Part 63 (1/2)
CONDITIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY This second period in the history of the organization of English education begins with the publication, in 1797, of Dr Andrew Bell's _An Experie numbers of children by means of the so-called mutual system, at the Male Asylum at Madras, India The period properly ends with the first Parliarant for education, in 1833
In its hteenth rather than to the nineteenth century, as the prohteenth (charity-schools, Sunday Schools, schools of industry) continue strong throughout the period, and ed Schools”; associations for the iun
The period--during and after the Napoleonic wars--was one ofemphasis on social and philanthropic service Theto be with their lack of political privileges Numerous plans to quiet the unrest and improve conditions were proposed, of which sche schools), to encourage thrift (savings banks; children's brigades), and to spread an eleious education (mutual schools; infant schools) that would train the poor in self-help were thethe Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor”
founded in 1796, became a very important early-nineteenth-century institution Branches were established all over England Soup-kitchens, clothing-stations, savings banks, and schools were a the chief lines of activity In particular it extended and ied the foravethe new thened during the period, though as yet along lines that were deeely religious in character
The eighteenth-century conception of education as a charity, designed where given to train the poor to ”an honest, upright, grateful, and industrious poverty,” still prevailed; there was as yet little thought of education as designed to train the poor to think for and help thehteenth-century conception of the educational process, too, which regarded education as so external and determined by adult standards and needs, and to be imposed on the child from without, also continued
The purpose of the school was to manufacture the standard anize and e could be acquired as economically, from a financial point of view, as possible The Pestalozzian conception of education as a develop to the law of his own nature, found but slow acceptance in England Mental develop, the exercise of judghtened opinion were ideas that found little favor there, and hence had to be handled carefully by those who had caught the new conception of the educational process
In the political reaction following the end of Napoleon's rule the upper and ruling classes of England, in coly suspicious of much education for the masses To secure contributions for schools it became necessary ”to avow and plead how little it was that the schools pretended or presureat developreatdemand for education was met by a counter-demand that the education provided should be systematized, economical, and should not teach toowas now discovered and applied, in the form of mutual or monitorial instruction, and was hailed as ”a new expedient, parallel and rival to the modern inventions in the mechanical departments”
[Illustration: FIG 185 THE CREATORS OF THE MONITORIAL SYSTEM REV ANDREW BELL (1753-1832) JOSEPH LANCASTER (1778-1838)]
ORIGIN OF MUTUAL OR MONITORIAL INSTRUCTION In 1797 Dr Andrew Bell, a clergyman in the Established Church, published the results of his experiment in the use of monitors in India [17] The idea attracted attention, and the plan was successfully introduced into a nu Quaker schoolmaster, Joseph Lancaster by name, was led independently to a siassistance in his school and being too poor to pay for additional teachers In 1803 he published an account of his plan [18] The two plans were quite similar, attracted attention from the first, and schools foranized all over England
Increased attention was attracted to the new plans by a bitter church quarrel which broke out as to as the real originator of the idea, [19] Bell being upheld by Church-of-England supporters, and Lancaster by the Dissenters In 1808 ”The Royal Lancastrian Institution” was forn School Society,” to promote Lancastrian schools This society had the close support of King George III, the Whigs, and the _Edinburgh Reviehile such liberals as Brougham, Whitbread, and James Mill were on its board of directors This Society sent out Lancaster to expound his ”truly British” system, and by 1810 as many as ninety-five Lancastrian schools had been established in England His h Road, Southwark, which beca page Lancaster was a poor er; became involved in financial difficulties; and in 1818 left for the United States, where he spent the re his system For a time this attracted wide attention, as we shall point out in the following chapter
Lancaster's work stiland into activity, and in 1811 ”The National Society for Pro the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales” was formed by prominent SPCK (p 449) members and Churchmen, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as president This Society was supported by the Tories, the Established Church, and the _Quarterly Review_, and was forious instruction an essential and necessary part of the plan” Within amany other contributions were 500 each fro-school for teachers was organized; district societies were foranized aid was extended for both buildings andinstruction in the monitorial schools of the National Society alone
[Illustration: Fig 186 THE LANCASTRIAN MODEL SCHOOL IN BOROUGH ROAD, SOUTHWARK, LONDON This shows 365 pupils, seated for writing The room was 40 x 90 feet in size and contained 20 desks, each 25 feet long The boys of each roere divided into two ”drafts” of froe of a monitor Around the ere 31 ”stations,” indicated by the semicircles on the floor]
The ium, Holland, Denmark--and seeium it was experimented with for a time because of its cheapness, but was soon discarded because of its defects In Teutonic lands, where the much better Pestalozzian ideas had become established, the monitorial system made practically no headway It was in the United States, of all countries outside of England, that the idea met with most ready acceptance
