Joseph Lancaster

Joseph Lancaster (25 November 1778 – 23 October 1838) was an English Quaker and public education innovator.

Lancaster was born the son of a shopkeeper in Southwark, south London in 1778.

In 1798, he founded a free elementary school in Borough Road, Southwark, using a variant of the monitorial system. His ideas were developed simultaneously with those of Dr Andrew Bell in Madras whose system was referred to as the "Madras system of education". The method of instruction and delivery is recursive. As one student learns the material he or she is rewarded for successfully passing on that information to the next pupil. This method is now commonly known as peer tutoring, but the economics of Lancaster's or Bell's methodology is not widely discussed. The use of monitors was prompted partly by a need to avoid the cost of assistant teachers.

Lancaster wrote Improvements in Education in 1803 and later travelled to the United States to lecture and promote his ideas. The height of popularity of his system came in the first decades of the 19th century. In 1818 Joseph Lancaster helped to start the first model school in Philadelphia to train teachers to implement his system. The year 1808 saw the creation of "The Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor".

Despite initial successes, the Lancasterian schools were criticized for poor standards and harsh discipline even by contemporary standards. Although Lancaster had rejected corporal punishment, misbehaving children might find themselves tied up in sacks, or hoisted above the classroom in cages. The poet Robert Southey noted that, despite his opposition to corporal punishment, he would rather be beaten than subjected to Lancasterian discipline.

...
Wikipedia