ABSTRACT
Lancaster was born in Southwark, England, into a Quaker family. He was to formulate and develop – simultaneously with Andrew Bell, of the Church of England’s National Society – the ‘monitorial system’ of schooling, outlined in Improvements in Education (1803). Lancaster became a major figure in the history of schooling, not only in Britain, but also in the British colonies, where the monitorial system was popular, and in the United States of America, where he spent most of his last twenty years. He was known for his opposition to denominational teaching and physical punishment, but in 1814 an inquiry into the abuse of boys precipitated his resignation from the Nonconformist British and Foreign School Society (BFSS), which he had founded. The first BFSS school had been established at Borough Road, London, in 1805. By the time he arrived in America, the monitorial system was widely used, having become compulsory in Pennsylvania in 1818.
