARKER ON THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS
FOR THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS By ANN T. ROWLAND

 In 1816, Chicago was a mere outpost of Anglo-Saxon civilization in the
wilderness of the Illinois country. The two-hundred square miles of land
which, a century later, were embraced by the city were then water,
prairie, swamp and sand dune. Fort Dearborn had been established by the
government in 1808 to provide security from hostile Indian tribes for
the advancing whites. Yet as late as 1831, besides the garrison at the
fort, the population of the settlement consisted of only twelve
families. In 1835, the rapidly growing settlement was organized as a
town, and two years later incorporated as a city, with a population of
4,000. At the opening of the Civil War, the city's population had
increased to more than 100,000, and by 1890 the millionth mark had been
passed.

The story of the growth of the public school system of Chicago reflects
the growth of the city itself. The first school was established in 1816,
when Chicago was but a frontier post. In 1841, four years after its
incorporation as a city, the schools enrolled only 410 pupils. By 1860
this number had increased to 14,199, by 1880 to 59,562, by 1900 to
255,861, and by 1920, to 406,000.

The first high school in Chicago was established in 1856. One of the
important purposes of establishing this high school was to educate
teachers, for up to that time, there had been no formal training for
teachers. The entrance requirements were low: women were required to be
at least 15 years of age, men at least 16, and the entrance examination
was of difficulty comparable to a 6th grade education. In the beginning,
the work was almost entirely theoretical. By 1865, however, a practice
school was established which provided a limited amount of student
teaching for half a year.

In 1854, the proportion of women to men teachers was 5 to one, but by
1871, it was 16 to one. This accounted for the difference in salaries,
men high school teachers in the 1850s and '60s receiving $1,000 a year
and women , $250/year.

Salaries for teachers did not improve, however, even though the
opportunities for being trained as a teacher did. A twenty year old girl
named Ella Flagg was put in charge of the normal school in 1865; she
arranged to have students work in rooms in a school in a very poor
neighborhood. Ella Flagg had attended the Brown School at the age of 13
when her family moved to Chicago, teaching arithmetic there as a child
monitor.

In 1871, Ella Flagg asked to be transferred to high school teaching,
since she was no longer willing to try to make teachers out of children
just two years out of elementary school, some of them totally
incompetent but with political sponsorship by members of the Board of
Education and other powerful people. The Board controlled the subjects
taught, the students taught, and no one could graduate and become a
teacher without their approval.

In that year of 1871, the normal division was separated from the high
school and located in six rooms of a building standing on the site of
the Chicago State College (for many years after 1897 called the Chicago
Normal School). The Board of Education was asked to lengthen the normal
training by at least another half year "to give the young ladies more
culture." but the Board discouraged both lengthening the term and
raising standards of admission for the normal school.

In 1868 community members had gotten what they wanted when the Cook
County Normal School opened on ten acres of land donated by L.W. Beck, a
prominent land developer. The new school attracted a group of
professionals and businessmen. In 1869, Beck subdivided the land to the
Southeast of the new Normal School and over the next few years he
further developed the land which surrounded the school. The community's
name, Junction Grove, kept alive memories of the old railroad community
which had been built by four railroads across the swamp and forestland
which had been known as Englewood. Most of the early settlers in
Englewood were German and Irish railroad workers, some of whom
maintained truck farms.

In 1871, the site of the Chicago High School was on Monroe St. near
Halsted. A Normal school was organized as an independent school on the
site of the High School. In 1890, the Chicago Manual Training School
established Englewood High and Manual Training School in the old Chicago
High School building at 762 W. Monroe St.

In the 1880s, Chicago's population had grown to a million, making it the
second largest city on the American continent. The Cook County Normal
School, the first county normal school in the U.S., had been established
in 1867 in Blue Island, was later moved to Englewood, and was finally
moved to the site of the Chicago Teachers College South at 6800 Stewart
Avenue. From a modest origin, the Cook County Normal School was destined
to become one of the famous schools of the country. In 1883, after the
death of Daniel S. Wentworth, the excellent first administrator, Col.
Francis Wayland Parker, endowed by nature with a genius for the work,
and coming as he did with a national reputation gained at Quincy, Mass.
became principal of the Cook County Normal School at Englewood, then a
suburb of Chicago. The 15 year old county normal school had had a
struggling existence and had declined markedly after the death of D. S.
Wentworth; it needed an administrator with a firm hand who was a
builder----requirements which Parker filled admirably. In 1883, The
normal school consisted of three departments, a professional training
class, a demonstration elementary school of eight grades, and the four
grades of high school. During his first year, Parker introduced a manual
training department into the elementary school. Though Parker emphasized
learning through activity programs rather than through memorization, he
insisted that his teachers be thoroughly prepared in subject matter,
teaching methods, and child development. There was no tuition for
residents of Cook County, but non-residents were charged $75. Parker, of
course, attracted students from all over the country. The average
graduating class between 1883 and 1886 was 68. The prescribed course of
study was forty weeks. Candidates for the diploma were evaluated on
satisfactory evidence of professional attitudes as well as skills.
Candidates were not only judged on their ability to "govern" and "teach
a class fairly well" but on their courage to fight for the ideals of the
new education.

