Plymouth State University - Conning Tower Yearbook (Plymouth, NH)

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‘4 T H E C 0 N N I N (; T 0 W E R” 19 2 8 15 I 1 ij L - IK

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14 “THE CONNING TOWER” 1928 MINXIK PORTER LEATHERBURY Matron of .Samuel Read Hall Dormitory OKRTRl'PK IDA SHAW Registrar ami Secretary to President Plymouth Normal School

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16 “THE CONNING TOWER” 1928 A Foreword Believing that the purpose of a classbook is to hold secure our school day memories, we have tried to make The Conning-Tower picture the life of our school, and record the history of the Classes of 1028. However, we think that the 1028 classbook means more than this, for the year of 1028 makes a change in the history of our school, a milestone from which we look back over the way we have come, and pause to foresee the future. This year for the first time, students of a four-year curriculum are graduating from Plymouth Normal School. It was fifty-eight years ago that the New Hampshire legislature authorized the establishment of Plymouth Normal School. The first term of the new normal school started March fifteenth, eighteen hundred seventy-one. The first classes graduated after only twenty weeks of instruction and training, but the standards were soon raised, and the course was increased to two years. In nineteen hundred eighteen Plymouth Normal School entered the field of training for high school teaching, when three-year courses were added. Last year the Commerce Curriculum was lengthened to four years, and later the History Curriculum was also made four years. Therefore at present we have three classes of students: those enrolled in the two-year curriculum who are preparing to teach in elementary schools; students taking the three-year curriculum which prepares junior high teachers; students of four-year Commerce and History Curricula who are preparing to teach in New Hampshire high schools. These changes in curricula show the increasingly higher standards for New Hampshire teachers; and they point the way to the future when our school will be no longer a normal school, but a teacher’s college. The Editor.