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TCNJ Magazine - Winter 2020

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10 The College of New Jersey Magazine P R A I R I E R E W I N D Decade swap We made it to 2020, but what was it like here a century — and a half century — ago? Male visitors and curfew "We are allowed to entertain our men friends until 9:30, for good girls go to bed at 10 o'clock." — a student writing in The Signal TIME CAPSULE The Roaring Twenties weren't exactly turning the Normal School on its ear. All the rage Middy dresses advertised for sale in The Signal were ubiquitous for college women in the '20s. If the buildings of the New Jersey State Normal School — TCNJ's predecessor, founded 1855 — were still standing, you would find them (above) in the Ewing & Carroll neighborhood about two miles from the iconic "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" sign perched above the Delaware. (Quick definition of normal school: A teacher-training school or college that taught to accepted educational norms.) At the start of the decade, most students enrolled for two years and chose from a variety of courses of study from kindergarten-primary to teaching the deaf. These future teachers didn't have to go far for student-teaching: The school's faculty ran a full- time K–6 school on campus for Trenton-area children. In 1925, the school introduced a four-year course of study. $ 0 In 1920, none of the school's 457 women and 10 men students paid for tuition or textbooks. Room (shared) and board per quarter $67 for men, $62.50 for women Average U.S. income, 1920 $ 3,270 1920s

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