In 1891 Albert G. Lane was elected Chicago Superintendent of Schools
after he had served eight years as Cook County Superintendent of
Schools. Although, like Ella Flagg Young, he had had only the two-year
normal course in the old Chicago High School as formal education, Lane
was generally recognized within the system as an effective
administrator, and his election as president of the new National
Education Association indicated similar recognition by his professional
colleagues outside the city. He used what authority he had with tact,
both with teachers and principals , and with the Board of Education.

Under Lane's direction, manual training classes were opened in ten more
elementary schools as a regular part of the curriculum. In 1892, the ten
kindergartens which had been operated and financed since 1888 by a
private association were finally incorporated into the system and
financed by state law in 1895. In that year also, Lane supported the
efforts of teachers to get a pension fund, and a general revision in the
course of study throughout the system embodied many smaller changes
sought by private groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union,
the Sons of the American Revolution, the Daily News, the Public School
Art Society and the School Children's Aid Society. "Vacation Schools",
sponsored by the Civic Federation were opened by 1897.

Superintendent of Schools Lane was impressed with the demonstration
Helen Keller gave at a conference on the oral method of teaching speech
to the deaf. Perhaps this was one reason that a School for the Deaf was
established in 1910 at the Chicago Normal College as well as at two
other schools, Delano and Waters. Some of the teachers of the deaf were
trained in the oral method at the Normal College. Miss Clara Newles
became the head teacher of the deaf in the Parker Practice School, which
also employed a full-time, specially trained manual training and
vocational guidance teacher for the deaf. There were 12 divisions of the
deaf at Parker Practice, more than at the other two schools. Female deaf
students above the third grade had cooking and sewing lessons by the
regular teachers of these subjects in Parker Practice. The deaf ate in
the Normal School lunch room, and the girls had a Camp Fire Circle, the
boys a Boy Scout Troop. By 1918, classes for the deaf at Parker were
badly overcrowded, with ten of its classes in portable buildings.
Students from the North side were transferred to the new Alexander
Graham Bell School, where A. G. Bell himself was present. By 1923, there
was a total of 379 deaf students in the school system.

While the City's population grew 21 percent between 1915 and 1925, the
elementary enrollment increased 29.8 percent and the high school
enrollment 130 percent, or 5 times that of 1906.

Before the 1889 annexations, Chicago had only 5 high schools, but by
1900 the Chicago Board of Education had the Chicago Normal School, 15
high schools and 234 elementary schools. In 1900, there were 244,926
enrolled in the elementary schools, 10,241 in the high schools, 497 in
the Normal School and 188 in the School for the Deaf.

However, not all the changes were positive, as there were those who felt
that too much money was being spent on public schools and that drawing,
music, physical culture, German, and sewing were "frills" not necessary
for any but rich children in private schools. In 1893, the Chicago
Tribune published no less than 30 editorials attacking these "fads and
frills" and declaring that the teaching of such subjects would compel
"sending to college all the children of working men" who wanted to go.

In April of 1893 the Chicago Board of Education had established a
special training school for "cadets". Candidates for teaching positions
were required "to cadet" during the forenoon in their assigned schools
and receive special instruction in educational principles and methods in
the afternoon. Over 300 cadets completed this course in 1894, more than
400 in 1895, while the Cook County Normal School, with all its
facilities, graduated less than 100 a year. The Chicago Board of
Education argued that the Cook County Normal School ought to come under
the Chicago Board of Education, where it would be be better and more
economically managed. On December 9, 1895 the Cook County Board of
Commissioners resolved to convey the Normal School properties to the
Chicago Board of Education. One important condition was that the Normal
School should always be open to residents of Cook County without charge.
The Chicago Board of Education hesitated to accept the transfer, some
said because Col. Parker went with it, a fact that was expected to cause
discord and contention. One Board member said that "Col. Parker is
teaching a system concerning which there is a diversity of opinion, and
which is totally irreconcilable with the system used in our schools. To
adopt him is to adopt his system." Parker and his teachers refused to
resign. The teachers protested by working without pay.

On January 29, 1896, under the head of "unfinished business", the
Chicago Board of Education voted to adopt the Normal School immediately
and retain its staff until July 1, 1896. Legal transfer of the Normal
School was officially effected on April 22, 1896. Parker announced the
move "an epoch" in the history of the school. The Col. had great plans
for introducing new scientific methods of education into the public
schools of Chicago. Early in June he wrote that if his plans passed the
Board of Education, there would be "the most effective Normal School in
America, if not in the world." The "cadets" and their small staff of
professional teachers were ordered joined to the Normal School. The
school was thereafter called the "Chicago Normal School".

