In fact, the monitorial system was destined to perform a great service for American education. At the time of its introduction, public and free schools were generally Increased school facilities lacking, outside of New England, and the facilities that existed were meager and available during but a small portion of the year. In all parts of the country illiteracy was almost universal among children of the poor. This want of school opportunities was rendered more serious by the rapid growth of American cities. ‘Free school societies,’ like that in New York City, formed to relieve the situation, came to regard the system of Lancaster, because of its comparative inexpensiveness, as a godsend for their purpose. And when the people generally awoke to the crying need of public education, legislators also found monitorial schools the cheapest way out of the difficulty, and the provision made for these schools gradually opened the road to the ever increasing expenditures and taxation that had to come before satisfactory schools could be established. Moreover, the Lancasterian schools were not only economical, but most effective, when the educational conditions of the times are taken into consideration. Even in the cities, the one-room and one-teacher school was the prevailing type, and grading was practically unknown. The whole organization and improved organization and methods. and administration were shiftless and uneconomical, and a great improvement was brought about by the carefully planned and detailed methods of Lancaster. The schools were made over through his definite mechanics of instruction, centralized management, well-trained teachers, improved apparatus, discipline, hygiene, and other features.
Fig. 27.—A monitorial school, with three hundred pupils and but one teacher.
Fig. 28.—Pupils reciting to monitors.
Fig. 29.—Monitor inspecting slates.
But while the monitorial methods met a great educational emergency in the United States, they were clearly mechanical, inelastic, and without psychological foundation. Disappeared when educational sentiment improved. Naturally their sway could not last long, and as enlarged material resources enabled the people to make greater appropriations for education, the obvious defects of the monitorial system became more fully appreciated and brought about its abandonment. Before the middle of the century its work in America was ended, and it gave way to the more psychological conceptions of Pestalozzi and to those afterward formulated by Froebel and Herbart.
The ‘Infant Schools’ in France.—Another form of philanthropic education that came to be very influential during the nineteenth century and has eventually been merged in several national systems is that of the so-called ‘infant schools.’ The first recorded instance of these institutions occurred late in the eighteenth century through the attempt of a young Lutheran pastor named Beginning with Oberlin; Oberlin to give an informal training to the small children in all the villages of his rural charge in northeastern development in Paris; France. This type of training was copied in Paris as early as 1801, but did not amount to much until its revival through the influence of a similar development in England a quarter of a century later. It then rapidly expanded, and in 1833 was adopted as part of the French part of national system. national system of education. In 1847 a normal school was founded to prepare directresses and inspectors for these institutions, and in 1881 they became known as ‘maternal schools,’ and the present type of curriculum was adopted. Besides reading and writing, these schools have always included informal exercises in the mother tongue, drawing, knowledge of common things, the elements of geography and natural history, manual and physical exercises, and singing.
The ‘Infant Schools’ in England.—Quite independently, though over a generation later than Oberlin, Owen at New Lanark; Robert Owen opened his ‘infant school’ in 1816 at New Lanark, Scotland. He was a philanthropic cotton-spinner, and wished to give the young children of his operatives a careful moral, physical, and intellectual training. From the age of three they were taught in this school for two or three years whatever was useful and within their understanding, and this instruction was combined with much singing, dancing, amusement, and out-of-door exercise. They were not “annoyed with books,” but were taught about nature and common objects through maps, models, paintings, and familiar conversation, and their “curiosity was excited so as to ask questions concerning them.” To afford this informal training, Owen secured a “poor simple-hearted weaver, named James Buchanan, who at first could scarcely read, write, or spell,” but who, by following the instructions of Owen literally, made a great success of the Buchanan’s school in London, system. But when Buchanan, with the consent of Owen, had been transferred to London, to start a similar school for a group of peers and other distinguished philanthropists, his lack of intelligence reduced the training to a mere mechanical imitation of the procedure he had learned at New Lanark. Unfortunately, this London school became the model for Samuel Wilderspin, who was destined to become the leading exponent of infant schools. The schools of Wilderspin, while became model for Wilderspin,—formal and mechanical. retaining some of the principles and devices of Owen, were much more formal and mechanical. He thought too highly of ‘books, lessons, and apparatus,’ and confounded instruction with education. He overloaded the child with verbal information, depending upon the memory rather than the understanding. Before the child was six, it was expected that he had been taught reading, the fundamental operations in arithmetic, the tables of money, weights, and measures, a knowledge of the qualities of common objects, the habits of different animals, the elements of astronomy, botany, and zoölogy, and the chief facts of the New Testament. Even the games were stereotyped, and the religious teaching most formal.