Children of the Normal School, 1909-1969

Everyone was in for a surprise in 1909 when New Mexico declared open the Spanish American Normal School at El Rito, founded to train teachers for the vast region in which there were few schools and the citizenry still did not speak English. The region's geographic isolation, scant means of communication, and lack of roadways rendered it impossible for anyone to make the proper estimate of educational need, it turned out.