a. The Establishment of the Normal School

In implementing the Education System Order including the establishment of elementary schools on a nationwide basis and the diffusion of modern educational concepts, there was a critical need for some new mechanism for training teaching personnel. To this end the Department of Education set up a Normal School under its own jurisdiction in Tokyo in July, 1872, and began the recruitment of students; in the preceding month the Department had presented in its notification to prefectures a general outline of the Normal School, which contained several points of interests:

1) The appointment of one foreign instructor to the teaching staff.

2) The admission of 24 applicants to the Normal School.

3) The admission of ninety applicants to the elementary school attached to the Normal School.

4) The appointment of one individual to act as an interpreter between the students and the instructor.

The 24 Normal School students were divided into six groups of four students each and each group was to take responsibility for the general development of fifteen of the pupils at the attached elementary school. In the practice teaching sessions, the Normal School students were expected to teach what they had learned from their foreign instructor. But whereas they had been taught in English, they were to conduct the practice teaching sessions in Japanese. Moreover, in teaching calligraphy and conversation, as well as in platform speech and lectures the students were to experiment in their practice teaching with both the Western method as well as with traditional Japanese educational practices. Through this experience, they were expected to develop an appropriate elementary teaching method for Japan.

The entrance requirements included that the applicants for the Normal School be at least twenty years of age and that they pass an entrance examination. Government expenses were made available, and the students were in turn obligated to fill teaching positions in elementary schools following their graduation.

54 applicants successfully passed the Normal School's first entrance examination, and began to receive instruction in October, 1872. Morokuzu Nobuzumi (1849-1880) became the Director and Marion M. Scott, who had been invited earlier to the Southern College, was the foreign instructor. Scott began the training of his future teachers with methods used in American elementary schools. As the Normal School's regulations for the course of study for elementary schools had not yet been compiled, the first policy of the Normal School was to select Western teaching methods for use in elementary education and to see to it that the Normal School students were trained accordingly. For this reason the American method of elementary school instruction was taken over without change.

The Normal School was established on the principles of modern education and in conformity with the Education System Order. In addition to its function of training teachers, it also concerned itself with the formation of regulations for the course of study for elementary schools and the editing of textbooks. Later with the establishment of government normal schools in each university district, graduates of the Tokyo institution were sent out to the prefectural normal schools. Both as teachers and as prefectural officers of education, they played an important role in the spread of modern education.