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Order in the Classroom: The Spanish American Appropriation of the Monitorial System of Education

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230500336723

1477-674X

Eugenia Roldán Vera,

History of Education in Spain

Abstract In this article the author looks at the appropriation of the monitorial system of education across a number of Spanish American countries between 1818 and c.1844. The British understanding of the method is compared with the Spanish American perception of it (privileging the similarities rather than the differences in perception among Spanish American countries). The focus is in particular on the overarching concept of “order” in the monitorial system. The author shows how, whereas the features of the method tending to inculcate a sense of order in the students was generally seen in Britain as a means to bring up a restrained and submissive working class, the association between order in the classroom and social order was not equally evident in the young Spanish American republics. It is argued that notions of order from the monitorial system were often linked to two elements: (1) the learning of the republican concept of limited exercise of individual authority in society, and (2) sensationalist theories about the manner in which knowledge is acquired by the infant mind, for which the monitorial method was considered ideal. Notes 1In Spanish America this pedagogical innovation was indistinctly known as “método/sistema de enseñanza mutua/Lancasteriana”, and thus here I use indistinctly the words “method” or “system” to refer to it. In England it was better known as the “monitorial system of education” and in France as “enseignement mutuel”. The differences of denomination in Spanish America have largely to do with the origin of the European sources consulted by their promoters. In Mexico the method was sometimes called “simultáneo” given that in monitorial schools reading and writing was learned “simultaneously” (in different classes but at the same pace, by contrast to other systems in which reading and writing were taught in different years). This is not to be confused with the “simultaneous” or “frontal” method that was to become the dominant form later in the nineteenth century, characterized by the fact that a group of pupils were instructed by one teacher all at the same time (by contrast to the individual tutoring inside “disorganized” classrooms, which was customary in the early‐modern period). In any case, the juxtaposition of terms gives an idea of the fluidity of different school methods that were not necessarily seen as compartmentalized in a given period. 2“… the latest French guide … the projects of citizens Francisco Ballester and Mr German Nicolas Prisset, the manual printed in Madrid, the practical manual printed in Cádiz, the English system of Mr Joseph Lancaster, the extract of Mr Laborde, the system printed in Havana and reprinted in Puebla, and the new plan by Vila and Domenech”. Compañía Lancasteriana. Sistema de enseñanza mutua para las escuelas de primeras letras de la República Mexicana. México: Imp. de Martín Rivera, 1824: iv. This manual had at least two other facsimile editions, in 1833 (México: Imp. de Agustín Guiol) and in 1854 (México: Imp. de Martín Rivera). 3 Sistema de enseñanza mutua, iv–v [emphasis added]. 4 Manifiesto al público de la Compañía Lancasteriana. México: Imp. de la Calle de las Escalerillas, a cargo del C. Agustin Guiol, 1832: 5. 5Meyer, John W., and Francisco O. Ramirez. “The World Institutionalization of Education.” In Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, edited by Jürgen Schriewer. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000: 111–32; Ramirez, Francisco O., and John Boli. “The Political Construction of Mass Schooling: European Origins and Worldwide Institutionalization.” Sociology of Education 60 (January 1987): 2–17; Id. “The Political Institutionalization of Compulsory Education: The Rise of Compulsory Schooling in the Western Cultural Context.” In A Significant Social Revolution: Cross‐Cultural Aspects of the Evolution of Compulsory Education, edited by J. A Mangan. London: Woburn Press, 1994: 1–20. See also Meyer, J., D. Kamens, and A. Benavot. School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century. Washington: Falmer Press, 1992. 6For an introduction to the monitorial system of education in England and the controversy between Bell’s and Lancaster’s schools, see Kaestle, Carl F., ed. Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement: A Documentary History. New York–London: Teachers College Press, 1973: 1–53. 7Bell, Andrew. The Madras School, or Elements of Tuition. London: T. Bensley, 1808: 9–10. 