This article explores the reception and adaptation of the Monitorial system of education in Chile after the struggles for independence. This process was characterised by the confluence of the ‘civilising’ discourses of those who diffused (the Quakers of the British and Foreign School Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society) and received (the Chilean liberal elite and Catholic clergy) the system. As a result, the original model was adapted to local circumstances and interests during the 1820s, according to the specific type of citizen that the political leaders sought for the new republic of Chile.