Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) was an English Quaker, and public education innovator. In 1801 he founded a free elementary school using a variant of the monitorial system . His ideas though were not original as Dr. Andrew Bell had been using a very similar system in Madras referred to as the "Madras System of Education". The method of instruction and delivery is recursive, as one student learns the material he or she is rewarded for successfully passing on that information to the next pupil. This method is now commonly known as peer tutoring but the economics of Lancaster's or Bell's methodology is not widely discussed.

Lancaster wrote Improvements in Education and later travelled to the United States to lecture and promote his ideas. His headstrong ways and poor money management made for rough times on himself and his schools. One of Lancaster's original schools, funded by royals, still runs under the name of The British and Foreign School Society but it is not known if the same methods used at the founding of the school, under the name The Royal Lancasterian Institution, are still in use today.

His ideas are being revisited by schools now as an effective model for reducing costs. At the time of his death, there were between 12 to 15 hundred schools established with his principles. Bell's schools and methodology were appropriated by the Catholic church, and later the government of England; creating the National Schools system, boasting nearly 17,000 schools in 1858.

Reflecting his travels and work in South America there is at least one school in Venezuela that retains Lancaster's name.

Lancaster died in New York from injuries sustained after being run over by a horse carriage.

Books

• "Improvements in Education" (London, 1803; New York, 1807)
• "'The British System of Education" (Washington, 1812)
• "Epitome of the Chief Events and Transactions of my own Life" (New Haven, 1833). See "Life of Lancaster," by his friend William Corston.