8Bell, Andrew. An Experiment in Education, made at the Male Asylum of Madras. Suggesting a system by which a school or family may teach itself under the superintendence of the master or parent. London: Cadell & Davies, 1797; Lancaster, Joseph. Improvements in Education, as it respects the industrious classes of the community: containing a short account of its present state, hints towards its improvement, and a detail of some practical experiments conducive to that end. London: Darton & Harvey, 1803. 9Kaestle. Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement, passim. 10Ibid. 8. 11For a study of the network of individuals involved in the introduction of the monitorial system in the whole of Spanish America, see Roldán Vera, Eugenia, and Thomas Schupp. “Bridges over the Atlantic. A Network Analysis of the Introduction of the Monitorial System of Education in Early‐Independent Spanish America,” Comparativ. Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung 15, no. 1 (2005): 58–93. 12The list of secondary sources concerning the monitorial method in each Latin American country is vast. A good introduction to the implementation of the method all over the continent is the work of López, Claudina, and Mariano Narodowski. “El mejor de los métodos posibles: la introducción del método lancasteriano en Iberoamérica en el temprano siglo XIX.” In A escola elementar no século XIX: o método monitorial/mutuo, edited by Maria Helena Camara Bastos and Luciano Mendes de Faria Filho. Paso Fundo: Editora Universitaria, 1999: 45–72. See also Newland, Carlos. “La educación elemental en Hispanoamérica: desde la independencia hasta la centralización de los sistemas educativos nacionales,” Hispanic American Historical Review 71, no. 2 (1991): 335–64. 13José Rafael Revenga to the Secretary of State and Internal Affairs, 13 April 1822. In Fernández Heres, Rafael. Sumario sobre la escuela caraqueña de Joseph Lancaster (1824–1827). Caracas: Arte, 1984: 48–50. 14Codorniu y Ferreras Manuel. Discurso inaugural que en la abertura de las escuelas mutuas de la Filantropia, establecidas por la Compañía Lancasteriana de México en el que fue convento de extinguidos betlehemitas, dijo el ciudadano Manuel Codorniu y Ferreras, presidente actual y socio fundador de la misma, en el dia 16 de noviembre de 1823, tercero de la independencia y segundo de la libertad. México: Imp. Martín Rivera, 1823: 32. 15James Thomson to the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, 25 May 1826. In Thomson, James. Letters on the Moral and Religious States of South America, Written During a Residence of Nearly Seven Years in Buenos Aires, Chile, Peru, and Colombia. London: James Nisbet, 1827: 291 [emphasis and capitals in the original]. 16In Chile the decree of 22 November 1821 obliged all the teachers of Santiago to learn the mutual method at the Central Lancasterian School (otherwise they risked losing their jobs). In Gran Colombia the decree of 26 January 1822 ordered the creation of a normal Lancasterian school in Bogotá, Caracas, and Quito, and the plan of 3 October 1826 established that within fourteen months all elementary schools in the whole country (new or converted) should be running under the monitorial method. In Peru, by a decree of 6 June 1822, all schools in Lima should be converted to the mutual method within six months, and a decree of 31 January 1825 ordered the establishment of a normal Lancasterian school in each department of the country. In the United Provinces of Río de la Plata the monitorial method was declared the official one for the school of Buenos Aires in 1825. In Mexico a decree of 16 April 1833 made the mutual method official in all the public schools of the Federal District, and the law of 26 October 1843 put the Lancasterian Company of Mexico City in charge of the Direction of Primary Instruction for the entire country (which the company continued until October 1845). In Guatemala the “statute of Primary Instruction” of 31 August 1835 ordered that by 1838 all primary schools in Guatemala should be monitorial. 17A good account of the Bourbon reforms in education is provided by Tanck, Dorothy. La educación ilustrada, 1786–1836. Educación primaria en la ciudad de México. 2nd ed. México: Nueva Imagen, 1992. 18Lancaster, Joseph. The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements. Baltimore: W.M. The Lancasterian Institute, Ogden Niles, 1821: 9. 19Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977: 159–67. A further analysis of the monitorial school system under Foucault’s premises is that of Hassard, John, and Michael Rowlinson. “Researching Foucault’s Research: Organization and Control in Joseph Lancaster’s Monitorial Schools,” Organization 9, no. 4 (2002): 615–39. 