ANACHRONISTIC MODERNITY: THE BELL-LANCASTER METHOD AND ITS ADAPTATION IN OTTOMAN MACEDONIA

Апстракт

This paper examines the Bell-Lancaster method, also known as the monitorial or mutual system, and its adaptation in Ottoman Macedonia during the nineteenth century. First developed in Britain by Andrew Bell and later popularized by Joseph Lancaster, the method addressed the challenge of mass education with limited resources: a single teacher, assisted by student-monitors, could manage the instruction of hundreds of pupils. Its promise of economy and reach made it a global phenomenon, praised as modern and progressive. Yet the system’s reliance on silence, surveillance, and public discipline revealed its deeper role as a mechanism of regulation, producing conformity rather than independent thought. The paper situates this method within Reinhart Koselleck’s notion of Sattelzeit, the modern process of educationalisation, and Michel Foucault’s analysis of discipline. As a product of the Sattelzeit, it reflected the conviction that education could shape society toward progress. Viewed through educationalisation, it functioned as social therapy, targeting poverty, morality, and civic order. Foucault’s perspective highlights its operation as an apparatus of surveillance. In Ottoman Macedonia, introduced in Bitola in the 1830s and later in Thessaloniki and Ohrid. The method was celebrated as a sign of European modernity but adapted to local conditions, from rural improvisations to girls’ moral training. Its paradox lies in being locally embraced just as Europe abandoned it.