Lancaster, Joseph (1778–1838)

English educational reformer and member of the Society of Friends (‘Quakers’). His radical experiment in the monitorial method of teaching, in which older pupils instructed groups of younger ones, was widely applied in both Britain and the USA. Unlike contemporary Anglican educational reformers, Lancaster strongly believed in non-denominational schooling.

Lancaster founded his first monitorial school in Borough Road, London. He claimed that his system could enable one master to teach up to 1,000 pupils, but in practice schools that adopted it were far smaller. In his first pamphlet ‘Improvements in Education’ (1803), he explained his ideas on the teaching of the basic curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and outlined elaborate methods of keeping discipline. He won the financial backing of influential Quakers, who set up the Royal Lancasterian Society, later renamed the British and Foreign Schools Society. After being involved in a scandal in 1814 and resigning from the society, Lancaster emigrated to the USA.