[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 number of charity-schools. About the same time (1798) a young Quaker schoolmaster, Joseph Lancaster by name, was led independently to a similar discovery of the advantages of using monitors, by reason of his needing assistance 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 formed after one or the other of the plans were soon organized all over England.
Increased attention was attracted to the new plans by a bitter church quarrel which broke out as to who was 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 formed, which in 1814 became "The British and Foreign School Society," to promote Lancastrian schools. This society had the close support of King George III, the Whigs, and the Edinburgh Review, while 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 model school in Borough Road, Southwark, which became a training-school for teachers, is shown on the following page. Lancaster was a poor manager; became involved in financial difficulties; and in 1818 left for the United States, where he spent the remainder of his life in organizing such schools and expounding his system. For a time this attracted wide attention, as we shall point out in the following chapter.
Lancaster's work stimulated the Church of England into activity, and in 1811 "The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales" was formed by prominent S.P.C.K. (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 formed to promote the Bell system, [20] "which made religious instruction an essential and necessary part of the plan." Within a month £15,000 had been subscribed to establish schools. Among many other contributions were £500 each from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A training-school for teachers was organized; district societies were formed over England to establish schools; and a system of organized aid was extended for both buildings and maintenance. By 1831 there were 900,412 children receiving instruction 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 row were divided into two "drafts" of from eight to ten, each in charge of a monitor. Around the wall were 31 "stations," indicated by the semicircles on the floor.]
The mutual-instruction idea spread to other lands—France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark—and seems to have been tried even in German lands. In France and Belgium 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 semicircles painted on the floor, are being taught by monitors from lessons suspended on the wall.]
THE SYSTEM OF MUTUAL OR MONITORIAL INSTRUCTION. The great merit, aside from being cheap, of the mutual or monitorial system of instruction lay in that it represented a marked advance in school organization over the older individual method of instruction, with its accompanying waste 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 made general education almost prohibitive. Pestalozzi, to be sure, had worked out in Switzerland the modern class- system of instruction, and following developmental lines in teaching, but of this the English 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 number of the brighter pupils whom they designated 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 row was assigned a clever boy (monitor) to act as an assistant teacher. A common number for each monitor to look after was ten. The teacher first taught 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 Catechism, the plan was soon extended to the teaching of writing, arithmetic, and spelling, and later on to instruction in higher 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
(From an engraved 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 mechanical (R. 298). Lancaster, in particular, was an organizing genius. The Manuals of Instruction gave complete directions for the organization and management of monitorial schools, the details of recitation work, use of apparatus, order, position of pupils at their work, and classification being minutely laid down. By carefully studying and following these directions any reasonably intelligent person could soon learn to become a successful teacher in a monitorial school.