The History of Education Part 63

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 Experiment in Education_, describing his work in educating large 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 Parliamentary grant for education, in 1833.

In its main characteristics it belongs to the eighteenth rather than to the nineteenth century, as the prominent educational movements of the eighteenth (charity-schools, Sunday Schools, schools of industry) continue strong throughout the period, and many new undertakings of a similar charitable nature ("Ragged Schools"; a.s.sociations for the improvement of the condition of the poor, etc.) were begun.

The period--during and after the Napoleonic wars--was one of marked social and political unrest, and of corresponding emphasis on social and philanthropic service. The ma.s.ses were discontented with their lot, and were beginning to be with their lack of political privileges. Numerous plans to quiet the unrest and improve conditions were proposed, of which schemes to increase employment (industrial schools; evening schools), to encourage thrift (savings banks; children's brigades), and to spread an elementary and religious education (mutual schools; infant schools) that would train the poor in self-help were the most prominent. "The Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor."

founded in 1796, became a very important early-nineteenth-century inst.i.tution. Branches were established all over England. Soup-kitchens, clothing-stations, savings banks, and schools were among the chief lines of activity. In particular it extended and improved Sunday Schools, encouraged the formation of charity-schools and schools of industry, and later gave much aid in establishing the new monitorial schools.

Educational interest steadily strengthened during the period, though as yet along lines that were deemed relatively harmless, were inexpensive, and were largely 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 themselves.

The eighteenth-century conception of the educational process, too, which regarded education as something 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 man, and the business of the teacher was to so organize and methodize instruction that the necessary knowledge could be acquired as economically, from a financial point of view, as possible. The Pestalozzian conception of education as a development of the individual, according to the law of his own nature, found but slow acceptance in England. Mental development, scientific instruction, the habit of thinking, the exercise of judgment, and free and enlightened 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 cla.s.ses of England, in common with those of continental lands, became exceedingly suspicious of much education for the ma.s.ses. To secure contributions for schools it became necessary "to avow and plead how little it was that the schools pretended or presumed to teach." [16]

England now experienced a great development of manufacturing and commerce, a great material prosperity ensued, and the growing demand for education was met by a counter-demand that the education provided should be systematized, economical, and should not teach too much. Such a system of training was 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sistance 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 Inst.i.tution" 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.s- 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, a.s.sisted 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 a.s.signed a clever boy (monitor) to act as an a.s.sistant 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sification 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.

The schools, mechanical as they now seem, marked a great 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 of much value to the type of children attending these schools. Lancaster's biographer, Salmon, has written of the system that so thoroughly was the instruction worked out that the teacher had only to organize, oversee, reward, punish, and inspire:

When a child was admitted a monitor a.s.signed him his cla.s.s; while he remained, a monitor taught him (with nine other pupils); when he was absent, one monitor ascertained the fact, and another found out the reason; a monitor examined him periodically, and, when he made progress, a monitor promoted him; a monitor ruled the writing paper; a monitor had charge of slates and books; and a monitor-general looked after all the other monitors. Every monitor wore a leather ticket, gilded and lettered, "Monitor of the First Cla.s.s," "Reading Monitor of the Second Cla.s.s," etc.

VALUE OF THE SYSTEM IN AWAKENING INTEREST. The monitorial system of instruction, coming at the time it did, exerted a very important influence in awakening interest in and a sentiment for schools. It increased the number of people who possessed the elements of an education; made schools much more talked about; and aroused thought and provoked discussion on the question of education. It did much toward making people see the advantages of a certain amount of schooling, and be willing 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 method of instruction, and in quite small groups. Under this new plan it was now possible for one teacher to instruct 300, 400, 500, or more pupils in a single room, and to do it with much better results in both learning 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 _Improvements in Education_, gave the annual cost of schooling under his system as only seven shillings sixpence ($1.80) per pupil, and this was later decreased to four shillings fivepence ($1.06) 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 shillings twopence ($1.00), in 1814. In the United States, Lancastrian schools cost from $1.22 per pupil in New York, in 1822, up to $3.00 and $4.00 later on. At first begun as free schools, [23] the expansion of effort was more rapid than the income from contributions, and a small tuition fee was in time charged. Pupils were admitted at about the age of seven, and might remain until thirteen or fourteen, though an attendance of two years was considered "abundantly sufficient for any boy." To prepare skilled masters and mistresses for the schools, girls were provided for in many places--training or model schools were organized by both the national societies, and these represent the beginnings of normal-school training in England.

INFANT SCHOOLS. Another type of school which became of much importance in England, and spread to other lands, was the Infant School. This owed its origin to Robert Owen, proprietor of the cotton mills at New Lanark, Scotland. Being of a philanthropic turn of mind, and believing that man was entirely the product of circ.u.mstance and environment, he held that it was not possible to begin too early in implanting right habits and forming character. Poverty and crime, he believed, were results of errors in the various systems of education and government. So plastic was child nature, that society would be able to mould itself "into the very image of rational wishes and desires." That "the infants of any one cla.s.s in the world may be readily formed into men of any other cla.s.s," was a fundamental belief of his.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 manhood were turned free to join the ignorant ma.s.s of the population. Owen sought to remedy this condition. He accordingly opened schools which children might enter at three years of age, receiving them into the schools almost as soon as they were able to walk, and caring 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 might be supposed useful that they could understand," and much was made of singing, dancing, and play. Moral instruction was made a prominent feature. By 1814 his work and his schools had become famous. In 1817 he published a plan for the organization of such industrial communities as he conducted. In 1818 he visited Switzerland, and saw Pestalozzi and Fellenberg.

