Education phrenologically & physiologically considered : a lecture / by L.N. Fowler.
- Lorenzo N. Fowler
- Date:
- Between 1873 and 1879]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Education phrenologically & physiologically considered : a lecture / by L.N. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![fortunate in business, that he could not afford to educate his children ” who were naturally very intelligent; yet he acknowledged he spent £50 e\ ery year tor wines and spirituous liquors. All should be producers; then we should have no drones in society, it is a tact, that the more a nation or government pays for the rhdit md of education, the less it pays for prisons, the maintenance0 of paupers, and asylums of various kinds. It is very true that we often hnd in prisons, men from the educated ranks of society; but these are exceptional cases, and are not thoroughly educated, and many of them have not learned even the rudiments, the necessity of self-government which was the reason they were committed to prison. There is no country that has so perfect a system of education for the masses as Amenca has ; none that pays more to secure general intelligence’ and the result is that the children of the great hordes of ignorant french, and Germans that migrate every year to her towns and cities become much better citizens than they otherwise would be if they had not the privileges of education offered to them almost “ witli- out money and without price.” Had it not been for these systems heathenism11^ AmenCa mig]lt liave merged into a kind of barbarism or A correct system of education is attractive, and not repulsive. The urSe a to go to school, may rest assured that eithei the child lias not received the right home-discipline, or that the teacher does not know how to interest children. Some boys are constants annoying their parents by their “ playing truant ” instead of going to school; m too many instances such children are allowed to have their own way in almost everything, or else they are governed very harslilv and severely, and break from the traces when they can find an oppor¬ tunity ; but when children are well trained at home, and are placed under teachers that are naturally qualified to teach, it will be a pleasure to the child to go to school. 1 It should not be necessary to whip an education into a child; it is natural tor a child to want to know everything, but sometimes children ai,e. ]squired to study those subjects that they cannot comprehend, which they forget as soon as they leave the class-room. Attraction and not repulsion, is nature’s method, and the gospel wav of bringing about the greatest results; but we should seek to adapt education to the child to be educated, and make it attractive by having reference to the peculiar organization of the child. I hope I may live to see this principle recognized in the training of the young; for it is impossible to make all alike clever, or to make all interested in the same puisuits. 1 have had such an extensive experience in analyzing mind that it seems strange to me that teachers should require all their pupils to come to the same standard of excellence; yet all pupils have their own peculiai talents, which might be improved. Tet me give a few instances fiom my own note-book of differences among individuals. In 1834, in Cincinnati, a gentleman brought to me for examination a man diessed as if he had just been picked up from a drunken frolic or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30472866_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
