*Black history and the American normal school or normal college is celebrated on this date in 1685. A normal school is an institution created to train teachers in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum.
The term "normal school" originated in the early 17th century from the French école normale. The French concept of an "école normale" was to provide a model school with model classrooms to teach model teaching practices to its student teachers. The children being taught, their teachers, and the teachers of the teachers were often together in the same building. A premise of many historic black colleges and universities (HBCU) schools of higher education evolved from the normal school model.
Many comprehensive public or state-supported universities—such as UCLA in the United States and Beijing Normal University in China—were established and operated as normal schools before they expanded their faculties and transformed into research universities. Some universities, particularly in Asia, retain the word "Normal" to highlight their historical purpose. In Canada, most normal schools eventually assimilated into a university as its education faculty, offering a one- or two-year Bachelor of Education degree. Such a degree requires at least three, but usually four, years of prior undergraduate study.
