Talk:California State Normal School

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Reinstated redraft of California State Normal School article, as candidate for inclusion in the California Project, as recommended by administrator HowCheng here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:San_Jos%C3%A9_State_University#California_State_Normal_School Michaelch7

The revisions to this article were completed in mid December 2006 and I submitted it to user HowCheng for inclusion in the Wikipedia Project California, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Howcheng#California_State_Normal_School Michaelch7

Added initial references to Acts of California State Legislature and Historical Sketch of the State Normal School. Request instruction and/or help in proper coding and formatting of references. More to come. Michaelch7 31 December 2006

State Normal School & its athletics

Added section heading and new material. SNS football team image to come.User:CSU Spartan 02:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Moved pix of State Normal School at Los Angeles near to UCLA-related text, and added images of SNS "Normal" football team from 1910. California State (1862) 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I have real problems with this article

I went through and tried as much as possible to get rid of the POV-pushing and irrelevant details:

• "In 1957, after almost 100 years of recognizing the California State Normal School's authentic May 2, 1862, date of establishment by the State of California..."
• "In 1972, the "California State" part of the school's original California State Normal School identity was restored..."

etc., and all that's really left is what's at San José State University#History already.

I agree that an aticle could be written about the normal school, but it really needs to steer far away from the history of the school. The history of the normal school is the history of San Jose State, so there's no way to talk about that without duplicating what's more properly located at San José State University anyway. This article could properly go into detail about the workings of the school in its pre-CSU/CSC days, notable achievements and events, talk about what was different about the school compared to SJSU, etc. –  Anþony  talk  03:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The article is not the same as the San Jose State article, b/c the California State Normal School, although intitally including just the SF-San Jose campus, later grew to encompass several campus across the State of California. Thus, the California State Normal School was something more than "San Jose State" and something less than today's CSU system. Michaelch7 1 January 2007

Considering that the Normal School is essentially a different institution than SJSU, a separate article makes sense to me. I think shrinking the History section of San José State University with a link back to this one is a better course of action. howcheng {chat} 06:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the school deserves to have its own article, but I think the history of SJSU belongs with SJSU. (And if you want to draw a comparison to the whole CSU system, the history of CSU belongs with California State University.) This isn't a summary-style situation with this article as the "History of San Jose State University". They're different topics and it doesn't make sense to direct readers from SJSU to another topic to learn of SJSU's history. Further, I think anything after 1935 (when the school ceased being a teaching college) is outside the scope of this article. –  Anþony  talk  09:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree that this article is about the history of "SJSU", which did not come into existence until 1974. It is about the history and identity of the California State Normal School, which was a precursor to both the CSU system and "SJSU". Also, I carefully compared the two articles and removed all of the identical material before I resubmitted it. Nevertheless, I will revisit this issue and try to distinguish the two articles even more. Perhaps some content needs to be moved from one to the other. I agree with your comment that the CSNS article should be mostly confined to the period of the CSNS, which was 1862 to 1921. Please give me some time to make some appropriate adjustments.

Also, giving the CSNS its own article allows for greater depth of exploration of this institution. And since it is the history of both SJSU and CSU for the 1862-1921 period, isn't it is better to cover that in one place than repeat the same info in both the CSU and SJSU articles? The proper formulation should probably be to include some basic info about the CSNS in the CSU and SJSU articles, and then a more in-depth discussion in the CSNS article. It's already that way to some extent, but I will work on refining the integration and distinction of the 3 articles.

Also, San Jose State supporters have deleted references to, and limited discussion of, the California State Normal School in the San Jose State article, which is another reason the CSNS should have its own article. If we tried to include alot of detail about the CSNS in the SJSU article, there would clearly be another unseemly edit war.

I agree with your point, however, that this article should include other information about the school, which I intend to add as soon as I can. For example, I am preparing some historical info about its "SNS" (State Normal School) athletics teams. But I don't understand your point that the article shouldn't be historical in nature. How is that possible, since the California State Normal School (1862-1921) no longer exists? Any reference to it must be historical in nature. Michaelch7 2 January 2007

<-- reset indent

I'll address what I think is the most important part of your post first: San Jose State supporters have deleted references to, and limited discussion of, the California State Normal School in the San Jose State article, which is another reason the CSNS should have its own article.

