ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the meaning of Spencer's writings in relation to early-Victorian debates on education. Transforming the doctrines of phrenology, his evolutionary arguments for child-centred instruction and a useful, scientifically informed curriculum gained wide attention. Abstracted from its original context, Education stood as naturalistic manifesto for the development of psychological knowledge necessary to turn education into a science and tailor learning to the needs of life. A hundred years after his death, historians have discovered Herbert Spencer, and with him a truly rich intellectual challenge. How a man once revered as the Victorian Aristotle, whose writings was instrumental to the emergence of psychology, sociology and political theory should have fallen into such a state of anonymity. Having rejected Spencer to affirm their own scientific standing, educators have shown little interest in the details of his thought. Spencer's phrenological voluntarism is clearly evident in his earliest political writings.
