Rethinking Teacher Training
Challenging the Legacy of Normal Schools
The invention of the "Normal School" in the 1800s was a turning point in education. These state-run programs were designed to create uniformity in how teachers were trained. But looking back, it’s clear this was one of the biggest mistakes we made in shaping modern education.
Teaching isn’t just a job. It’s a way of life.
Yet when we turned it into something to be standardized, certified, and institutionally managed, we stripped away what makes it powerful in the first place.
Normal schools were born during a time when the world was industrializing fast. Governments wanted to create systems that would produce factory workers, and they needed teachers who would follow the script. But it wasn’t just state control that shaped this movement. Men like Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefeller family poured money into Normal schools, helping spread them across the country.
These weren’t acts of pure generosity. These families had a vision for the future. One where education could be used to mold obedience and uniformity. And Normal schools became the perfect tool.
But let’s think about the name itself. "Normal" school. It tells you everything. These places weren’t interested in cultivating the exceptional. They were designed to flatten out individuality, to make every teacher teach the same way.
That mindset has done more damage than we realize.
Teaching is personal. It’s creative. It’s messy. It’s something that grows from curiosity, from real connection, from knowing how to respond in the moment—not from a manual. But once teacher training became institutionalized, we created this idea that only certain people were qualified to teach. The ones who could pass the tests. The ones who could earn the credentials.
And we lost so many brilliant educators because of that.
Some of the best teachers I know would never survive in a college classroom. They’re too bold, too intuitive, too alive. And they were never meant to sit still and listen quietly while someone told them how learning "should" look. But they know how to reach people. They know how to inspire kids. They know how to teach.
We need to stop pretending that credentials make a teacher.
They don’t.
What makes someone a teacher is who they are. Their love of learning. Their willingness to meet a child where they’re at. Their ability to see potential and pull it forward. And none of that can be taught in a Normal school.
We need to reclaim teaching as something real. Something human. Something that doesn’t belong in a box.
As Ivan Illich said, “The institutionalization of education... has to do with the power of professions to mystify and monopolize knowledge.” He saw what we’re only just starting to admit. That once education became professionalized, we lost the very heart of it.
It’s time to challenge that.
We don’t need more systems to create “better” teachers. We need to recognize the ones who already exist. The ones who never fit into the mold. The ones who are living this work every day, not because someone trained them, but because they were born for it.