Fitzgerald, 2002, “A Rediscovered Tradition”

 Fitzgerald,
Kathryn. "A Rediscovered Tradition: European Pedagogy and Composition in
Nineteenth-Century Midwestern Normal Schools." CCC 53 (2001): 224-250.

Big Idea
Midwestern normal schools at the turn of the nineteenth century were fertile
sites for promising pedagogical mixing which brought together student-centered
European practices (attributed to Heinrick Pestalozzi and John Frederick Herbart)
with the populace-serving, democratizing missions of normal schools. 
Fitzgerald’s historical account of the Oshkosh conference of 1900 elaborates
these forces through descriptions and analysis of the archival gems pointing
back to the important work of the normal composition teachers of the era. 
Pestalozzian and Herbartian pedagogies generally favored student-centered rather
than content-centered approaches.  As a result, the normal schools in
Wisconsin served as a stage for these pre-Dewey practices to foment toward
efficacy, while shrugging off strict adherence to textbook lessons, adopting a
more compassionate, respectful view of students’ linguistic competence and
preferring demonstrations of understanding–often in the form of writing and
students teaching to other students–over rote memorization and recitation.
Fitzgerald’s essay ends with a plug for the study of teaching practices in
contemporary and historical contexts (quartered by regionalism and
institutionality).  She also emphasizes–at the end–the role of teaching
in the curriculum as vocational/professional/normal schools have been subsumed
into grand research conglomerates where pedagogy is relegated to servile rank
and often viewed as a necessary but unpleasant burden. 

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