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Abstract
The business side of the Lancasterian system of mass schooling has been highlighted by some researchers. However, this feature is usually considered of minor importance compared to other dimensions of that system, namely the social control role of popular education in early nineteenth-century Britain. The present surge of projects and mechanisms directed to capitalist valorisation within public education systems provides an enhanced relevance to the study of past experiments with similar meaning and content. In this paper, I seek to understand the processes of educational production and capital valorisation in the Lancasterian undertaking. Succinctly as it may be, I refer to initiatives originated in the Benthamite circle in support of the Lancasterian system and aimed at extending it to superior branches of knowledge and to other social classes.
Notes
1Paul A. Olson, The Kingdom of Science: Literary Utopianism and British Education, 1612–1870 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 158–9.
2David Wardle, English Popular Education, 1780–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 87.
4Thomas Bernard, “Preface,” in Of the Education of the Poor; Being the First Part of a Digest of the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1809), 34–5.
3See C. Birchenough, History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, from 1800 to the Present Day (London: W.B. Clive, 1914), 42–54; also W.H.G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 89–93; and Wardle, English Popular Education, 86–8. As a representative of the critical voices of the monitorial system, see Elisabeth Hamilton, Hints Adressed to the Patrons and Directors of Schools; Principally Intended to Shew, that the Benefits Derived from the New Modes of Teaching May Be Increased by a Partial Adoption of the Plan of Pestalossi (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815), 32–60.
5See B. Kirkman Gray, A History of English Philanthropy – From the Dissolution of the Monasteries to the Taking of the First Census (London: P.S. King & Son, 1905), 278–9.
6See Andrew Bell, The Madras School or Elements of Tuition; Comprising the Analysis of an Experiment in Education, Made at the Male Asylum, Madras (London: T. Bensley, 1808).
7See Joseph Lancaster, Improvements in Education as it Respects the Industrious Classes of the Community, Containing, Among Other Important Particulars, an Account of the Institution for the Education of One Thousand Children, Borough Road Southwark; and of the New System of Education on Which it is Conducted (Londres: Darton and Harvey, 1805).
8See Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir-Naissance de la Prison (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1975), 167–9; also Wardle, English Popular Education, 85–8; Phillip McCann, “Popular Education, Socialisation and Social Control: Spitalfields 1812–1824,” in Popular Education and Socialisation in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Phillip McCann (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1977), 12–20, 25–6; Peter Gordon and Denis Lawton, Curriculum Change in the Nineteenth & Twentieth Centuries (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978), 128–30; Eugenia Roldán Vera, “Order in the Classroom: The Spanish American Appropriation of the Monitorial System of Education,” Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 6 (2005): 657–60; Jana Tschurenev, “Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789–1840,” Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 3 (2008): 245–64; and Paul Sedra, “Exposure to the Eyes of God: Monitorial Schools and Evangelicals in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” Paedagogica Historica, First published on: 06 May 2010 (iFirst).
9See P.J. Miller, “Factories, Monitorial Schools and Jeremy Bentham: The Origins of the ‘Management Syndrome’ in Popular Education,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 5, no. 1 (1973): 10–20; also David Hogan, “The Market Revolution and Disciplinary Power: Joseph Lancaster and the Psychology of the Early Classroom System,” History of Education Quarterly 29, no. 3 (1989): 381–417; and David Hamilton, Towards a Theory of Schooling (London: The Falmer Press, 1989), 81–3.
10See Lancaster, Improvements, 1–27; Idem., Extracts from a Report of J. Lancaster’s Progress, from the Year 1798. With the Report of the Finance Committee for the Year 1810. To Which Is Prefixed an Adress of the Committee for Promoting the Royal Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor (New York: Re-printed from the London Edition of 1811).
11Wardle, English Popular Education, 88.
12“Bell and his supporters sought to stem the flow of history; Lancaster and his colleagues struggled to channel its social energies along more efficient and profitable lines.” Hamilton, Towards a Theory of Schooling, 83.
13Miller, “Factories, Monitorial Schools and Jeremy Bentham,” 13, 17.
14Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 85–107.
15“Edison has been not just one experiment in public school privatisation but the experiment in corporations taking over public schools to run them for profit.” Kenneth J. Saltman, The Edison Schools –Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 3.
16Guilbert C. Hentschke, “The Role of Government in Education: Enduring Principles, New Circumstances, and the Question of ‘Shelf Life,’” in Liberty & Learning: Milton Friedman’s Voucher Idea at Fifty, ed. Robert C. Enlow and Lenore T. Ealy (Washington DC: Cato Institute, 2006), 14.
