“’Principles of Loyalty and Attachment to the Parent State’: The Madras School System in New Brunswick from 1818 to 1828”
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Date
2025-04
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
This thesis examines Madras Schools in New Brunswick between 1818 and their rapid decline after 1828. The Madras method was an educational philosophy popular in the British Empire in the early nineteenth century in which academically advanced pupils were tasked with instructing other children in the classroom. By analyzing the records of the New Brunswick Madras School Board, we can understand the motivations that drove the expansion of this system in New Brunswick between 1818 and 1828. The Madras School system in New Brunswick was designed to fit into the model of a class stratified education system envisioned by the Loyalist elite. The preference given to the Madras system in early nineteenth-century New Brunswick shows how colonial policy makers in the province believed that the system would both buttress the hierarchical society favoured by the Loyalist elite and encourage settlers to remain loyal to the British Empire.