[Illustration: FIG 187 MONITORS TEACHING READING AT ”STATIONS”
Three ”drafts” of ten each, with their toes to the seht by monitors from lessons suspended on the wall]
THE SYSTEM OF MUTUAL OR MONITORIAL INSTRUCTION The greatcheap, of the mutual or monitorial system of instruction lay in that it represented a anization over the older individualwaste of time and schoolroom disorder Under the individual method only a small number of pupils could be placed under the control of one teacher, and the expense for such instruction eneral education almost prohibitive
Pestalozzi, to be sure, had worked out in Switzerland thedeveloplish were not only ignorant, but it called for a degree of pedagogical skill which their teachers did not then possess Bell and Lancaster now evolved a plan whereby one teacher, assisted by a nunated as monitors, could teach from two hundred to a thousand pupils in one school (R 297) The picture of Lancaster's London school (Figure 186) shows 365 pupils seated [21] The pupils were sorted into rows, and to each roas assigned a clever boy (monitor) to act as an assistant teacher A common number for each ht these monitors a lesson from a printed card, and then each monitor took his row to a ”station”
about the wall and proceeded to teach the other boys what he had just learned At first used only for teaching reading and the Catechis, arithher branches The system was very popular from about 1810 to 1830, but by 1840 its popularity had waned
[Illustration: FIG 188 PROPER MONITORIAL-SCHOOL POSITIONS (Froraved plate of 30 positions, in a Manual of the British and Foreign School Society, London, 1831)]
Such schools were naturally highly organized, the organization being largely anizing genius The _Manuals of Instruction_ gave coement of monitorial schools, the details of recitation work, use of apparatus, order, position of pupils at their work, and classification beingthese directions any reasonably intelligent person could soon learn to become a successful teacher in a monitorial school
The schools, reat improvement over the individual method upon which schoolmasters for centuries had wasted so much of their own and their pupils' time In place of earlier idleness, inattention, and disorder, Bell and Lancaster introduced activity, emulation, order, and a kind of military discipline which was ofthese schools Lancaster's biographer, Salhly was the instruction worked out that the teacher had only to organize, oversee, reward, punish, and inspire:
When a child was adned hiht him (with nine other pupils); when he was absent, one monitor ascertained the fact, and another found out the reason; a ress, apaper; a eneral looked after all the other ilded and lettered, ”Monitor of the First Class,” ”Reading Monitor of the Second Class,” etc
VALUE OF THE SYSTEM IN AWAKENING INTEREST Theat the ti interest in and a sentiment for schools It increased the number of people who possessed the elements of an education; ht and provoked discussion on the question of education It did es of a certain a to contribute to its support Under the plans previously in use education had been a slow and an expensive process, because it had to be carried on by the individual roups Under this new plan it was now possible for one teacher to instruct 300, 400, 500, or le roo and discipline than the old type of schoolmaster had achieved
All at once, comparatively, a new system had been introduced which not only improved and popularized, but tremendously cheapened education [22]
Lancaster, in his _I under his systes sixpence (180) per pupil, and this was later decreased to four shi+llings fivepence (106) as the school was increased to accommodate a thousand pupils Under the Bell system the yearly cost per pupil, in a school of five hundred, was only four shi+llings twopence (100), in 1814 In the United States, Lancastrian schools cost from 122 per pupil in New York, in 1822, up to 300 and 400 later on At first begun as free schools, [23] the expansion of effort was more rapid than the income froed Pupils were adht reh an attendance of two years was considered ”abundantly sufficient for any boy” To prepare skilled irls were provided for in anized by both the national societies, and these represent the beginnings of norland
INFANT SCHOOLS Another type of school which becaland, and spread to other lands, was the Infant School This owed its origin to Robert Owen, proprietor of the cottonof a philanthropic turn ofthat man was entirely the product of circumstance and environin too early in i character Poverty and crime, he believed, were results of errors in the various systeovernment So plastic was child nature, that society would be able to e of rational wishes and desires” That ”the infants of any one class in the world may be readily formed into men of any other class,” was a fundamental belief of his
[Illustration: FIG 189 ROBERT OWEN (1771-1858)]
When he took charge of the mills at New Lanark (1799) he found the usual wretched social conditions of the time Children of five, six, and seven years were bound out to the factory as apprentices (R 242) for a period of nine years They worked as apprentices and helpers in the factories twelve to thirteen hours a day, and at early norant ht to rely opened schools which childrenthem into the schools al for them while their parents were at work
Children under ten he forbade to work in the mills, and for these he provided schools The instruction for the children younger than six was to be ”whatever ht be supposed useful that they could understand,” and , and play Moral instruction was made a prominent feature By 1814 his work and his schools had becoanization of such industrial communities as he conducted In 1818 he visited Switzerland, and saw Pestalozzi and Fellenberg