The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-11-28 00:00:00

Eke g)tourbribg Obsetber.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER, 28th, 1874.

SCHOOLS AND THEIR DISCIPLINE.

The working of the Education Act of 1870 is
kept constantly before the public mind in one
way or another, In the metropolis more espe-
cially, the officials connected with the London
School Board display great energy in the prose-
cution of their labours. They are actively en-
gaged in gethering up the waifs and strays of
humanity front the streets, where they have had
no training but that of vice, no roof to cover
them save the broad canopy of heaven, no rest-
ing place of a night except the dark erches of
toe Adelplii, or tic recesses of one of the Midges
with the bitter.y cold current of air sent up from
the river, ens, loping their chilled and benumbed
frames. It will doabtiess take a long time to
make an impression upon the numbers of these
outcasts, but tee work is gradually progressing,
and every week diminishes the given quantity of
street Arabs, and adds to the hope of an ulti-
mate increase in the ranks of respectability. It
is scarcely poseihte to estimate to highly bend-
fieial results of such action as this. Often and
often when a clever robbery his been elle cted,
such, for inetanee, as those jewellery raids upon
the shopkeepers of Cornhil, a few years ago, we
find the judge who tries the criminals teldeg
them that if their ingenuity and ability bail been
applied to inilu•trial persuits, instead if being
devoted to pre) big upon their neighbours, their
intellect would have gained for the a fortune
in the race of life. Every outcast reclaimed is,
therefore, a poseive gain in two ways. It in-
cress's the chivies of inure producting plover
being brought into requisition for the benefit of
the community ; and at the SAMS time corres-
ponding reducti in of loss by robbery, of charges
for prosecutions, and of the cost of maintenance
ia prisone. Therefore let us wish nil speed to
the work of reclamation. Who knows but that
a School Board officer may, in his capture of a
sharp-eyed, ragged urchin, have laid his band
upou some future philosopher—one who tn. rely
requires training for the development of intel•
lectual powers which will one day give the world
a Newton or a Feraday ?
1 here is uneteer matter in which the public
are watching the operation of the Education Act,
and which is not merely of local, but of tuitional
interest. The question as to the efficacy of
corporal punishment has of late years been
warmly debated. From time to time an affair of
this kind at one of our public schools gives rise
to a sharp controversy in the prom' advocates i-f
the obi system going in for a free use of the birch
and others arguing in favour of humanitarian
prineiplee. Even the expediency of flogging
garotters is at time fiercely contested, it being
1, argued that this corrective measure has a ten-
dency to brutali-et these gentry, and to injure
their sensitive f. Ohms. Bat one or two cases
which have lately come before the magistrates
raise the question what constitutes a moderate
amount of corporal punishment? II a boy is
obstinate, and refuses to do his sum or to write
his copy, is the &ureter simply to lecture iii
or to resort to th, stick? if he is not penal-bed
to use the stick, jtelieienely by all we .ns, tlee
recalcitrant yeungster is very likely to take al-
vantage of the leniency thus extended to him,
and other youths in the school, never remarkeble
for . applying theniselves industriously to their
duties, will presume on the indulgence thus
granted. A nietropolitian magistrate only the
other day declared that it was perfectly impos-
sible for a schoolmaster to keep in order a large
number of lio)s eisa he was allowed to admim
ister moderate eie•stieee.eot. In his young delis
, the worthy st:pi reliery continued to obeerie,
neither boys uor ;lick haieuts were quite so
j sentimental as they are now on this subject. In
:Lte pres iii, if e ec,ioel.,eieter or even
parent lifted his Muni to correct a child, there
was a general outcry about it. What it would