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Benthamites and Lancasterians—The Relationship between the followers of Bentham and the British and Foreign School Society during the early years of Popular Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

George F. Bartle
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Extract

Much has been written about the Benthamite theories of education and their debt to monitorialism. Bentham himself, in Chrestomathia, based his blueprint for the schools of the future on the use of monitors, and James Mill, in his various articles on education, envisaged universal schooling within a monitorial framework. In more recent times, scholars, such as Burston, have discussed the influence of the theory of mutual instruction on Utilitarian educational thought. Yet in all this output, little attention has been given to relations between Benthamites and Joseph Lancaster, one of the foremost practical exponents of monitorial teaching in the early nineteenth century nor to the organization in Southwark which perpetuated his methods. When Lancaster himself has been referred to, it has usually been in unfavourable terms. Bentham expressed his contempt for the ‘self-styled Quaker’, who ‘so notoriously and scandalously abused’ his early reputation as a successful schoolmaster. Francis Place, abandoning his early enthusiasm for Lancaster, decided that he was ‘adapted to the teaching in the school and to nothing else’ and became ‘mischievous, ridiculous and childish’ after he was ‘caressed by the great’. Halévy summed him up as ‘a pure madman’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , November 1991 , pp. 275 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 The influence of monitorial methods on the educational thought of Bentham and his followers is discussed in Hans, N., ‘Bentham and the Utilitarians’, in Pioneers of English Education, ed. Judges, A. V., London, 1952Google Scholar; Burston, W. H., ‘The Utilitarians and the Monitorial System of Teaching’, Year Book of Education, London, 1957, pp. 383–404.Google Scholar

2 Quoted in Bain, A., Life of James Mill, London, 1882, p. 85.Google Scholar

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4 Halévy, E., The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, London, 1927, p. 285.Google Scholar

5 The best account of Lancaster's relations with the British and Foreign School Society (henceforth BFSS) is an unpublished thesis by McGarry, K. J., ‘Joseph Lancaster and the British and Foreign School Society: The Evolution of an Educational Organization from 1798–1846’, Univ. of Wales Ph.D., 1985.Google Scholar This thesis contains a section on the relations between the Benthamites and the BFSS. A recent life of Lancaster is Dickson, M., Teacher Extraordinary: Joseph Lancaster, 1778–1838, Lewes, 1986.Google Scholar Salmon, D., Joseph Lancaster, London, 1904Google Scholar, is still useful. See also Bartle, G. F., ‘Joseph Lancaster and his Biographers: Some unfamiliar aspects of his Character’, Biography and Education: Some Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies, History of Education Society Occasional Publication, No. 5, 1980, 16–22.Google Scholar

6 Dickson, , p. 48.Google Scholar The Visit of Sarah Trimmer, soon to be a strong opponent of Lancaster's system, was also arranged by the Wakefield family (Salmon, , p. 27).Google Scholar

7 BL Add. MS 27,823, fo. 8. Lancaster called on Place asking for a higher subscription.

8 Bain, , p. 79.Google Scholar

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21 Ibid., fo. 8.

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49 For Allen's part in the production of the BFSS Teaching Manuals, see Bartle, G. F. ‘The Teaching Manuals and Lesson Books of the British and Foreign School Society’, History of Education Society Bulletin, xliv (1990), 22–33.Google Scholar

50 Scripture Lessons for Schools in the British System of Mutual Instruction, London 1820, Preface.Google Scholar

51 Works of Allen, i. 112 (Diary for 27 Nov. 1809).Google Scholar

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53 BFSS Ann. Rpt. xv (1820), 116 (Report from Spicer Street School, Spitalfields).Google Scholar

54 For Dunn see Bartle, G. F., ‘Henry Dunn and the Secretaryship of the British and Foreign School Society’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, xiii (1986), 13–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 The BFSS Ann. Rpt. for 1820 (vol. xv)Google Scholar, contains the following details of subscriptions: J. Bentham £3.0.0; J. Mill £1.0.0; F. Place £1.0.0; D. Ricardo £5.5.0. The list of ‘Life Governors’ who paid a higher subscription included Hume.

56 Westminster Review, i (1824), 53–5.Google Scholar

57 See Bartle, G. F., ‘The Greek Boys at Borough Road during the War of Independence’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, xx (1988), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Report from the Select Committee on the State of Education, P. P., Commons (1835), vii (2), 87Google Scholar (Evidence of Francis Place). Place had also given evidence on the London schools to Brougham's Select Committee of 1816 (Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis, iv. 473–7).Google Scholar

59 BL Add. MS 27,823, fo. 6.