To aid prospective teachers and to maintain high professional standards, Norway early established a Teachers' Seminary in each of its six dioceses (_Stifter_). Having made this ample provision for the training of teachers, they were in a position to require a certain amount of professional preparation of all candidates for appointment to teaching positions. Adherence to this laudable principle has saved the state from an overflow of incompetent instructors. While requirements were very low for a long time, the increasing supply of qualified candidates for positions warranted successive shiftings of them to higher and higher standards. At present, the teachers of Norway, as a body, rank among the best in educational equipment, professional training, and morality.
Technical, agricultural, military, and naval schools have been established in order to keep pace with the world's developments along these lines. The technical school in Trondhjem opened in 1910, sets the requirements for admission as high as those at the university. Its work promises to be of unquestioned quality and its prospects are very bright. The students at this school come chiefly from the scientific course offered in the gymnasia or from the several preparatory technical schools of Norway. There are many of these lower technical schools doing excellent work and some of them are modeled after American schools. The work of the agricultural college and of the military and naval schools is more or less technical along their respective lines and meets certain requirements not elsewhere provided for. When one notes the variety of schools maintained by the Norwegian state, it is evident that it is the intent to provide for its citizens a very wide range of educational advantages, and at the same time to develop the capacities of young people until they are able to perform the offices of state and nation.
The laws of Norway are specific in their requirements regarding education, and the people are at hand to provide the essential means for carrying out the demands. It is required that in each city or district in the entire realm there shall be the necessary number of schools to provide instruction for all children of school age. This is in answer to the law which makes a requirement of a certain minimum amount of education of all such children.