[11] In a Manchester Sunday School, in 1834, there were 2700 scholars and 120 unsalaried teachers, all but two or three of whom were former pupils in the Sunday Schools, now teaching others, free of charge, in return for the advantages once given them.
[12] "The amount of instruction rarely, if ever, exceeds the first four rules of arithmetic, with reading and writing. The class of children instructed is presumed to be of the very poorest, living in the most crowded districts. No doubt a large number come under this designation, but not a few better-to-do persons are found ready to take advantage for their children of the free instruction thus held out to them, and even at times almost pressed upon them." (Bartley, George C. T., The Schools for the People, p. 385.)
[13] The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832). "The schools of the Borough."
[14] French Revolutionary thought "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal rights and were able to attain the fullest self-realization. In its strictly educational aspects, it demanded the withdrawal of education from the Church and the setting up of a state system of secular instruction." (Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, p. 20.)
[15] The ideas of Malthus were especially offensive to his brother clergymen, and created quite a furor. Many regarded him as an insane and unorthodox fanatic. A prevailing idea of the time was that of a "beautiful order Providentially arranged," and it was the custom to give everything a rose-colored hue. The poor were thought to be contented in their poverty, and the rich and the aristocratic considered themselves divinely appointed to rule over them. Malthus saw the fallacy of such thinking, and stated matters in the light of biologic and political truths.
[16] Foster, John, An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, p. 259.
[17] Bell, Reverend Dr. Andrew, An Experiment in Education made at the Male Asylum at Madras, Suggesting a System by which a School or a Family may teach itself under the Superintendence of the Master or Parent. London, 1797.
[18] Lancaster, Joseph, Improvements in Education as it Respects the Industrial Classes of the Community. London, 1803; New York, 1807.
[19] Both Bell and Lancaster worked with great energy to organize schools after their respective plans, and quarreled with equal energy as to who originated the idea. While both probably did, the idea nevertheless is older than either. In 1790 Chevalier Paulet organized a monitorial school in Paris; while the English schoolmaster, John Brinsley (1587-1665), in his Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar Schooles (1612), laid down the monitorial principle in explicit language.
[20] This Society adopted, as a fundamental principle, "that the national religion should be made the foundation of national education, and according to the excellent liturgy and catechism adopted by our Church for that purpose."