The Training of Teachers

An important part of the course in the Glasgow Seminary was the training of teachers for infant schools; for Stow had begun to train infant school teachers ten years previously. In England, the Home and Colonial Infant School Society (or Institution as it was called later), established in Gray’s Inn Road, London, in 1836, was the first institution to concern itself primarily with the teaching of small children; and its course was based on the theories of Pestalozzi. The Home and Colonial was run on Church of England principles but accepted students belonging to other denominations. Initially, the training course lasted three months but was later increased to fifteen weeks; and the curriculum, which was both educational and professional, included religious knowledge, natural history, elementary geography, the first rules of arithmetic, singing and drawing simple geometrical forms. Students were also instructed in Pestalozzi’s methods and the basic elements of infant school teaching. The training was highly appreciated; and, at the instigation of some women teachers, among them Miss Buss’s mother who had run a school of her own, a short course of training for older children in middle class schools was added.