The Origins of the Teachers College of the University of Hawaii: 1921-1931

Abstract

I embarked on this study of tracing the development of the Teachers College from the Territorial Normal and training School, hoping to find clues in the development of the Teachers College which would help to explain the over-emphasis on methods courses which I felt was pre- sent in College of Education today. My study had not proceeded far, before I discovered that I had erred in my criticism of the curriculum of the College of Education. In a study of the curriculum of the Teachers College in 1941 to 1942, Theodore Faulkner concluded that there was a balance between the number of "culture type" (subject matter) courses and the number of "professional type" courses. Of the students studied in 1941-2, Faulkner found that two times as many cultural as professional credit hours of work were carried. Thus, my criticisms of the curriculum of the College of Education were unfounded. Nevertheless, I continued my study on the development of the Teachers College at the University of Hawaii. I became interested in the reasons for the merger of the Territorial Normal and Training School with the University of Hawaii's School of Education. Through the course of my study I found that the affiliation of the Normal School with the University of Hawaii was a slow process occurring over two decades. The immediate reason for the merger was a response to the growing problem of teacher surplus. The more fundamental reason for the merger lay in the normal School’s desire to raise its status from a secondary teacher training institution to a four year collegiate level teachers college.