A photo essay
The Monitorial System
I've been interested the culture of classrooms ever since my middle school years. I was intrigued when I discovered the 19th century monitorial system that was so influential in shaping what we know as modern elementary education. I researched the topic and wrote a 12000-word essay that was published in The Concord Review (you'll find a link in the Research section).
But a picture is worth a thousand words, and I was captivated by images of education in the 19th century, specifically in monitorial schools, as I did as I did the research. So this is a compilation of those images, with many thanks to Wellcome Collection, a primary source of the images used here. I hope we can offer students of today more hope and joy in their education than the frustrated "young destructive" experienced while contemplating his in the 19th century - and for that you need to read through the end of this post!
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In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, London witnessed mounting urban poverty. With growing numbers of abandoned or illegitimate children – or simply children whose working parents were overburdened and who roamed the streets freely – London’s elite were concerned by the prospects for rising crime. Their motivation for mass education was to address the problem of vagrancy and get the “urchins” off the streets.​
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Image credits: A boy is caught by a shopkeeper and threatened with a stick as punishment for breaking a window. Coloured lithograph after J.R. Barfoot. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Education was not viewed as a public good for the laboring classes at the time. Learning was largely the preserve of the rich and privileged classes. Private tutors, typically clergymen, would educate the children of rich families privately in their homes or in the few fee-paying private and grammar schools open to the elite. Public resourcing for mass schooling was virtually absent.
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Image credit: Boys are being taught by an schoolmaster sitting at a table. Stipple engraving by George Keating after Pasquilini. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
The schools available for children of the "laboring classes" in 19th century England were ill-equipped to educate students. Children of all ages and skill levels were thrown into one room. The focus was largely on teaching the Bible with parochial or Sunday schools funded by various Church organizations and open to specific sectarian groups. Other charity schools were “workhouses” that kept poor children for a short period of time with the main objective of preparing them for menial service. None of these systems had the resources to take on the task of mass public schooling.
Image credit: Schoolboys arriving at school, showing different attitudes. Engraving by W. Ridgway after T. Webster. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Image credit: Design for a parochial school. Wood engraving by C.D. Laing, 1848, after G. Truefitt. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Children of families without means were often accommodated in Dame Schools, supervised by teachers who were little more than childminders themselves. Corporate punishment was the norm in such schools, just as in most other educational establishments of those times. This engraving represents lines from the poem 'The school mistress" by William Shenstone:
"In every village mark'd with little spire,
Embower'd in trees, and hardly known to Fame,
There dwells in lowly shed, and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we School-mistress name;
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame;
They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent,
Aw'd by the power of this relentless dame;
And oft-times, on vagaries idly bent,
For unkempt hair, or task unconn'd, are sorely shent."
Image credit: A woman school-teacher sitting on a chair with birches in her hand as a small boy stands in front of her and another child holding a book looks on. Engraving by W.H. Simmons after T. Webster. Publication/Creation. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Classroom culture was typified by authority, dictat, and sheer physical force. In this engraving, a young woman presents the student to the old man sitting on a chair with other pupils present around. On the wall behind the teacher is a printed poster headed "Regolamento" meaning “regulation or rules.”
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Image credit: A young woman taking a boy to school introduces him to the school master in the schoolroom. Wood engraving after Ludwig Bassini. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Teachers of in 19th century England were typically uneducated, former soldiers or tradespeople, or, as Lord Macaulay put it, “...the refuse of all other callings, discarded footmen, ruined pedlars, men who cannot work a sum in the rule of three, men who cannot write a common letter without blunders.” Teaching was not regarded as a respected profession that required skilled or trained people to undertake it. This engraving has satirical words inscribed below it (reproduced from the British Museum):
"Thus many Senseless flogging Fools,
Are Teachers of our Modern Schooles;
Tho' void of Learning, Wit or Parts,
Presume to teach the Lib'ral Arts;
Strange! that such Asses shou'd bestow
On others more than yet they know:
And such the Madness of Mankind,
We're fond of Fools, to Merit blind."​
Image credit: A schoolroom with animals as teachers and pupils. Engraving after E. van Heemskerck. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
In this challenging educational landscape, Reverend Andrew Bell pioneered a new way of teaching. He “invented” his ideas at the other end of world, in Madras, British India, where he was in charge of the Madras Male Asylum orphanage school and had vowed to make his wards “good scholars, good men, and good Christians.” Struggling with the paucity of trained teachers, Bell evolved a new economical method of elementary schooling based on the sand-writing techniques and peer tutoring practices prevalent in indigenous Hindu schools.
