This is new to me, and I've found many articles on the Normal School science of teaching, many like this on one such method, the "Oswego Method" used around the country.

Oswego New York, Normal School Methods, 1898...

"Students at Oswego [NY] have sometimes complained of the rigorous drill of classes in methods, and of the practice school, as too mechanical, tending to produce mannerisms and to crush individuality. These complaints were sometimes made by those who best comprehended the principles and felt the power and desire to work out their own applications. These complaints admit this answer: For the average man and woman comprehension of principles does not secure practice. The principles must be embodied in precepts and rules, must be applied in a practical course of action under whose influence habits of right conduct are formed. Right habits can not be formed in the teacher by imparting to him the principles merely of his profession more than in the soldier. If in some cases the product of drill is a mere machine, it is usually because the person is inclined to become a machine, and a well-constructed machine is better than a poor one. The few so specially gifted as not to need so much detail and drill suffer no permanent injury by the temporary restraint of their powers of independent action. The habits formed in the thorough training school will but aid their steps into new paths in the wide field beyond its walls. To the careful, unremitting drill of her method and practice school work is largely due the fact that the Oswego Normal School has turned out so large a product of successful teachers as compared with her production of mere talkers and essay writers."

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David Upton