In 1818 a number of Liberals--Brougham, James Mill, and others--combined to establish an Infant School in London, importing a teacher from New Lanark. The idea took root, was popularized, and the Infant School was soon adopted as an integral part of their schools by both the British and Foreign School Society (Lancastrians) and the National Society (Bell). In 1836 the "Home and Colonial Infant School Society" was formed to train teachers for and to establish Infant Schools. One of the organizers of this society was Charles Mayo who had worked with Pestalozzi at Yverdon (R. 270), and through his influence much of the bookishness which had crept in was removed and the better Pestalozzian procedure put in its place.

Unlike the monitorial schools, the Infant Schools were based on the idea of small-group work, and were usually conducted in harmony with the new psychological conceptions of instruction which had been worked out by Pestalozzi, and had by that time begun to be introduced into England. The Infant-School idea came at an opportune time, as the defects of the mechanical Lancastrian instruction were becoming evident and its popularity was waning. It gave a new and a somewhat deeper philosophical interpretation of the educational process, created a stronger demand than had before been known for trained teachers, established a preference for women teachers for primary work, and tended to give a new dignity to teaching and school work by revealing something of a psychological basis for the instruction of little children. It also contributed its share toward awakening a sentiment for national action.

WORK OF THE EDUCATIONAL SOCIETIES. The work of the voluntary and philanthropic educational societies in establishing schools and providing teachers and instruction before the days of national schools was enormous.

[24] Though the State did nothing before 1833, and little before 1870, the work of the educational societies was large and important. What was done by the church societies alone may be seen from the following table:

STATISTICS AS TO 10,595 ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS FOUNDED BY THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES (BRITISH CENSUS RETURNS, 1851)

The National Society, or British Church and For- Indepen- Other Total num- of eign dents, or Wesleyan Roman rel- ber of England Schools Congrega- Method-Cathol- Bapt- gious Date schools schools Society tionalists ists ics ists bodies

Before 1801 766 709 16 8 7 10 1801-1811 410 350 28 9 4 10 1811-1821 879 756 77 12 17 14 1821-1831 1,021 897 45 21 17 28 1831-1841 2,417 2,002 191 95 62 69 1841-1851 4,604 3,448 449 269 239 166 Not stated 498 409 46 17 17 14 131 331 Totals 10,595 8,571 852 431 363 311 131 331

After about 1820-25 the rising interest in elementary education expressed itself in the formation of a number of additional societies, the more important of which were:

1824. "London Infant School Society" founded by Brougham.

1826. "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" founded by Brougham. The _Journal of Education_ begun.

1836. "Central Society of Education" founded.

1836. "Home and Colonial Infant Society" founded. Beginning of a Pestalozzian Training College.

1837. "Educational Committee of the Wesleyan Conference" established.

1843. "Congregational Board of Education" formed.

1844. "Ragged School Union" founded.

1845. "Catholic Inst.i.tute."

1847. The "Catholic Poor-School Committee."

1847. "Lancashire Public School a.s.sociation" formed.

1850. The "National Public School a.s.sociation."

1867. "Birmingham Education Aid Society."

1868. The Manchester Conference.

1869. Formation of "The League."

Some of these were formed to found and support schools, and some engaged primarily in the work of propaganda in an effort to secure some national action.

III. THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION

THE PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE. During the whole of the eighteenth century Parliament had enacted no legislation relating to elementary education, aside from the one Act of 1767 for the education of pauper children in London, and the freeing of elementary schools, Dissenters, and Catholics, from inhibitions as to teaching. In the nineteenth century this att.i.tude was to be changed, though slowly, and after three quarters of a century of struggle the beginnings of national education were finally to be made for England, as they had by then for every other great nation. In 1870 the "no-business-of-the-State" att.i.tude toward the education of the people, which had persisted from the days of the great Elizabeth, was finally and permanently changed. The legislative battle began with the first Factory Act [25] of 1802, Whitbread's Parochial Schools Bill [26] of 1807, and Brougham's first Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of 1816 (R. 291); it finally culminated with the reform of the old endowed Grammar Schools by the Act of 1869, the enactment of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 (R.

304), and the Act of 1871 freeing instruction in the universities from religious restrictions (R. 305). The first of these enactments declared clearly the right of the State to inquire into, reorganize, and redirect the age-old educational foundations for secondary education; the second made the definite though tardy beginnings of a national system of elementary education for England; and the third opened up a university career to the whole nation. The agitation and conflict of ideas was long drawn out, and need not be traced in detail. The following tabulated summary will give the main outlines of the struggle, and the selection on "The Educational Traditions of England" (R. 306) gives a good brief history of the long conflict.

THE PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

Dates Proposals, Reports, etc., and Results

1802 First Factory Act for regulating employment of children.

Adopted.

1807 Whitbread's Parochial Schools' Bill introduced.

Rejected by the House of Lords 1816 Brougham secured a Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the state of education of the lower cla.s.ses in London, Westminster, and Southwark.