Groups of children reciting to monitors from reading charts or wall slates

ས མའི སུ སུ ནུ པ ཧ ལ

Monitor leading pupils to seats. Note hats hanging on backs to save time and

cloak rooms

into this suspended position. Another example of timesaving was the taking of attendance by the monitors through a rapid inspection to note vacant places, instead of calling the roll.

3. Schoolroom construction and apparatus attended to. Special attention was devoted to the construction of the schoolroom, to lighting, ventilation, slant of floor, seating, elimination of unnecessary noise, etc. Great ingenuity was shown in devising apparatus that would assist in teaching. One of the first innovations, which Lancaster probably copied from Bell, was the use of a thin layer of sand, spread on the desk for learning to write. A child wrote in the sand with a pointed stick, then erased it by passing a long straight stick across the desk. Later Lancaster introduced slates into common use. Blackboards and reading charts were suspended around the room, and the small groups of ten gathered around these when reciting to the monitors.

4. Careful, flexible classification of children. — Children were carefully classified according to attainments into larger or smaller groups. This careful grading was an important innovation, and it was carried out so effectively in relation to the time program that often a child could recite with a group at one stage of advancement in arithmetic and with another group at a different stage of advancement in reading or spelling.

5. School work made an active social process. Studying and learning were made active social processes instead of being passive individual processes, as in the ordinary undergraded school of that time. A child was always studying or working or reciting as a member of a group, usually producing some objective result to which the monitor or the rest of the class gave attention. Emulation was the chief social instinct appealed to, as was the case with the Jesuits, and with very effective results. The child's instinct of physical activity was appealed to by the large amount of marching back and forth and the alternation of seat work and standing recitations.

6. Led to training of teachers. Lancasterian teachers were carefully selected and trained, and they commonly undertook teaching as a permanent career. To attain any success at all with a large school on the Lancasterian plan, a teacher had to be a somewhat superior manager; hence there resulted a few large groups of children under a few efficient teachers, in contrast with the prevailing condition of many small groups under hundreds of shiftless, incompetent persons. Not only was a superior class of masters or head teachers thus developed, but schools for training monitors soon came into existence and these developed later into regular normal schools. One of the clearest examples of this occurred in Philadelphia, where the model school for monitors established about 1818 became the city normal school in 1848.

Routine drill superior to habituation to shiftlessness.These six characteristics of the Lancasterian schools show how superior they were to the ordinary schools in which two thirds of a child's time was wasted, as described at the end of the previous chapter. While many of the particular devices which Lancaster used have been superseded by better ones, the general principles expressed in the above summary are still generally recognized as fundamental in effective school keeping. Moreover, even though educational idealists do deny that there is any educative value in the military drill which Lancaster inaugurated in the schoolroom, most educators will admit that effective military drill is better than a loose, lazy, idle, passive, inattentive, slipshod existence which encourages the formation of many bad habits and no good ones. In succeeding chapters we shall have no further occasion to refer to the improvements in the routine factors of school keeping, but the educational importance of these should not be lost sight of in the long account of changing educational ideals which is to follow. In the next chapter we shall describe the development of secular interests which furnished the basis for the non-religious ideals in modern elementary education.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Concerning the Brethren of the Christian Schools. - 1. BROTHER AZARIAS (pseudonym for MULLANY, P. F.). Essays Educational. (W. H. Young & Co., New York, 1905.) A sympathetic Catholic account. See pp. 207-240, entitled the Simultaneous Method.

2. ADAMSON, J. W. Pioneers of Modern Education, 1600-1700. (The Macmillan Company, 1905.) Chap. xii is entitled St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle.

3. BARNARD, H. American Journal of Education, Vol. III, pp. 437448, contains sketch of the history of the organization, its rules, and the conduct of its normal schools in France.

4. WILSON, MRS. R. F. The Christian Brothers. A brief epitome of the standard French work on La Salle by A. Ravelet.

Concerning the monitorial schools.-5. GILL, J. Systems of Education. (D. C. Heath & Co.) The best account from the standpoint of class management.

6. SALMON, DAVID. Joseph Lancaster. (Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904.) The best biographical and historical account, based on complete study of sources. See pp. 7-16 for description of the methods.

7. BARNARD, H. American Journal of Education, Vol. X, pp. 355-370, 467–502.

8. FITCH, J. C. Educational Aims and Methods. (The Macmillan Company, 1900.) See Lecture XI.

PART III. TRANSITION TO SECU

LAR BASIS FOR ELEMENTARY

EDUCATION

CHAPTER VI

DEVELOPMENT OF SECULAR INTERESTS

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY; RELIGIOUS TOLERATION; NATIONALISM; DEMOCRACY

Main points of the chapter. 1. The development of strong secular interests gradually overthrew the narrow religious conception of life and education which followed the Reformation.

2. The substitution of the scientific method of inductive verification of hypotheses in place of the acceptance of Greek authority was the first step in this direction.

3. Newton was the greatest genius in this scientific development. Francis Bacon was a popular writer about scientific methods which he did not understand.

4. In France, under the leadership of Voltaire, the Newtonian methods and results were applied in the criticism of social abuses which had prevailed under ecclesiastical and political despotism.

5. The introduction of religious toleration was a second factor in decreasing the power of ecclesiasticism. England and Prussia are examples.

6. The development of strong centralized governments created rivals of the ecclesiastical powers. Prussia under the efficient, despotic Hohenzollern kings is the best example.

7. Modern democracy, with its principles of freedom and self-government, proved another check to ecclesiastical dominance. Locke and the English Revolution of 1688, Rousseau and the French Revolution of 1789, and the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution of 1776 are closely connected in this development.