Conditions and Limitations of the Monitorial System : through Sarah Trimmer's Educational Thought and Practice

The purpose of this paper is to study the structural relations between people, objects, and their arrangement in the monitorial system, which was at the heart of the early nineteenth-century church schools in England. To address this problem, the author reconstructs Sarah Trimmer's educational thought. Trimmer, one of the most famous promoters of the Sunday School movement, started the 'Bell-Lancaster controversy' by criticizing Joseph Lancaster, and played an important role in organizing the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor. In 1805 Trimmer criticized Lancaster's British System not only for its meritocracy and non-sectionalism, but also for teaching monitor skills, which led pupils to learn Christian knowledge by rote without understanding it. We can find her critical remarks of rote learning in her works from the 1780's-1790's. Trimmer criticized contemporary Charity Schools for their teaching method which heavily depended upon memory. According to Trimmer, Charity Schools had two defects. One was the difficulty of the textbooks used in them, and the other was the poor skill of their teachers. Her textbooks such as spelling books, readers, and manuals for Charity Schools and Sunday Schools were designed to help unskilled Charity School teachers enable pupils to understand 'Christian Principles'. Trimmer found her own Sunday schools in Brentford. Upon investigating her schools, we can see how her educational thought was realized. Trimmer's textbooks on religious education were used and applied to the monitorial system-especially to Bell's schools. They were divided into simple and clear sentences, in order to promote pupils' understanding. However, applied to the monitorial system, they could also promote rote learning, which originally should have been removed from the education of the poor, for ushers could teach and examine pupils mechanically without paying attention to their understanding due to the simple and clear form of her textbooks. Although their form was suitable to the monitorial system, ironically, it once again, brought about rote learning without understanding it. Through the investigation above, we can see how the attributes of the person giving the lessons, form of textbooks, and class-organization in the monitorial system were integrated. We can also see how Trimmer's textbooks enabled, as well as regulated, the form of teaching and learning behavior in the monitorial system. Moreover, we can make it clear what pupils actually did, and what kind of knowledge they acquired in the monitorial system.