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(BENTHAM).  (EDUCATION). Schools for All. At a Meeting of the West London Lancasterian Association ?Ķ Second Day of August, 1813, Sir James Mackintosh, M.P. in the Chair; It was Resolved, that this Association intends providing instruction in reading, writing arithmetic, and good morals, for the children of both Sexes, and of every religious denomination?Ķ [Caption title and partial text]. Broadsheet, 10-7/8?�� x 8-1/8." 2 pp. Sheet lightly toned. Nice copy. London, [Eng.]: J. M'Crery, [1813]. $600.00

 

     Essentially a prospectus for a school: a district of West London comprising approximately 85.000 families is defined, terms are set for various levels of subscription, asserts that ?��the wretched ignorance of a large portion of the population, is the fruitful parent of crime,?�� and ?��That to take the Children from the streets, and to train them in goodness, is the object of this Association.?�� The document continues with the text of an Address, stating the inadequacy of education institutions in England and the Association?��s aim in rectifying the situation: it is to ?��be printed and delivered to every Family within the district.?��

     There is a list of bankers, booksellers and others who have volunteered to accept contributions to further the effort, with signature in type of Joseph Fox, Secretary, at conclusion.

     Jeremy Bentham wrote Chrestomathia, in part, to serve as a aid to the projected school.

Chrestomathia, published in two parts in 1817 (the first part having been printed in 1815 and reprinted in 1816), was Bentham?��s one published work on education. It was written in order to set out the curriculum and teaching methods to be used in a new secondary day school for children of the ?��middling and higher ranks?�� of society in London. To understand Chrestomathia, therefore, it is necessary to look at the history of this enterprise to found a school in which Bentham?��s theories were to be put into practice.

According to Francis Place, the idea of the school was originally his and suggested to him by Edward Wakefield ?��in the autumn of 1813.?�� It was to be a ?��super Lancasterian school?��?a Lancasterian school being one organized according to the monitorial system whereby the master taught the senior boys and they in turn taught the rest. For some years Place, James Mill, and other reformers had been active advocates for this system for primary schools. It was thought to be the answer, both cheap and efficient, to the glaring need for education in nineteenth-century England. Place and Mill campaigned for non-sectarian schools, and regarded Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), a Quaker, as the originator of the monitorial system. A Royal Lancasterian Society (later renamed the British and Foreign School Society) was formed in 1808 to popularize his system, and in 1813, as an offshoot of the parent body, the West London Lancasterian Association was set up by Wakefield, Place, Mill and others, with the intention of providing ?��schools for all?�� on a systematic basis in London.?Smith & Burston, ?��Editorial Introduction?�� to Chrestomathia (in Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, Oxford 1983).

     Efforts to establish the school continued for eight years, but difficulties in securing a site and other obstacles (such as opposition from the Church of England which favored a system of sectarian instruction) intervened and it came to naught. The project was abandoned in 1821 and all monies returned to the subscribers.

     The present broadsheet is not in WorldCat which records only electronic and microform versions of an 1813 pamphlet of 18 pp. entitled ?��Schools for All. Report of the First Public Meeting of the WLLA?�� from Goldsmith?��s-Kress 20826. This pamphlet, as well as a broadside, being ?��A Corrected Report?Ķ.?�� of the August 2nd meeting, are recorded in the COPAC (British Union) database, but not this.