Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-06-26
DEFINITION.

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ton or teGching. Good authority defines
it: The treatment suited to disciples or
learners. In the sense designed by its
place on your programme, discipline is
subsection to lao. 1t is observing order
by submitting to control; it is obedience
to legitimate rulers.
But law without adequate means of
enforcing it-law without proper pen
atty for its transgression, or without rul-
ers with skill and authority to maintain
it, is as valueless as it is powerless.
The Importance of school discipline
can hardly be too highly estimated. Too
many parents and teachers seem to re-
gard it as of but little consequence.
Discipline is essential to the prosperity
and permanence of any form of gov
eminent. 1t is essential to the safety
and success of any organization or insti-
tuition.
In a republic where the people make
the laws and maintain them personally
or by proxy, national progress and per-
petuity depend very largely upon the
reverence of the people fer their laws
and their respect for their lawful rulers.
If the people do not make and maintain
wholesome laws-if they do not respect
legitimate rulers and submit to lawful
authority, then there is no national Sc
curlty and no public safety. Without
such reverence for law and restraint by
it, the strength of republics is but a
''rope of sand"
The time and place for ensuring law
loving and law-abiding people is in early
childhood and in the family training. If
the child is early trained to respect law
and disciplined to submit readily TO right
restraint-to reverence and obey proper
authority-then III manhood he will be
prepared to make laws and maintain
them; then he will also the more readily
find his highest happiness as well
as his largest liberty i'll reverence and
obedience to the higher law-the law of
lOve-the law of God.
The parent is morally bound to discip-
line his child to respect law and readily
obey just rulers. TO neglect this is a
great moral wrong to the child it is
dealing with him as bastard and not a
son.
The parent also has duty to society
in tho education and discipline of his
child He may ignore, he may even de-
ny that duty, but no denial can destroy
his responsibility as a guardian of the
public safety in the training of its future
friend or foe for, all other things being
equal, the children being trained in the
family to-day will prove, according to
their discipline, future friends or foes to
the pubic virtue and safety of a free
people.
But the question for discussion this
hour is not family or parental training
only, as it is necessarily incidentally in
volved in the question of school discip-
line. The same principles, so selfevi-
dent in family government as to need
only to be stated to secure admission and
acceptance with all intelligent, right
minded persons, are equally applicable
to school discipline.
The school is but larger family of
children, composed of the various smaller
families, united for the greater good of
private parties, but especially for the
greatest good of the public interests.
The legal status of the teacher is
greatly misunderstood by too many per-
sons. For the time being of the lawful
hours of school, the preceptor in charge
holds the lawful and moral relation of
parent to the children under bis care. In
the place of the parent-iR loco PARENTS
is the language of the law. The law
full right of the teacher to enforce ODE
dience to wholesome rules and consist
ent order is hence apparent to the atten-
tive.
We are not now speaking of the wis
dom or expediency of any particular
form of discipline, or of the best means
to insure it. The legal right to enforce
school discipline is the present point in
question. The law of Vermont, in de-
claring the teacher in the place of the
parent, gives the teacher just the same
legal right to enforce the obedience OF
the scholar in the school to right rules
and the observance of proper order or
decorum and quietness that it gives the
parent to secure the obedience of his
child in the family or in the field. The
teacher has lust the same lawful license
to impose penalties and infiict punish
ments, corporal or otherwise, in the
school, that the parent has out Of the
school, For the time being the law takes
the child from the responsibility and the
control of the parent and charges the
teacher with the control of the child and
holds him responsible for its proper con-
duct,
The child once at school and the par
ent has no right to interfere with its
government, no right to disturb the
school or recall the child, till excused OF
dismissed by the teacher. Any insult OF
| interference on tue pdIt VI ehO p''i Oio Az
lust as punishable by law as though he
were an alien. And just that kind and
degree of punishment the law sustalns
the parent in inflicting on his child fol
disobedience, it also gives the teacher the
same right to infiict on the scholar fol
transgression. The parent has no lega
or moral right to bruise, MAIN or man,
gle his child, or infict any permanent
injury upon its body or mind the teach
er has no more or less right than tne
parent to thus abuse the scholar. nc
parent or preceptor has right to poun y
the child's head with fist or ferule. e
mil the hair by handfulls from the head
or tear the ears from their place, DJ
twists or pulls or by lifting the child o p
them-as we have known to be zone II
several cases-but in any way thaI L
right and reasonable for one to punisl
for transgression or to use measures :