Monitorial Schools in the Canadas, 1810-1845

British educator Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) led a movement in the early nineteenth century to establish schools that used what he called the Monitorial System in which more advanced students taught less advanced ones, enabling a small number of adult masters to educate large numbers of students at low cost in basic and often advanced skills. After going bankrupt and leaving England, Lancaster resided in Montreal from the summer of 1829 until the spring of 1833. A number of schools using his Monitorial System were established in Lower Canada before he settled there. He received government funding and support for his educational approach from Lower Canadian politicians from all factions. Lancaster's involvement in politics and the election of 1832, as well as his association with Stephen Ayres, a mysterious cholera doctor, during the 1832 cholera epidemic, reduced his influence on colonial educational policies. He left Canada, and in October 1838 Lancaster had an accident in New York and soon after died of his injuries.

PhD dissertation

University of Toronto

Toronto, ON

1935

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