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‘The monitorial system’ and ‘mutual instruction’ are two of the terms used for the new teaching methods that were developed separately by Andrew Bell in India and Joseph Lancaster in England in around 1800. These methods spread rapidly around the world, and in just a couple of decades they were practised worldwide (Caruso & Vera 2005; Tschurenev 2008; Caruso 2017). Bell’s and Lancaster’s methods could be understood as an educational technology that used objects such as bells, badges, sand benches, slates and special charts to revolutionize teaching and also utilized the best pupils as helpers – so-called monitors. Thereby it was possible for one teacher to teach hundreds of pupils at the same time (Kaestle 1973). In Sweden, these teaching methods became known in 1810, but it was not until 1817 that the teacher Peter (Per) Reinhold Svensson was sent to England by the Swedish government to learn more about the monitorial system. Thereafter monitorial education spread throughout Sweden under the name of växelundervisning, and in 1822 the Society for the Promotion of Monitorial Education (Sällskapet för växelundervisningens befrämjande) was formed. In 1824, the monitorial system had reached such recognition in Sweden that following a royal resolution it became the recommended method for teaching in Swedish elementary schools (Nordin 1973).

In this paper I will examine the introduction and early spread of this educational technology and its objects in Sweden. This has not been done systematically before, despite the fact that several investigations has dealt with the introduction and/or the spread of the monitorial system in Sweden (Nordin 1973; Hodacs 2003; Neidenmark 2011; Larsson 2014). Drawing on documents in the archive from the Society for the Promotion of Monitorial Education that decribes the introduction of the monitorial system in the first 30 monitorial schools in Sweden the paper can show that the introduction of the monitorial system in Sweden was not just the result of a decision of the Royal Majesty to send Svensson to England. Although Svensson began using the monitorial system in the school where he taught, the monitorial system was also introduced around the same time in two other schools in Norrköping and Gothenburg. These schools were in turn the result of an import of ideas from France and Denmark. The monitorial system then continued to spread throughout the country from these three original schools by the work of rich philanthropists, the local clergy and teachers. The spread seems to have occurred as a result of people visiting or by parishes sending a teacher to one of these schools to learn more about the new teaching methods. As new monitorial schools started they could also function as inspiration for others planning to start schools in surrounding parishes. Furthermore, these investigations also show that the educational objects of the monitorial system played a major part in the spread of this educational technology and many parishes went to great length to reproduce the teaching objects introduced by Lancaster and Bell.

Bibliography

Marcelo Caruso, ‘Disruptive Dynamics: The Spatial Dimensions of the Spanish Networks in the Spread of Monitorial Schooling (1815–1825),’ Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2017): 271–82.

Marcelo Caruso and Eugenia Roldán Vera, ‘Pluralizing Meanings: the Monitorial System of Education in Latin America in the Early Nineteenth Century,’ Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 6 (2005): 645-654.

Hanna Hodacs, Converging World Views: the European Expansion and Early-Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Swedish Contacts (Department of Histoy: Uppsala, 2003).

Carl F. Kaestle, Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement: A Documentary History (New York: Teachers College Press, 1973).

Esbjörn Larsson, En lycklig Mechanism: olika aspekter av växelundervisningen som en del av 1800-talets utbildningsrevolution (Department of Histoy: Uppsala, 2014).

Thomas Neidenmark, Pedagogiska imperativ och sociala nätverk i svensk medborgarbildning 1812-1828 (Stockholm University: Stockholm, 2011).

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Jana Tschurenev, ‘Diffusing Useful Knowledge: The Monitorial System of Education in Madras, London and Bengal, 1789–1840,’ Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 3 (2008): 245-264.