Research On British Monitorial System In The Eighteenth Century

The monitorial system, also known as mutual education system, is a teaching method that makes some older and outstanding pupils act as the teacher’s assistants, called monitor, to help the teacher teach other students. The monitorial system, first established in Great Britain in the late18th century, was once popular across nation states in Europe in the industrial era. It was noted that the system contributed a great deal to the development of the world primary education and junior teacher education from the19th century onward. In the similar vain, the monitorial system was first introduced to China in the early20th century by Tao Xing-Zhi, one of John Dewey’s disciples. He employed this approach in his educational experiment in the rural area. More recently, in the late20th century, with the expansion of higher education in China, the monitorial system began to serve as the way of educational management and also an original function in aiding classroom teaching across universities and colleges. Today we recap and revise it, not only because of its contribution in the history, but also because it has many shared values that will facilitate educational accessibility in the large scale when facing constraints in limited resources and competitive demand.This paper will trace the history and practice of the18th century monitorial system, and explore its common and theoretical values in relation to primary education, teacher education and classroom teaching by drawing upon existing literature and translating some related historical materials. In the concluding part the author will put forward some suggestions for the current practice in colleges and universities. This is believed to allocate a higher level of our research on monitorial system so as to provide a theoretical reference for the current practice of monitorial system.