You should be very careful about making such statements. You've subtly accused the editors at SJSU of pushing one POV and suggested that the appropriate response is a POV fork to push another. This is a dangerous mentality. If the material you're referring to was removed because it promoted the idea that San Jose State should be renamed to CSU San Jose, that material has no place here or anywhere on Wikipedia.

As for the rest of your comments...

Clearly, this article needs to talk about its history to a certain extent in order to explain what the California State Normal School was. However, if this article is only about the history of CSNS, which is a subset of the history of SJSU, then we don't need it. The university's history isn't so complex that we should be splitting off different articles for its various iterations over time. As for the Normal School's involvement with the history of the CSU system, California State University could just as easily reference SJSU#History as it could this article. Beyond that, I don't see much problem with those two articles that needs to be changed just to accomodate this one. It's like trying to fill three buckets with the contents of two when the first two weren't even full to begin with.

The period of the CSNS encompasses info that is separately relevant to both articles: The California State Normal School at San Jose stuff is mostly relevant to just San Jose school history, but since the it was the only Cal State insitution at the time, it is also the history of the entire CSU for that period. On the other hand, the broader discussion of the spread of the CSNS to other campuses is relevant only to the CSU article, but may be of limited interest to readers from the many campuses that came into existence after the CSNS ceased to exist. These are powerful arguments for the separate existence of this article. To this end, I have today removed one sentence about the statewide spread of the CSNS from the SJSU article. Michaelch7 22:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Now, I still do believe there's an article to be had here. I'm just saying it shouldn't be relying heavily on the details of its founding or how it came to be SJSU. Yes, that's important and necessary information, but those are moreso bookends which are needed provide context. Remember that the most likely way a reader will find this page is coming from the CSU or SJSU history sections, so chances are they'll have just read most of the stuff anyway. The meat of the article should be about a school for teachers, describing it as it was rather than what it came to be.

As a side note, are you User:CSU Spartan? Your writing style seems similar, in particular the shared tendency to edit as an IP yet sign with your username. I admit this is slightly annoying, especially because you're not linking to your user page (User:Michaelch7), but rather a non-existant mainspace article (Michaelch7). I think you probably know this already, but you can just type ~~~~ to sign automatically if you're signed in. –  Anþony  talk  22:36, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm usually rushed at work, and that's why I don't sign in, but I'll try to, if that's the proper procedure. Trying the 4 tildens now: Michaelch7 22:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Name of the San Francisco Normal School (aka Minns)

The material about the name of the San Francisco Normal School is historically sourced from citation #4, "Washington Square". Michaelch7 1 January 2007

Please note: Editors requested to ensure schools' actual name--Minns Evening Normal School--is not changed. It wasn't atypical to not use the possessive in this case. All reports of the school list it as such. Ommnomnomgulp (talk) 19:51, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Year of Establishment Change from 1862 to 1957

Accepted Anpony's modifications of 1862 vs. 1957 text, but added text explaining the relevance of the sentence he left without an introduction or explanation of its relevance. Michaelch7 1 January 2007

The letter in my name is a þ (thorn). It's pronounced as the 'th' sound in English, so you can call me Anthony if you have trouble typing that. –  Anþony  talk  09:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

In response to the actual changes you made, I think you should strive for a more neutral point of view, chiefly this quote:

“ ... a San Jose State "cennential" planning committee purported to change the official date of the school's establishment ... ”

I gather you put centennial in quotes because 1957 was not the "real" centennial, so they're not actually a centennial planning committee. This is irrelevant; we're not here to decide when the real centennial was. It's completely accurate to say that this was a committee planning a centennial celebration, whether or not it's the "right" centennial. I also don't see the point of saying they "purported to change" the official date. To this day, the school's official date of establishment is 1857, so it's not something they purported to change; they did change it. It's these kinds of small bits that can add up to a POV problem. We're here to report the facts, not interpret them. –  Anþony  talk  09:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger to San Jose State University

I propose that we merge the California State Normal School article into the one for San Jose State University. As both describe the same subject, having two articles seems redundant. Also, information on one page hasn't been propagating to the other. - Johnlogic (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

This matter was already decided when the article was reinstated after militant San Jose State supporters deleted it before. Also, the discussion of this issue on the San Jose State page supports keeping this article separate. How many times and how long must this pernicious suggestion of merger be entertained? I request that the notice about merging this article be removed. - Michaelch7 (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2011 (UTC)