Policy Issues: The University's Outreach

Abstract

American universities expect their faculty to engage in teaching, research, and service. While the first two represent the age-old role of university professors, the last, service, is a relatively new phenomenon. Near the beginning of the 19th century, Prussia introduced the notion that the state should provide formally for the education of primary school teachers. In the teachers seminaries the future Prussian schoolmasters received a form of secondary education coupled with pedagogy and practice teaching. Despite some hankering to go on to university studies, the prospective teachers were confined to teaching the children of the working classes. The teachers seminaries inspired the French ecole normale; the model was brought to the United States by Horace Mann in the 1830s. By the end of the century American colleges and universities offered teacher preparation programs for the elementary and secondary level.