17Patricia Ellen Burch, “The New Educational Privatisation: Educational Contracting and High Stakes Accountability,” Teachers College Record 108, no. 12 (2006): 25–89.
18Alex Molnar, Gary Miron, and Jessica L. Urschel, Profiles of For-Profit Education Management Organisations: Twelfth Annual Report – 2009–2010 (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, 2010), 4–6.
19Michael R. Sandler, Social Entrepreneurship in Education – Private Ventures for the Public Good (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2010), 141.
20The boarding school opened by J. Lancaster at Tooting was intended to take 50 boarders at £42 per annum; see Mora Dickson, Teacher Extraordinary – Joseph Lancaster, 1778–1838 (Sussex, England: The Book Guild Limited, 1986), 141. The Maiden Bradley experiment had as its goal the establishment of a new industrial branch for the production of straw plait goods; see William Corston, quoted in Lancaster, Improvements, 122–44; and Joseph Lancaster, Outlines of a Plan for Educating Ten Thousand Poor Children, by Establishing Schools in Country Towns and Villages; For Uniting Works of Industry with Useful Knowledge. Under Royal Patronage (London: Free School, Borough Road, 1806), 16–36.
22Lancaster, Improvements, 1.
21In fact, in general terms and beyond some anecdotal remarks, such description is corroborated either by witnesses or by researchers. See, for example, Carl F. Kaestle, ed., Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement – A Documentary History (New York and London: Teachers College Press, 1973); also Dickson, Teacher Extraordinary, 19–51.
23Ibid., 2.
24Lancaster, Improvements, 14–5.
25Ibid., 8.
26See Lancaster, Improvements, 8–20. The meaning of the accounting elaborated by J. Lancaster is shown in Leopoldo Mesquita, “A Capitalização da Actividade Educativa nos Níveis Básico e Secundário de Escolaridade: O Caso da Instrução das Crianças Pobres e Trabalhadoras em Inglaterra, Entre o Século XVII e o Primeiro Quartel do Século XIX.” [“The Capitalization of Educational Activity in Elementary and Secondary Education: The Case of the Instruction of Poor and Working Children in England, Between the 17th Century And the First Quarter of the 19th Century.”] (PhD diss., University of Porto, 2009), 346–53.
27“Minutes of the First Committee,” quoted in David Salmon, Joseph Lancaster (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), 40; also William Allen, Life of William Allen with Selections from his Correspondence, vol. I (London: Charles Gilpin, 1846), 109.
28See Graham Wallas, The Life of Francis Place, 1771–1854 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1918), 93–113; also Allen, Life of William Allen, 109, 132, 151, 158; also Anonymous, “The British System of Education For the Least Opulent, Least Instructed, and Most Numerous Class,” in The Philanthropist: Or Repository for Hints and Suggestions Calculated To Promote the Comfort and Happiness of Man, Vol. IV–For 1814 (London: Richard and Arthur Taylor, 1814), 65–74; Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, 4–57; Dickson, Teacher Extraordinary, 96–182; Birchenough, History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, 40–54; and Brian Simon, The Two Nations and the Educational Structure, 1780–1870 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1974), 126–52.
29This is the case of Chris Whittle, founder of Edison Schools. See Chris Whittle, Crash Course: Imagining a Better Future for Public Education (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005) ; also Vance H. Trimble, An Empire Undone – The Wild Rise and Hard Fall of Chris Whittle (New York: A Birch Lane Press Book published by Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 260–354; and Kenneth J. Saltman, The Edison Schools – Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education (New York and London: Routledge, 2005).
30See Saltman, The Edison Schools, 119–79; also Amy Stuart Wells and Janelle Scott, “Privatisation and Charter School Reform: Economic, Political and Social Dimensions,” in Privatising Education – Can the Marketplace Deliver Choice, Efficiency, Equity, and Social Cohesion?, ed. Henry M. Levin (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 234–59.
31See Frederick M. Hess, ed., With the Best of Intentions – How Philanthropy Is Reshaping K-12 Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2005).
32See Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (New York: Harper Business, 1994), 198–9; also Whittle, Crash Course, 101–7; Rena F. Subotnik and Herbert J. Walberg, eds., The Scientific Basis of Educational Productivity (Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2006); Matthew Wicks, A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning, Version 2 (International Association for K-12 Online Learning, 2010), http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/iNCL_NationalPrimerv22010–web.pdf (accessed February 2, 2011); and Heather Staker et al., The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning: Profiles of Emerging Models (Innosight Institute, Inc., 2011), http://www.innosightinstitute.org/blended_learning_models/ (accessed November 2, 2011).
33Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), 455–91; Bell, The Madras School, 3–4, 36–7; Lancaster, Improvements, 30–114; Bernard, “Preface,” 34–5; Kaestle, Joseph Lancaster, 11–5; Wardle, English Popular Education, 85–8.
34Lancaster, Outlines, 3.
35J. Lancaster’s option for centring the students’ activity in writing was grounded on the intensive utilisation of the slate, an instrument scarcely used before in school instruction. Nigel Hall just designates the Lancasterian school workshop as a “slate-based economy”. See Nigel Hall, “The Role of the Slate in Lancasterian Schools as Evidenced by Their Manuals and Handbooks,” Paradigm 2, no. 7 (December 2003): 46–54, http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/paradigm/Hall.doc (accessed January 30, 2008).
36Lancaster, Improvements, 17–18.
37Ibid., 100–5.
38Joseph Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements (Baltimore: W.M. Ogden Niles, 1821), 15.
39Marx, Capital, 131–7.
40“[The monitorial system] is the method of teaching employed by animals, and is exactly fitted to intellects with final and definite limitations.” J.E.G. de Montmorency, The Progress of Education in England: A Sketch of the Development of English Educational Organisation from Early Times to the Year 1904 (London: Knight & Co, 1904), 61.
41Several analysis of that time stressed the above mentioned effect of destroying the child’s intellectual capacities as resulting from methods used in the monitorial schools. See, for example, Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 75–6; also Hamilton, Hints, 36–50.
42Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, 15.
43“[T]he frequent recurring of one idea, if simple and definite, is alone sufficient to impress it on the memory, without sitting down to learn it as a task; and in this method of tuition just described, every boy is obliged to repeat it at least twice. First, the impression it makes on his mind, when listening to his monitor’s voice, and the repetition of that impression when writing it on the slate. When a certain quota of sums are done, the class begins anew: and thus repetitions gradually succeed each other, till practice secures improvement, and removes boys individually into other classes and superior rules, when each boy has a suitable prise, which our established plan appropriates to the occasion,” Lancaster, Improvements, 72.
44Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, 12.
45J. Lancaster quoted in Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, 7.
46J. Lancaster quoted in Salmon, Joseph Lancaster, 8.
47Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, 10.
48See Marx, Capital, 544–75.
49See Lancaster, Improvements, 11, 26; also Idem., Extracts from a Report of J. Lancaster’s Progress, 8–15; and Dickson, Teacher Extraordinary, 119–22.
50Lancaster, The Lancasterian System of Education, 8–9.
51See Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education, 134–40.
53Étienne Louis Dumont, note in Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Reward, ed. E.L. Dumont (London: John and H.L. Hunt, 1825), 159–60.
52Mesquita, “A Capitalização da Actividade Educativa” [“The Capitalization of Educational Activity”], 439–96.
54Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Books IV–V (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 348–50, 353.
55Ibid., 371.
56See Simon, The Two Nations, 148–50.
57Jeremy Bentham, “Chrestomathia: Being a Collection of Papers Explanatory of the Design of an Institution, Proposed to Be Set on Foot Under the Name of the Chrestomathic Day School, or Chrestomathic School, for the Extension of the New System of Instruction to the Higher Branches of Learning, for the Use of the Middling and Higher Ranks in Life,” in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 8, ed. John Bowring (London: Elibron Classics, 2005), 1–191. James Mill and Francis Place, two outstanding elements of the Benthamite circle, collaborated in this work, writing the important Appendix no. I. See Elissa Itskin, “Bentham’s Chrestomathia: Utilitarian Legacy to English Education,” Journal of the History of Ideas 39, no. 2 (1978): 305.
58See Bentham, “Chrestomathia,” 14–7, 46–53, 56, 58–9; also Wallas, The Life of Francis Place, 111.
59James Mill, “Education,” in James Mill on Education, ed. W.H. Burston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 107–8.
60See James Mill, “Schools For All, in Preference to Schools For Churchmen Only,” in Burston’s James Mill, 124.
61See Thomas Southwood Smith, “Education,” Westminster Review, 1 (1824): 51, 54.
62See Wallas, The Life of Francis Place, 111; and Itskin, “Bentham’s Chrestomathia,” 315.
63“The Chrestomathic school never came into being. But when the middle class were in a position to start educational institutions under their own control, they had ready to hand a clear theory of education,” Simon, The Two Nations, 84.
64Ibid., 150.
65See Franklin Bobbitt, The Curriculum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 84–5.
66See Herbert J. Walberg, “Preface,” in Subotnik and Walberg, The Scientific Basis of Educational Productivity, vii–viii; also Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America’s Schools (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003).