of S. P. K. G.

that number. The schools lasted only about a decade, as disappearance the Germans soon came to feel that this English school- schools. ing threatened their language, nationality, and institutions.

The Sunday School' Movement in Great Britain.A variety of charity school, quite different from those already mentioned, sprang up toward the close of the century under the name of 'Sunday Schools.' To overcome the prevailing ignorance, vice, and squalor in the manufacturing center of Gloucester, England, Robert Foundation, Raikes in 1780 set up a school in Sooty Alley for the instruction of children and adults in religion and the rudiments. Six months later he started a new school in Southgate street, and soon had other schools established. He paid his teachers a shilling each Sunday to train the children to read in the Bible, spell, and write. This charity education, meager as it was, was attacked by opposition, many of the upper classes, and was often viewed with suspicion by the recipients themselves. Yet the new movement had warm supporters among the nobility and advocacy, and such reformers as Wesley, and the schools soon spread to London, and then throughout England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. A Sunday School Society was founded in 1785, and within a decade distributed nearly one hundred thousand spellers, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five thousand bibles, and trained approximately sixty-five thousand pupils in one thousand schools.

spread.

The Sunday School' Movement in the United States. The Raikes system of Sunday instruction was also soon introduced in America. The first school was organized in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the house of Thomas centers

Individual

Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia, and within a quarter of a century a number of schools arose in various and permanent cities. Before long, permanent associations were also

associations.

prepared the way for universal education.

started to promote Sunday instruction. 'The First Day or Sunday School Society' was organized at Philadelphia in 1791, and during the first two decades of the nineteenth century a number of similar societies for secular instruction on Sunday were founded in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 1823 these associations were all absorbed into a new and broader organization, known ever since as the 'American Sunday School Union.' At the start it published suitable reading-books, and furnished primers, spellers, testaments, and hymn-books to needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate.

Value of the Instruction in 'Sunday Schools.'-Both in Great Britain and the United States, however, the Sunday schools gradually tended to abandon their Makeshift, but secular instruction and become purely religious. At the same time the teachers came to serve without pay and to instruct less efficiently. And the value of the secular teaching was not large at the best, as the work was necessarily limited to a few hours once a week. Raikes and all others interested in these institutions recognized their inadequacy as a means of securing universal education, and regarded them merely as auxiliary to a more complete system of instruction. But while a makeshift and by no means a final solution for national education, they performed a notable service for the times, and helped point the way to universal education.

The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.-While philanthropic education started largely in the eighteenth

century, some of the schools continued well into the nineteenth. This was especially the case with the 'monitorial' system, started at Southwark in 1798. This district of London was thronged with barefoot and unkempt children; and Lancaster, the founder of the school, Lancaster undertook to educate as many as he could. His schoolroom was soon filled with a hundred or more pupils. In order to teach them all, he used the older pupils as assistants. He taught the lesson first to these 'monitors,' and they in turn imparted it to the others, who were divided into equal groups. Each monitor cared for a single group. The work was very successful from the first, but Lancaster, attempting to introduce schools of this kind throughout England, fell so recklessly into debt that an association had to be founded in 1808 to continue the work on a practical basis. Within half a dozen years Lancaster withdrew from the organization, but the association, under the name of the 'British and Foreign and Foreign Society,' continued to flourish and found Society; new schools.

and the British

So successful was the Lancasterian work that the Church of England, fearing its nonsectarian influence upon education, in 1811 organized 'The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.' This long-named association was to conduct monitorial schools under the management of Doctor Andrew Bell, who had experi- National mented with the system in India before Lancaster opened Society. his school. Although they had formed no part of Bell's original methods, the Anglican catechism and prayer book were now taught dogmatically in the schools founded by the National Society. Bell proved an admirable

Bell and the

director, and a healthy rivalry sprang up between the societies.

Value of the Monitorial System in England.—The Differences in plans of the two organizations were similar, but differed

the two systems.

somewhat in details. Both used monitors and taught writing by means of a desk covered with sand, but the system of Lancaster was animated by broader motives and had many more devices for teaching. It also instituted company organization, drill, and precision, and developed a system of badges, offices, rewards, and punishments. Monitorial instruction, however, was not Both were un- original with either Lancaster or Bell. It had long been

original

used by the Hindus and others, although the work of the two societies brought it into prominence. It overand mechani- emphasized repetition and recitation mechanics, and consisted of a formal drill rather than a method of instruction.

cal.

tion.

Yet the monitorial schools were productive of some Afforded sub- achievements. Most of them afforded a fair education in stitute for national educa- the elementary school subjects and added some industrial and vocational training. They also did much to awaken the conscience of the English nation to the need of general education for the poor. The British and Foreign and the National Societies afforded a substitute, though a poor one, for national education in the days before England was willing to pay for general education, and they became the avenues through which such appropriations as the government did make were distributed. In 1833 the grant of £20,000, constituting the first government aid to elementary education, was equally divided between the two societies (see p. 388), and this method of administration was continued as the annual grant was

leges.

gradually increased, until the system of public education was established. Likewise, in 1839, £10,000 for normal instruction was voted to the societies, and was used by the British and Foreign for its Borough Road Train- Training coling College, and by the National for St. Mark's Training College. These were followed by several other training institutions, established by each society through government aid. In 1870, when the 'board,' or public elementary, schools were at length founded, the schools of the British and Foreign Society, with their nonsec- Foreign tarian instruction, fused naturally with them; but the schools abinstitutions of the National Society, though transferred National a systo school boards in a few cases, have generally come to selves. constitute by themselves a national system on a voluntary basis.

British and

sorbed, but

tem by them

Adoption by

other cities.

Results of the Monitorial System in the United States. In the United States the monitorial system was introduced into New York City in 1806. The 'Society for the Establishment of a Free School,' after investigating the best methods in other cities and countries, decided to try the system of Lancaster (see p. 260). The method was likewise introduced into the charity schools of Philadelphia (see p. 261). The monitorial system then spread New York and rapidly through New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other States. It is almost impossible to trace the exact extent of this organization in the United States, but before long it seems to have affected nearly all cities of any size as far south as Augusta (Georgia), and west as far as Cincinnati. There are still traces of its influence throughout this region,-in Hartford, New Haven, Albany, Washington, and Baltimore, as well as in the places already mentioned (Figs. 27, 28,