ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, VI, 16 May 1813, pp. 305–6. Hunt frequently connects the issue of educational improvement for the poor with his ongoing push for widespread political and cultural reform (see his Political Examiner of 17 January 1813, pp. 33–6, and above, pp. 269–76). The Madras system of mutual or monitorial instruction, developed by Dr Andrew Bell and modified by Joseph Lancaster into what became known as the Lancastrian system, emerged as the most influential and controversial form of educating the poor in early nineteenth-century England. Bell’s method was deployed to teach the Classics at the school Hunt attended, Christ’s Hospital School, though probably after Hunt’s student years. The political and religious differences between the two systems occasioned considerable dispute, with Bell’s approach supported by the conservative groups and the established church in contrast to the endorsement given by dissenters and liberals to the Lancastrian system. For a detailed analysis of educational systems and their cultural work during the romantic era, see Alan Richardson, Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994).