20Bell. The Madras School, 10. 21Bowles, John. “Letter Addressed to Samuel Whitbread,” 1808, in Kaestle. Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement, 114. 22Kaestle. Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement: introduction; Simon, Brian. The Two Nations and the Educational Structure: 1780–1870. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1974: passim. 23Laborde, Alexandre Louis Joseph de, Count. Plan d’éducation pour les enfants pauvres, d’après les deux méthodes combinées du Docteur Bell et de M. Lancaster. Paris–London, 1815. It was because of the influence of this text that the monitorial method was largely known in Spanish America as the “combined method of Bell and Lancaster”; indeed, many of its promoters spoke of it as if it had been designed by the two authors working together. For an analysis of the circulation and translation of the British, French and Spanish manuals of the monitorial system in Spanish America, see Roldán Vera, Eugenia. “Internacionalización pedagógica y comunicación en perspectiva histórica: la introducción del método de enseñanza mutua en Hispanoamérica independiente.” In Internacionalización: Semántica y sistemas educativos en perspectiva comparada, edited by Marcelo Caruso and Heinz‐Elmar Tenorth. Barcelona: Pomares, forthcoming 2005. 24 Plan de enseñanza para escuelas de primeras letras o edición compuesta del plan publicado en francés en 1815 por el Sr. Conde de Laborde, según los métodos combinados del Dr. Bell y del Sr. Lancaster por una traducción anónima de 1816; y del manual práctico del método de mutua enseñanza publicado en Cádiz en 1818 por la Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de aquella Provincia. Buenos Aires: Imp. de los Espósitos, 1823. 25Compañía Lancasteriana. Sistema de enseñanza mutua para las escuelas de primeras letras de la república mexicana. México: Imp. de Martín Rivera, 1824. This stands in contrasts with a Spanish translation of Laborde’s manual published in 1818, which preserved the word “poor” in the title: Lecciones de enseñanza mutua segun los métodos combinados por Bell y Lancaster, ó Plan de educación para los niños pobres. Valencia: Imp. de Manuel Muñoz y Compañía, 1818; reprinted Mallorca: Imp. Real, 1819. 26José Joaquín de Mora to Florencio Varela, Santiago de Chile, 28 mayo 1828, in Rodríguez, Gregorio F. Contribución histórica y documental, 3 vols. Buenos Aires: Talleres “Casa Jacobo Peuser”, 1921–1922: 522. 27James Thomson to the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, 25 May 1826, in Thomson. Letters, 270. 28Newland, Carlos. “El experimento lancasteriano en Buenos Aires.” Todo es Historia 224 (October 1987): 46–52. 29 Prospecto ó sucinta idea de los estatutos y sistema de la enseñanza mutua que con arreglo a nuestras costumbres, religion y gobierno siguen los alumnos de ambos secsos del establecimiento de educacion del ciudadano Luis Octaviano Chousal en la capital de la Federacion. México: Imp. de Martín Rivera, 1825: 11. By the way he describes it, it is unlikely that Chousal’s school followed strictly the mechanisms of the monitorial method; still, it is significant that he boasted that his school was arranged according to that “celebrated system, so well received by the most cultured nations, especially the French, the English and the Spanish one because of its multiples advantages for teaching that it offers.” 30“Plan de estudios del Liceo de Chile con algunos pormenores sobre su ejecución y sobre la disciplina del establecimiento.” Santiago: Imp de Renjifo, 1828, in Stuardo Ortiz, Carlos. “El Liceo de Chile, Antecedentes para su historia, 1828–1831,” Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografía 114 (1949): 48–91; 115 (1950): 162–217; 116 (1950): 50–91. 31Ibid., 114 (1949): 62. 32Ibid., 114 (1949): 58; 115 (1950): 167–68. In the list of children who received a scholarship to attend the Liceo, 15 of the 35 pupils have the surname of a member of congress. See also Mora to Varela, Santiago de Chile, 11 May 1828, in Rodríguez. Contribución histórica y documental, 518. 34Ibid., 64–65. 33 El Venezolano, 31 May 1823. In Fernández Heres. Sumario sobre la escuela caraqueña de Joseph Lancaster, 64. 35 El Sol, 24, 25, 26, and 27 June 1826. For a longer discussion of the republican associations of the monitorial method in Mexico, see Roldán Vera, Eugenia. “The Monitorial System of Education and Civic Culture in Early Independent México,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education XXXV, no. 2 (1999): 297–331. For a more detailed consideration of this issue in Colombia, including an examination of the changing of meanings of the monitorial method in that country over time, see Caruso, Marcelo. “New Schooling and the Invention of a Political Culture. Community, Rituals and Meritocracy in Colombian Monitorial Schools (Approx. 