MONITORIAL SYSTEM, or MUTUAL INSTRUCTION. It first occurred to Dr. Bell (q.v.), when superintendent of the orphan hospital, Madras, in 1;95, to make use of the more advanced boys in the school to instruct the younger pupils. These youthful teachers were called monitors. The method was eagerly adopted by Joseph Lancaster (q.v.) who, in•the first years of this century, did so much for the extension of popular educa tion; and from him and the originator, the system was called indifferently the Madras and the Lancastrian, as well as the monitorial or mutual system. The monitorial system is not, as is commonly supposed, a method of teaching; it is simply a method of organizing schools, and of providing the necessary teaching power. At a time when the whole question of primary education was in its infancy, the state refusing to pro mote it on the ground that it was dangerous to society, and the public little disposed to contribute towards its extension, it was of great importance that a system should be adopted which should recommend itself as at once effectual and economical. It was manifest that even with the most skillful arrangement of classes, a single teacher could not undertake the tuition of more than 80 or 90 pupils; while, by the judicious employ ment of the cleverer boys under the general direction of the master, the school might be made almost self-working, and 300 or 400 children taught where there was only one adult superintendent. The novelty and economy of this plan, tind we may add also, its temporary success, gained for it a large and enthusiastic support both in Britain and in Germany. But the importance of the system as an educational agency was universally overrated, for although it is to be admitted that, under en able and enthusiastic master, boys may he inspired to teach well all technical and rote subjects (as, for example, in the Latin and Greek classes under Dr. Pillans of the Edinburgh high school), yet it is
manifest that children so instructed are not in any sense of the word educated. Their monitor necessarily lacks the maturity of mind which is indispensable to the instructor, whose business it is to arouse in the child those mental operations which have taken place within himself, and so lead him to an intelligent and rational grasp of intellectual and moral and physical truths. No amount of private instruction from the master, no enthusiasm could ever enable a boy to do this, and consequently the system broke down, after having done its work by being the engine whereby a large interest was stirred up in the education of the masses, and whereby the requisites of a primary teacher were brought into view. The reaction against the system, however, was not so violent in Great Britain or in Holland or France, as in Germany. In England, the monitorial system was modified in such a way as to secure for the master the aid of the more clever boys in teaching rote subjects, in revising lessons, keeping registers, and supervising the work of those cusses not directly under the master's tuition. In this way were afforded the means of training for the teaching profession boys who seemed fitted by natural endowment for the work. Hence the prevalent employment in this country of paid monitors and pupil teachers (male and female), who are regularly apprenticed to school managers and teachers, and go forward to be trained in the normal schools now so . numerous.