A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

Throughout its work in the American colonies the S. P. Opposition to the S. P. G. G. met with various forms of opposition. The dissenters, Quakers, and others were often openly hostile through fear of the foundation of an established national church similar to that of England, and both sides displayed considerable sectarianism and bigotry. After 1750 the opposition to the society increased in bitterness and became more general, owing to the feeling that its agents were supporting the king against the colonists. Yet its patronage of schools was most philanthropic and important for American education in the eighteenth century. While it insisted upon the interpretation of Christianity adopted by the Church of England, it stood first and foremost for the extension of religion and education to the virgin soil of America. It carried Its devotion and generosity, on its labors with devoted interest and showed great generosity in the maintenance of schools, and the support and influence upon universal education. of schools in the colonies by the S. P. G. must have exerted some influence toward universal education.

Charity Schools among the Pennsylvania Germans.—During the eighteenth century the efforts of the S. P. G. were supplemented by the formation of minor associations and the establishment of other charity schools in various colonies. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance was the organization in 1753 of ‘A Society for Propagating the Knowledge of God among the Germans,’ and the maintenance of schools among the sects Organization, of Pennsylvania. These schools were managed by a general colonial board of six trustees, who visited the schools annually and awarded prizes for English orations and course, and attainments in civic and religious duties. The course of study included instruction in “both the English and German languages; likewise in writing, keeping of common accounts, singing of psalms, and the true principles of the holy Protestant religion.” Twenty-five schools were planned, but probably there were never more than half disappearance of S. P. K. G. schools. that number. The schools lasted only about a decade, as the Germans soon came to feel that this English schooling threatened their language, nationality, and institutions.

The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in Great Britain.—A variety of charity school, quite different from those already mentioned, sprang up toward the close of the century under the name of ‘Sunday Schools.’ To overcome the prevailing ignorance, vice, and squalor in the Foundation, manufacturing center of Gloucester, England, Robert Raikes in 1780 set up a school in Sooty Alley for the instruction of children and adults in religion and the rudiments. Six months later he started a new school in Southgate street, and soon had other schools established. He paid his teachers a shilling each Sunday to train the children to read in the Bible, spell, and write. This opposition, charity education, meager as it was, was attacked by many of the upper classes, and was often viewed with suspicion by the recipients themselves. Yet the new advocacy, and spread. movement had warm supporters among the nobility and such reformers as Wesley, and the schools soon spread to London, and then throughout England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. A Sunday School Society was founded in 1785, and within a decade distributed nearly one hundred thousand spellers, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five thousand bibles, and trained approximately sixty-five thousand pupils in one thousand schools.

The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in the United States.—The Raikes system of Sunday instruction was also soon introduced in America. The first school was organized Individual centers in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the house of Thomas Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia, and within a quarter of a century a number of schools arose in various and permanent associations. cities. Before long, permanent associations were also started to promote Sunday instruction. ‘The First Day or Sunday School Society’ was organized at Philadelphia in 1791, and during the first two decades of the nineteenth century a number of similar societies for secular instruction on Sunday were founded in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 1823 these associations were all absorbed into a new and broader organization, known ever since as the ‘American Sunday School Union.’ At the start it published suitable reading-books, and furnished primers, spellers, testaments, and hymn-books to needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate.

Value of the Instruction in ‘Sunday Schools.’—Both in Great Britain and the United States, however, the Sunday schools gradually tended to abandon their Makeshift, but prepared the way for universal education. secular instruction and become purely religious. At the same time the teachers came to serve without pay and to instruct less efficiently. And the value of the secular teaching was not large at the best, as the work was necessarily limited to a few hours once a week. Raikes and all others interested in these institutions recognized their inadequacy as a means of securing universal education, and regarded them merely as auxiliary to a more complete system of instruction. But while a makeshift and by no means a final solution for national education, they performed a notable service for the times, and helped point the way to universal education.

