Lancaster School

The Lancaster School (also: Bell-Lancaster School) was a type of school of the 19th century that primarily promoted the mutual teaching of students.

overview

The so-called monitoring system envisaged that more experienced students should teach younger ones and thus increasingly grew to become assistant teachers. The implementation took place in a so-called sweeping system, strongly characterized by drill , which in a class that is not divided into years, allowed half of the students to sit and the other half to memorize standing on the wall .

The method goes back to the British educator Andrew Bell , who advocated the system of mutual teaching as early as the end of the 18th century . However, it was only implemented by the British Quaker Joseph Lancaster , who practiced the method in a school founded especially in Southwark . From England the type found in Italy , Bulgaria , Spain and France , in the early 19th century also in Sweden , but less so in Germany . In Switzerland it was mainly associated with the name of the Franciscan Gregor Girard through his sponsorship . As early as 1824 Pope Leo XII banned the system for Catholic schools that is now classified as educationally dysfunctional. In the following decade the Lancaster schools went under completely.

See also

• Learning through teaching (LdL)
• Introduction of the Lancaster School in Bulgaria

Web links

• Jürgen Oelkers: Political Education and Democratic Education Comprehensive lecture notes ( PDF ; 1.2 MB), contains a description of the Bell-Lancaster system and its weaknesses (from p. 15)