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Image credit: Andrew Bell. Mezzotint by C. Turner, 1825, after W. Owen. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Image credit: Glyn Barlow, The Story of Madras, 1921.
Image credit: A village school; a teacher giving lessons to three children. Gouache painting by an Indian artist. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Meanwhile, Joseph Lancaster had established a free school at Borough Road in Southwark, a working-class neighborhood of London, around 1798. There he struggled with the same challenges that Bell faced in Madras – the lack of trained teachers who could run a school operating on very limited resources. Lancaster too came up with ideas for peer tutoring and systematized classroom practices, similar to those of Bell. The system gained favor with influential British peers and even the King himself, and Lancaster went on to refine, codify, and popularize it as the Monitorial (or Lancasterian) education system throughout the British Isles as to farflung corners of the Empire.
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Image credit: Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Joseph Lancaster". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Mar. 2024.
The configuration of Lancasterian schools was prescribed in great detailed in manuals. Monitorial schoolrooms represented pioneering classroom design, equipment, and organizational methods. They were much larger than traditional schoolrooms, with as many as 1000 students in a single room under one school master. Students were seated in long rows, called forms, organized by their degree of literacy and skill in numbers. Windows were placed high on walls to prevent students from looking out and getting distracted.
Image credit: Mr. Gray's School, Westminster: the interior. Lithograph by J. Miller. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Image credit: Child welfare: Ragged School, Whitechapel, 19thC. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
The essence of the monitorial system was peer tutoring, an approach where the most industrious and intelligent boys were appointed as “monitors” to supervise the work of other children and help organize classroom activities. Monitors would inspect the books and slates of students, point out corrections, record progress made and the recognition as well as punishment due to children. Groups of students would gather in half-circles around enlarged posters to go over their lessons under the eye of the monitor, who would encourage other students to point out mistakes and correct them.
Image credit: Digital Encyclopedia of European History.
Image credit: Middle Street School History: The Lancastrian Monitorial System of Education.
The monitorial system promised basic schooling to all children at an unbelievably low cost. It captivated the imagination of educators and at first and spread to practically every part of the world for a brief period. However, both teachers and parents soon realized that the education it offered was completely rote-based and did not live up to any expectations of what a good education system should achieve. Although it had many important and enduring legacies, the monitorial system as a formal practice of schooling died out by the mid-1850s in both England and America. Yet, frustration with the quality of education remains a challenge. The young student in this engraving, embodying L.E. Landon’s poem, "The Young Destructive," represents the plight of many students even today.
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Image credit: A boy tears up his school textbooks in a fit of anger against his education. Engraving W.C. Wrankmore after C. Wrankmore. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
The Young Destructive
By L.E. Landon
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In truth, I do not wonder
To see them scatter’d round;
So many leaves of knowledge—
Some fruit must sure be found.
The Eton Latin Grammar
Has now its verbs declin’d;
And those of Lindley Murray
Are not so far behind.
Oh! days of bread and water—
How many I recall,
Past—sent into the corner;
Your face towards the wall.
Oh! boundaries of Europe!
Oh! rivers great and small!
Oh! islands, gulfs, and capitals!
How I abhorr'd ye all!
And then those dreadful tables
Of shillings, pence, and pounds!
Though I own their greater trouble
In after life abounds.
'Tis strange how memory lingers
About those early hours;
And we talk of happy childhood,
As if such had been ours.
But distance lends enchantment
To all we suffer’d then;
Thank Heaven, that I never
Can be a child again!"