The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.—While philanthropic education started largely in the eighteenth century, some of the schools continued well into the nineteenth. This was especially the case with the ‘monitorial’ system, started at Southwark in 1798. This district of London was thronged with barefoot and unkempt Lancaster children; and Lancaster, the founder of the school, undertook to educate as many as he could. His schoolroom was soon filled with a hundred or more pupils. In order to teach them all, he used the older pupils as assistants. He taught the lesson first to these ‘monitors,’ and they in turn imparted it to the others, who were divided into equal groups. Each monitor cared for a single group. The work was very successful from the first, but Lancaster, attempting to introduce schools of this kind throughout England, fell so recklessly into debt that an association had to be founded in 1808 to continue the work on a practical basis. Within half a dozen years Lancaster withdrew from the organization, and the British and Foreign Society; but the association, under the name of the ‘British and Foreign Society,’ continued to flourish and found new schools.

So successful was the Lancasterian work that the Church of England, fearing its nonsectarian influence upon education, in 1811 organized ‘The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.’ This long-named association was to conduct monitorial schools under the Bell and the National Society. management of Doctor Andrew Bell, who had experimented with the system in India before Lancaster opened his school. Although they had formed no part of Bell’s original methods, the Anglican catechism and prayer book were now taught dogmatically in the schools founded by the National Society. Bell proved an admirable director, and a healthy rivalry sprang up between the societies.

Value of the Monitorial System in England.—The Differences in the two systems. plans of the two organizations were similar, but differed somewhat in details. Both used monitors and taught writing by means of a desk covered with sand, but the system of Lancaster was animated by broader motives and had many more devices for teaching. It also instituted company organization, drill, and precision, and developed a system of badges, offices, rewards, and punishments. Monitorial instruction, however, was not Both were unoriginal original with either Lancaster or Bell. It had long been used by the Hindus and others, although the work of the two societies brought it into prominence. It overemphasized and mechanical. repetition and recitation mechanics, and consisted of a formal drill rather than a method of instruction.

Yet the monitorial schools were productive of some Afforded substitute for national education. achievements. Most of them afforded a fair education in the elementary school subjects and added some industrial and vocational training. They also did much to awaken the conscience of the English nation to the need of general education for the poor. The British and Foreign and the National Societies afforded a substitute, though a poor one, for national education in the days before England was willing to pay for general education, and they became the avenues through which such appropriations as the government did make were distributed. In 1833 the grant of £20,000, constituting the first government aid to elementary education, was equally divided between the two societies (see p. 388), and this method of administration was continued as the annual grant was gradually increased, until the system of public education was established. Likewise, in 1839, £10,000 for normal instruction was voted to the societies, and was used Training colleges. by the British and Foreign for its Borough Road Training College, and by the National for St. Mark’s Training College. These were followed by several other training institutions, established by each society through government aid. In 1870, when the ‘board,’ or public elementary, schools were at length founded, the schools British and Foreign schools absorbed, but National a system by themselves. of the British and Foreign Society, with their nonsectarian instruction, fused naturally with them; but the institutions of the National Society, though transferred to school boards in a few cases, have generally come to constitute by themselves a national system on a voluntary basis.

Results of the Monitorial System in the United States.—In the United States the monitorial system was introduced into New York City in 1806. The ‘Society for the Establishment of a Free School,’ after investigating the best methods in other cities and countries, decided to try the system of Lancaster (see p. 260). The method Adoption by New York and other cities. was likewise introduced into the charity schools of Philadelphia (see p. 261). The monitorial system then spread rapidly through New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other States. It is almost impossible to trace the exact extent of this organization in the United States, but before long it seems to have affected nearly all cities of any size as far south as Augusta (Georgia), and west as far as Cincinnati. There are still traces of its influence throughout this region,—in Hartford, New Haven, Albany, Washington, and Baltimore, as well as in the places already mentioned (Figs. 27, 28, and 29). In 1818 Lancaster himself was invited to America, and assisted in the monitorial schools of New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. A dozen years later the system began to be introduced generally into the high Introduced into high schools and academies. schools and academies. Through the efforts of Dr. John Griscom, who had been greatly pleased with the monitorial high school of Dr. Pillans in Edinburgh, a similar institution was established in New York City in 1825, and the plan was soon adopted by a number of high schools in New York and neighboring states. Likewise, the state systems of academies in Maryland and in Indiana, which became high schools after the Civil War, were organized on this basis. For two decades the monitorial remained the prevailing method in secondary education. Training schools for teachers on the Lancasterian basis also became common.