ABSTRACT
When the New York State Legislature selected Geneseo in 1867 as the site of the state's seventh normal school, the supporters of Geneseo Academy were, in the words of the normal's first principal, seized with “fright,” for they thought “that the Academy could be no longer sustained.” 1 History justifies their reaction: in Geneseo and throughout the United States, the rise of the state normal school corresponded to the decline of the academy. The state normal first appeared while the academy movement was at its height. This new type of educational institution grew out of the common school revival of the early to mid-nineteenth century, when education reformers created their own version of the German teacher seminary and the French école normale to prepare teachers for the growing system of American common schools. Massachusetts established three state normal schools in 1839 and 1840. Within a decade, Connecticut and New York each had a state normal school. By 1870, when academies were just past their prime, a total of thirty-nine state normal schools were located in eighteen states, in New England, the mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, and California. By the tum of the twentieth century, state normal schools would number close to two hundred and spread throughout the country. While their official function was teacher training, state normal schools also made a form of higher education available to many people who would not otherwise have been able to pursue advanced learning. 2