1820–1840).” In Promising Imports. The Appropriation of Modern Politics, Monitorial Schooling and Other Cultural Pracices in Postcolonial Latin America, edited by Marcelo Caruso and Eugenia Roldán Vera. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2005 (forthcoming). 36Lancaster. The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements, 9–11. 37Alamán, Lucas. “Instruccion para el establecimiento de escuelas, segun los principios de la enseñanza mutua, presentada a la Excma. Diputacion Provincial de México, por Don Lucas Alaman, Diputado en las Cortes de España por la provincia de Guanajuato.” La Sabatina Universal. Periódico político y literario nos. 16, 17 and 18 (28 September, 5 and 12 October 1822), no. 16, 266 [emphasis added]. 38I have analysed this at length, for the case of Mexico, in Roldán Vera. “The Monitorial System of Education and Civic Culture.” 39Bell. The Madras School, 42–44. 40Bell, Andrew. Instructions for Conducting a School, Through the Agency of the Scholars Themselves… or Elements of Tuition… (London, Printed at the Free School, Gower’s Walk, Whitechapel, for J. Murray, 32 Fleet Street; Rivingtons, St Paul’s Church‐Yard; Hatchard, Piccadilly; and Archibald Constable and Co. Edinburgh, 1808): 30. Also in Bell. The Madras School, 84–85. 41For Lancaster, however, religion should preferably be learned through the memorizing of passages taken directly from the Scriptures. That was part of the non‐denominational character that he wanted to introduce in his schools. 42See Roldán Vera, Eugenia. “Reading in Questions and Answers: the Catechism as an Educational Genre in Early‐Independent Spanish America.” Book History (2001): 17–47 (or in its slightly shorter, modified Spanish version, Roldán Vera, Eugenia. “Lectura en preguntas y respuestas.” In Empresa y cultura en tinta y papel (1800–1860), edited by Laura Beatriz Suárez de la Torre and Miguel Angel Castro. Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr José María Luis Mora, 2001: 327–41. 43Bernard, Thomas. Of the Education of the Poor. London: W. Bulmer & Co Cleveland, 1808: 35–36. 44Bell. The Madras School, 36–37. 45Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), book V, chapter I, part 3, art. II. Smith did not suggest a specific method of teaching to counteract the negative trend of mechanical work, but writers in favour of the monitorial method seemed to be aware of Smith’s concerns. 46 Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes. London, 1825: 270–71. 47Codorniu. Discurso, 24. 51Codorniu, Discurso, p. 18. 48Codorniu. Discurso inaugural, 18; Stuardo Ortiz. “El Liceo de Chile” 114 (1949), 52. 49Yet Condillac distanced himself from Locke’s division between “ideas of sensation” and “ideas of reflection”. For Condillac, knowledge was pure sensation, and intellectual life (as well as, to an extent, emotional life) was reducible to sensation. 50Bonnot de Condillac, Etienne. La lógica, ó los primeros elementos del arte de pensar: obra aprobada por la Junta de Dirección de las Escuelas Palatinas, y aplaudida por celebres Universidades (1741). Barcelona: Tomas Gorchs, 1817. It is partly because of this reading of Condillac that in Spanish America the monitorial method was often called “método simultáneo”. 53 Museo Universal de Ciencias y Artes. London, 1825: 270–71. 52Ibid., 29. 54Condillac had been introduced at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Spain, especially for the study of grammar; it was a strong influence in the Spanish enlightenment, especially in the figures of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Calderón de la Barca. His Lógica was indeed one of the most widely read books in Río de la Plata. See Parada, Alejandro. El mundo del libro y de la lectura durante la época de Rivadavia: una aproximación a través de los avisos de La Gaceta Mercantil (1823–1828). Buenos Aires: UBA: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas, 1998. 56“Report of Mr Rocafuerte, Chargé d’Affaires in England from the Government of Mexico, delivered in a Speech at the Twenty‐first Annual Meeting of the BFSS, May 15th, 1826,” cited in James Thomson to the Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, London, 25 May 1826, in Thomson. Letters, 293–94. 55In this sense see for example the pioneer works of Szuchman, Mark D. Order, Family and Community in Buenos Aires, 1810–1860. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, and Escalante Gonzalbo, Fernando. Ciudadanos imaginarios. México: El Colegio de México, 1993.