James Bonwick: Australian school inspector and Fellenberg disciple

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the “educational borrowing” of Pestalozzi’s and Fellenberg’s reforms by James Bonwick, an Australian schoolmaster and inspector in the 1840s and 1850s. The article initially examines Pestalozzi’s and Fellenberg’s teaching methods and philosophies. Adopting a biographical approach, it then explores the circumstances that influenced Bonwick to embrace, utilise, and then become a protagonist in promoting the ideas of these European educationalists. Commencing with his teacher training, Bonwick was inspired to question the social and educational effectiveness of the monitorial teaching then in vogue. Transferring to the Australian Colony of Van Diemen’s Land, he operated several schools based on Fellenberg’s example. Then, in South Australia and Victoria, where he continued to implement Pestalozzian teaching methods, his superior teaching skills received recognition through being invited to appear before several governmental investigations into education. Finally, but most significantly, as a school inspector in Victoria between 1856 and 1859, he inspired a generation of the colony’s schoolteachers to take up his enlightened and progressive teaching methods and views. Most studies of “educational borrowing” focus on parliamentarians and senior bureaucrats, but this study explains how a school inspector’s energy and passion for Pestalozzian principles and methods generated widespread teacher support for their adoption.