I also should have included these notes from Chapter 6 of the same book.
" In 1905, the University of Virginia created a school of education that
became a center for the new science of education and teacher certification.
Along with the female normal school established at Farmville in 1887, the
state added new normals for white women at Harrisonburg, Fredericksburg, and
Radford after 1908. A variety of teachers' institutes and state-sponsored
summer normals were also established.
The proportion of both black and white teachers who by 1916 had training
beyond high school - those with collegiate or professional certificates -
about doubled in just six years.
Improving the status of teachers through education and professionalism often
made them less willing to teach in backwoods schools, and better-trained
teachers preferred to avoid these schools. Teachers exposed to the "new"
education had raised expectations and surely found a future in a one-room
school unappealing. The reaction of one modernizer to rural Southside
Virginia was typical. Complaining about "most abominable" mail schedules
and newspapers that were "old before they arrive," .
. the greater the teacher's education, the less attractive the rural school.
Most attended normal school for three years, where they enjoyed constant
activity - basketball, tennis, access to newspapers and magazines - as well
as the "delicious fare of the college dining-room with its bi-weekly
dessert."
MOV
-----Original Message-----
From: Research and writing about Virginia genealogy and family history.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mary Vidlak
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2013 10:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VA-ROOTS] 1920 Virginia teaching certification requirements
In Chapter 3 (don't know the page) of A Hard Country and a Lonely Place:
Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870 - 1920 (University of
North Carolina Press, 1986) author William A. Link writes:
"Late nineteenth-century teachers had little, and in some cases hardly any,
formal education. As one teacher observed, Virginia schools paid such
paltry wages and their terms were so short in duration that for those who
spent their "time and money in acquiring a classical education," teaching
was hardly worthwhile. In 1885, only 27 percent of all teachers held either
a high school or higher diploma, and only about 6 percent had received a
college degree. Undereducation of teachers was a feature of rural schools
that persisted well past the turn of the century. One survey conducted in
the early twentieth century revealed that in spite of expanded normal
facilities, about four-fifths of the Virginia teaching force had no training
beyond high school and about a third had no education past elementary
school. During the nineteenth century, most teachers in rural Virginia were
undereducated out of necessity, simply because facilities, or access to
them, did not exist. Instead, most during this period became teachers
through a system of apprenticeship, in which district boards hired teachers'
assistants, usually older pupils, many of whom eventually became teachers. "
My grandmother attended the State Normal School at Fredericksburg (now
University of Mary Washington) for two years in 1913 and then taught in
Cumberland County until her marriage. However I have found records for
other family members who taught school in the same time period and they do
not have the same amount of education.
Mary O'Brien Vidlak
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