Re-inventing the Schoolmaster: Teacher Training in Early 19th-century London

Abstract

This paper explores a piece of the puzzle that is central to the emergence of state education in the British Empire. Between 1810-1840, the British and Foreign School Society and the Anglican National Society both founded central teacher training schools in London. Both the National Society (NS) and the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) were run by non-state actors who believed in the importance of religious education, the necessity of providing education to England’s poor, and in the importance of preventing their rival from controlling education. Even though the monitorial system sought to mechanize and circumvent the role of the schoolmaster, in Britain pedagogical training and the professionalization developed precisely out of this moment. What happened between about 1810 and 1840 was nothing less than the invention of the modern British schoolteacher.