Abstract:
The scope of this study traces the origins, growth and development of
the British and Foreign School Society from its obscure origins in Joseph
Lancaster's school at Borough Road to the beginnings of the pupil teacher
system in 1846. Lancaster's early life is used as a framework to show the
obscure and controversial origins of the Society, and the manner in which
his twin contributions of the monitorial system and non-sectarian religious
education influenced and directed the Society's response to a rapidly
changing historical context. Unlike the National Society, the British and
Foreign School Society represented, in its supporters, a wide spectrum of
opinions on the social and religious nature of education. Extensive use has
been made of the manuscript collections dealing with eminent
contemporaries such as Francis Place, Henry Brougham, Samuel Whitbread
and William Allen. The intention is to show how a voluntary organization's
problems are reflected in the private communications between the people
who are involved in its policy planning and control, and the degree to which
the organization adapted to internal dissensions and external pressures in
the first half of the nineteenth century.
