Beginning in the years of the expansion of free common schooling, around mid-century, greater attention was also focussed on the instructional force. How could the improvements promised by the promoters of educational reform come to pass without trained teachers? The provinces thus built special institutions, called normal schools and model schools, where candidates were taught the content, techniques and values approved by each province's department of education. Training in one of these institutions and official certification were also intended to make teaching a more socially acceptable career. Where model schools existed, they generally prepared third-class certificate teachers for rural areas in a two or three month course, while normal schools trained teachers in a more prestigious and longer course of instruction. The normal schools admitted women almost from their earliest years, but strict segregation of the sexes was the rule in these institutions. The first woman to attend the New Brunswick training school for teachers was required to wear a veil, arrive at classes ten minutes early and leave five minutes before the end of the lecture. Male and female students alike were expelled from the early normal school in Toronto for speaking to fellow students of the opposite sex. Despite these rules and regulations, there was serious criticism of the early normal and model schools. Critics resented the new institutions, claiming that both the larger new schools and the training schools were costly educational "palaces" which gave little of value to the children and were a burden to the taxpayers.
Courtesy: Historical Collection, Toronto Board of Education
