Page "Normal school" Paragraph 1

In 1685, John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1839.

It operates today as Framingham State University.