New-York tribune., 1869-05-22
FCOGGJNG IN SCBOOLS

according to their pleasure or their passion;
and, to speak shortly, the law proved to be
good for nothing. The next modification
adopted was to the effect that no children
should receive corporal punishment without
the consent and approval OF the
Principal and record of corporal
punishment was required, which was
submitted monthly to the subcommittee.
These reports seem at least to have been hon
estly made for it was shown that in the very
first month after the adoption of the rule, the
number Of corporal punishments was at the
crate of 2,4OO for the school year in the primary
schools alone, with less than 5000 pupils y
four whippings for every five children This
would never do and in 1868 (there being good
deal of public excitement on the subject) the
Committee defined corporal punishment" to
be any punishment intended to act through
" the production of bodily pain" which included
thrashing, feruling, pinching, humping, and
boxing of the ears and this kind of discipline,
it was distinctly ordered should no longer be
inflicted upon girls. This brought about re-
ductiOn of 80 per cent of such punlshments,
which seems to show that the poor little girls,
in the days of unrestTained barbmity, must
have had rather q hard time of it. Yet the
Committee reported "a successful years work.
and the schools "in q quiet and prosperous
state AS a general result, without going into
statistics further, we may cite the opinion form
ed by the Committee after corporal punishment
has absolutely ceased in two out of seven
grammar schools, and practically iii three;
while in nine out of twenty-three primaries, 1t
is no longer employed at ALL a resort to expul-
sion or suspension being seldom found necessa-
ry. The Committee are decidedly of the Opin-
ion, are as they say fully persuaded" that
schools can be successfully conducted with
"out resort to violence They therefore pro-
pose the following general rule for all the
schools:
enoued the Instructors to exercise vgtntipu and
s discipline govern By persussoa ad gentle a far
practicable intended through the production Of
bodily pain shall not be inflicted"
In this excellent and sensible regulation
there is n complete abandonment of the anti
quatcd and musty notion (for which, more than
anybody else, lking Solomon is respOnsible)
that children cannot be governed without tor
ture in one shape or another. What change
since the days of Sir Roger de COverly When
that excellent knight stood before the tomb of
DR.. Busby, in Westminster Abbey, he soilo-
quized, according to The Spectators report, as
follows DR.. Busby, great man! he whipped
"my grandfather; a very great man!
"should have gone to him myself, if had not
"been bockhead very great man." In
every school, at that time, hogging was the
controlling idea, just as hanging was in Old
Bailey Jurisprudence. Even Shenstone, who
describes his Schoolmistress" as a gentle and
pert old lady, makes more than dozen illusions
to the vigor with which she welded the rod,
and tells us that she kept birch plant grow
ing in front of her humble door, that she
might always be well supplied with the in
struments of torture!
"AHl all In sight doth rise bIreheh tres
which learning near her little dome id siOwe;
wLlou tvig of small regard 10 see.
Thoash nov 81 vide is vAyiug braaches dow,
Apd work the staple vis,as meks wo
For not sind mi ght curl the leaves that blow
But their limbs shudderel sud their pOlss beat loui
Ard IS they Looked they found the horror grew
Add shaped Il into reds, and uuEled Is the view"
1t is painful to think how that which should
have been the most delightful employment of
infancy and youth was for so many generations
turned into terror and a torture. In early
life we never knew a teacher who did not
keep constantly in sight some instrument of
rod. This last named vegetable horror was
sometimes long enough TO reach across the
room, and to put in pain some distant and per-
haps unconscious offender. We have known
even a Quaker pedagogue who read the Bible
and foggcd onc-tenth of the scholars every
morning at nine o'clock. No eXplana-
ton was made TO the sufferer of the
causes of this chastsement-hiS Oifense might
be day, a week, or fortnight old. The
consequence was that that the reading of the
Holy Scriptures became in the minds of the pupils
quite a secondary matter. The subsequent and
predestinate switching and shifting was always
uppermOst. We are sorry to notice that the
Cambridge Committee show little timidity, at
the very least, in Offering their advice. "If,n
they say, "there is doubt in the minds of a
considerable minority, or if they cannot give
" their hearty support to the measure, it would
"bc better to allow the rules to continue as
" they now are.n We do not think so. This
is matter quite within the province of the
majority to determine. If man wants his
child hogged, let him do it himself, and not
expect the public to pay the cost of the casti-
CATION. There will always be "a considerable
minority who will not think upon this sub
ject at ALL or who will consider it only in a
blind and brutal way. We trust that the pro-
posal of the Cambridge Committee will be at
once sanctioned and adopted.
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A citizen of New-York, whose conspicuous