Editing Normal school (section)

===Latin America===

====Argentina====
In Argentina, normal schools were founded starting in 1852, and still exist today and carry that name. Teachers' training is considered higher education and requires a high school diploma, but normal schools have the particularity of granting five-year teacher degrees for primary school or four year degrees for kindergarten, while at the same time hosting secondary, primary school students, and kindergarten and pre-school. Teachers-to-be do intense practical training in the schools annexed to the higher education section. This is the main difference with other teachers' training institutions called Instituto de Formación Docente and with universities that grant teaching degrees.

====Brazil====
The first and oldest operating normal school in Brazil is the ''Escola Normal de Niterói'', founded in [[Niterói]] in 1835 and renamed to ''Instituto de Educação Professor Ismael Coutinho'' in 1965. It is however not the oldest continually operating normal school in Latin America as it was disestablished during two separate periods from 1847–1862, and again from 1890–1931. Many Brazilian states later founded their own normal schools to train primary school teachers.

====Chile====
Perhaps the oldest continually operating normal school in Latin America is the Escuela Normal Superior José Abelardo Núñez, founded in [[Santiago, Chile]], in 1842 as the Escuela de Preceptores de Santiago under the direction of the emininent [[Argentina|Argentine]] educator, writer, and politician [[Domingo Faustino Sarmiento]]. The first normal school in the [[Dominican Republic]] was founded in 1875 by [[Puerto Rico|Puerto Rican]] educator and activist [[Eugenio María de Hostos]].

====Mexico====
Mexico founded early normal schools, such as the {{Lang|es|Escuela Normal de Enseñanza Mutua de Oaxaca}} (1824), the {{Lang|es|Escuela Normal Mixta de San Luis Potosí}} (1849), the {{Lang|es|Normal de Guadalajara}} (1881), and the {{Lang|es|Escuela Normal para Profesores de Instrucción Primaria}} (1887). The Mexican normal school system was nationalized and reorganized in the period after the [[Mexican Revolution]] (1910–1920) by the ''[[Secretariat of Public Education|Secretaría de Educación Pública]]'' (Secretariat of Public Education) under [[José Vasconcelos]] in 1921. Many normal schools were founded in the postrevolutionary period to train the sons and daughters of peasants as teachers. In the 1960s, normal school students joined in the widespread student agitation to create systemic change in Mexico.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The [[Iguala mass kidnapping|2014 mass kidnapping]] of normal school students from [[Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College]] was a major scandal in Mexico.

====Panama, Colombia and Paraguay====
In [[Panama]], the Escuela Normal Juan Demóstenes Arosemena was founded in [[Santiago de Veraguas]], Panama, in 1938. In [[Colombia]], normal schools were primarily associated with women's religious schools although in modern times have admitted men, thus forming ''escuelas normales mixtas'' (mixed normal schools). In [[Paraguay]], they are known as Instituto de Formación Docente.