Chicago in 1896 was the scene of the Democratic National Convention.
Williams Jenning Bryan lost the presidency to William McKinley, but
Carter H. Harrison gained the Chicago mayoralty on the Democratic
ticket. He proceeded to incorporate the Chicago Board of Education into
the City's political machine. Harrison was determined to rid the schools
of Parker but failed; he succeeded in ridding them of Superintendant
Lane.

Superintendent Lane's most important contribution to the Chicago school
system was a long step forward in the training of teachers, taken in
1896. Whereas the procedure for becoming an elementary school teacher,
since the normal school had been closed in 1877, was for a high school
graduate who could find a political sponsor to be designated a cadet to
learn from another untrained teacher, or, without any experience, be
assigned as a substitute teacher. In 1892, Lane opened an after-hours
school course for cadets which they were required to attend for six
months.

But in the winter of 1895-96, the Cook County Normal School offered to
turn over its building and land on 68th St. to the City of Chicago if
the Board of Education would continue to use it as a normal school. Col.
Francis W. Parker became head of the new normal school and brought with
him from Quincy, Mass. a whole new range of ideas about children and
pedagogy. In spite of his critics, Parker kept this position until 1899,
when he left the Normal School to lead a new school for teachers at the
University of Chicago, leaving a mark on the Chicago Public Schools
which would improve their quality for many years to come.

In 1909, Superintendent of Schools Cooley resigned and the vacancy was
filled by the election of Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, by that time an
experienced teacher and administrator. The Chicago Normal School had
been under the control of the Board of Education since 1896, and Mrs.
Young thought that she was confronted with a practical necessity, that
of coordinating it with the city schools. In keeping with the constantly
broadening concept of education, the campus was reorganized, athletics
and activities were given more prominence, and the course of study was
expanded from two to three years. In 1928, Chicago Normal School
president Butler Laughlin raised entrance requirements, adding an oral
examination to the entrance procedure, and adopted a quota system which
resulted in a highly selective student body. In 1936, the succeeding
president, Dr. Verne Graham, reorganized the Chicago Normal College into
the four-year degree-granting Chicago Teachers College, which became a
reality in 1938. By 1962, the College started granting the Master of
Arts degree in numerous academic fields and the Master of Education
Degree in a number of specialized fields such as library science,
teaching of the handicapped, and guidance.

In Chicago schools by this time, commercial and technical courses,
manual training and household arts, physical education, classes for
several kinds of handicapped children, kindergartens all were taken for
granted. The child labor law of the state had raised the school leaving
age to 16. Textbooks were now furnished free, after forty years of
argument.

The Chicago Teachers College is now, in 2002, Northeastern Illinois
University at 5500 N. St. Louis Avenue in Chicago. On the campus which
was once the Normal College campus are the City College of Chicago and
the Kennedy-King College, located between Normal Parkway to the north,
69th St. to the south, Normal St. on the west and the Dan Ryan
Expressway on the east. Parker Practice School is at 68th St. and
Stewart. The Francis Parker School, a private school founded by Col.
Parker on the North Shore in 1901, is a leading school in the Chicago
area. It is located at 330 W. Webster Avenue.



Author's Note:

On February 15, 1933, at the age of 9, I moved to Chicago from Grand
Rapids, Mich. with my parents, Charlie and Sarah Carrel and my
nineteen-year old sister, Sally, living in a one-bedroom apartment on
the second floor of a building on Yale Street near 67th in Englewood, a
neighborhood in south Chicago. I can pinpoint the date by the headlines
in the Chicago papers that day, which announced that the Mayor of
Chicago, Mayor Cermak, had been shot and killed by a bullet meant for
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at the dedication of a bridge in
Florida.

My sister, a college student, was transferring from Olivet College in
Michigan to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I, a 4th
grade student, was transferring from Sigsbee School in Grand Rapids to
the Francis Parker Practice School in Chicago, about two blocks south of
our apartment house.

I'm sure one of my parents must have taken me to school the first day,
showing me the way through an alley and across 68th Street to the
spacious campus of the Chicago Normal School, Parker Practice Elementary
School and the Chicago School for the Deaf, each, as I remember it, in a
separate building. The bigness of it all, along with the busyness and
noise of the city, with the "L" loudly clattering just east of us, was
"scary" to me.

That impression is the most that I remember, except for one event which
I shall never forget. One day the whole student body of all three
schools on the campus were assembled in the auditorium of the Normal
College to see and hear someone we'd all heard about, Miss Helen Keller
and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. It was an experience I shall never
forget, and I treasure that memory.

I don't know how many weeks or months we lived in the apartment on Yale,
but ever since we moved from there to Washington Blvd. in Oak Park and I
finished 4th grade in Emerson School across Kenilworth street, I have
wondered about what happened to the Chicago Normal School campus and its
components.

/Quote

/body