On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell.

  • Dora Greenwell
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the education of the imbecile / by Dora Greenwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/54 page 47
    VI. We have said that the claims of this subject are far too weighty to be left to mere individual charity. Yet it is well, perhaps, that philanthropy should in this case, as in many others, work out the first experiments, which may after¬ wards be carried forward on a broader scale, as one of universally admitted obligation. The institutions which are at present being founded demand a heavy outlay; they are large, and necessarily expensive,—as a single master cannot here, as in places of ordinary education, take charge of a great number of pupils. ‘ Here,’ says M. Delasiauve, ‘ all preceptoral action is necessarily minute, immediate, sustained, and in some degree individualized on each separate object,’ so that a large staff of teachers and super¬ intendents is Called for, and these, it is scarcely necessary to say, must be unexceptionable as regards intelligence and moral tone. ‘Large asylums,’ Dr. Kitching says, ‘are at present needed to carry out this work, which is an altogether peculiar one, and requires adaptations physical, intellectual, and systematic, which no other instrumentality can supply. An idiot asylum is a singularly complex thing. It com¬ bines the sanatorium, the hospital, the gymnasium, the school, the workshop, and the chapel, and each of these has to be brought to bear under modifications adapted to the peculiar character of its pupils. The difficulty, as well as the variety of the work to be accomplished, requires a corresponding adaptation, and versatility of power in those by whom it is performed.’ Considerable space is also required for the varied exercises the children so imper;
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image