Stow was born in Paisley on 17 May 1793. In 1811 he began a long involvement with the Port-Eglinton Spinning Company, but his most lasting work came in education.
In 1827, Stow converted a house and garden in Glasgow's Drygate into a school for 100 scholars. The Glasgow Educational Society was soon founded, and in 1836 Stow laid the foundation stone of the first Normal School, in Dundas Vale. He was officially the school's honorary secretary, but the post combined the offices of rector and director. Students came from across Britain.
A legal ruling in 1845 decided that the school belonged to the established church, and that no one could hold office unless they were with the church. Stow and his teachers were with the Free Church, so the Free Church Normal School was built and Stow transferred his work here until his death on 6 November 1864.
DAVID STOW, author of the Training System of Education and founder of the Glasgow Normal Seminary for the Training of Teachers, was born in Paisley on the 17th of May, 1793. His father, William Stow, son of Fenwick Stow, who held a family property in the County of Durham, commenced business as a merchant in Paisley and soon rose to a high position in that town, and was for many years a much-esteemed magistrate of the burgh.
David Stow received his education in the Grammar School of Paisley. In 1811, when only eighteen, he became connected with an extensively engaged commercial firm in Glasgow and continued in business until the close of his life. The firm was known as the Port-Eglinton Spinning Company.
But it is not as a merchant that David Stow will be remembered. As such, he differs in no regard from hundreds who have helped to make Glasgow what it now is - one of the most important commercial centres in the world. His labours in the cause of education, at a time when the subject of education was not so popular as now, have given him a name which is held in high honour, not only at home, but in every English-speaking colony.
He came early in life under the spell of Dr. Chalmers, and was enlisted as one of the workers in connection with the Doctor's Sabbath School agencies. He commenced work in the Saltmarket, and it was the experience he acquired in teaching his Sabbath School that led him to ponder deeply on the necessity of having teachers duly trained both for the Sabbath and the day schools.
David Stow was an enthusiast, and no difficulties daunted him in attempting to carry his views into practice. Many were inclined to consider him a visionary, but he held on his way, regardless of all obstacles, and embraced every opportunity of impressing on the public mind that teaching was not training, that to make education what it should be, the child must be trained to do what was right, and not merely taught. This was the very keystone of all his labours, and is embodied in the sentence which forms the motto of the two Normal Schools he was mainly instrumental in founding in Glasgow:- "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."
To reduce his principles to practice, Mr. Stow, in 1827, converted a house and garden in the Drygate into a school, capable of accommodating about one hundred scholars, and giving facilities for training a few students, male and female, with a view to extending his system through country districts and villages, but chiefly in the larger towns. By his means there was also formed the Glasgow Educational Society, which for many years did much to advance education, not only in Glasgow, but throughout the whole kingdom. Many names honoured in the history of Glasgow were members of this Society, and by their help Mr. Stow was enabled, on the 14th November, 1836, to lay the foundation stone of the first Normal School established in Great Britain - the building in Dundas Vale now occupied as the Church of Scotland Training College. "It was," says his biographer, the late Dr. Fraser, of Paisley, "a notable day for Mr. Stow, and notable in the educational history of the city. The foundation of a Normal College, the first in Britain, formally and publicly recognized, planned on a basis and equipped with appliances which can yet hold honourable comparison with those institutions which many years afterwards were erected with Government guidance, gives new lustre to Glasgow."
Mr. Stow continued in close connection with this institution until 1845; officially he was honorary secretary, but in reality he combined the offices of rector, secretary, and directors. He was the moving spirit of the whole establishment, and, by his writings and his own personal efforts, he succeeded in giving it a firm and solid basis, and making it the centre of all educational improvement. Students flocked to the Normal School from all quarters of the country, and particularly from England, where public education at that time was in a wretched condition. Institutions based on the model of the Glasgow one were established in England, mainly through the exertions of Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, and it may be truly said in the words of Lord Lansdowne, the first President of the Committee of Council on Education, that "all the improvements in education that of late years have appeared in England worth mentioning can be easily traced to the Glasgow Normal Seminary."
In 1845 it was decided by the Courts of Law that the Glasgow Normal Seminary was the property of the Established Church, and that Church decreed that no person could hold office in the institution who was not a member of the Established Church. Mr. Stow and all his teachers had joined the Free Church, and the resolution just mentioned led to the erection, in 1845, of the Free Church Normal School, to which Mr. Stow transferred his services, and with which he maintained his connection till his death.
It is impossible in a brief notice like this to do full justice to Mr. Stow's merits as an educationist. The following words, spoken by the late Dr. Candlish, convey a not inadequate tribute to this distinguished citizen of Glasgow:- "I cannot, of course, name the Normal Institution in Glasgow without paying a just tribute of respect and gratitude, in the name of all our educationists who love the Lord Jesus Christ, to that noble member of the community here, whose name will ever be remembered with the Normal Institution of Glasgow - David Stow. It is impossible to over-rate the services he has rendered to the cause of secular education, let the secularist educationists say what they will - not only to the cause of moral training, which is dearest to his heart, but to the cause of secular education."
It is difficult to give any accurate estimate of the number of teachers who have been trained in the two institutions founded by Mr. Stow. For some time after the erection of the first there was no regular well-defined course of study, and students attended only for a few months, mainly with the view of obtaining practical training. But, since 1845, 3181 students have been trained in the Established Normal School, and 3183 in the Free Church. These students are now to be found in every quarter of the globe.
Mr. Stow was twice married. His first wife was Miss Marion Freebairn. She died in 1831. In 1841 he married Miss Elizabeth McArthur, who died in 1847.
Mr. Stow's health began to fail about 1858, but his interest in education never flagged. To the last it occupied his thoughts. He died at Bridge of Allan on the 6th November, 1864.
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