Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1880-03-24
Keeping Children After School.

Educators Of long experience and careful
observation assert it to be almost universally
true that where seeming necessity for
punishment exists in the school-room the
source of the difficulty may be traced to a
failing on the part of the teacher to study
the characteristics of the individual, or
suitably present or treat the subject under
consideration.
While this seems rather sweeping state
ment, which we are not now prepared to &C.
cept without slight notifications, yet, if
every teacher before administering correc-
ton in any form would seriously and can.
didly ask himself whether the desired OBJ
ject could not be gained by some other treat
ment, and whether, after all, the lack was
not in himself, schools would run with less
friction and there would be fewer instances
OF collision between teacher and taught
True, teachers are sometimes taxed, appar.
emily, beyond endurance and their patience
put to the severest trial. but these are the
very ordeals which test their true character
and fitness for the important work assigned
them. These quietly borne and the temp
tation to yield to the passionate dictates of
the moment successfully resisted better
judgment asserts itself, and an approving
conscience usually tells him that modera.
ton is preferable to haste and presents
plan of gaining the victory without the hu.
initiation of descending to brute force or
sometimes without punishment of any kind.
But corporal punishment of reasonable
severity, and administered in the right
spirit is perhaps preferable to some of the
inhuman means of torture employed by
would-be model discipinarians. Among
these may be classed the practice of "hold-
ing down knot" standing on one foot,
having the mouth propped open or lips
stuck together, or, worst of all, being kept
an hour after school, OF the latter method
Good Company says Z" If teachers were iu.
dicious, it might occasionally be resorted to
with good effect; but teachers are not all
judicious, and thousands of children are
thus detained every day, to whom the de-
tention is a serious injury, and grave in
justice. For some trifing breach of order,
or some small failure in recitation-whole
classes being kept Oh account of the indo-
lence of some of the members and innocent
thus suffering with the guilty-the children
are shut up in the school-house sometimes
during the intermissions, often after the
close of school. Children in delicate health,
to whom the regular school hours are too
long, are permanently injured by this sys-
tenn OF confinement. If only the willful and
those in sturdy health were thus punished,
there would be less reason of complaint;
out any careful investigation will show that
such discrimination is not generally made,
md, from the nature of the system, cannot
well be made; and that the injury to the
health of pupils resulting from the practice
more than outweighs any good that may re.
ult from it. The health of the pupil is a
subject to which the average school teacher
gives but little consideration; any practice,
therefore, which is liable to impair or injure
it ought to be forbidden by law. This
plea is based upon an observation of the
working of this system in several towns and
cities and upon the concurrent testimony of
many medical men. In some places the
rules of the governing boards forbid the
Imprisonment of children, but the rules are
generally set at naught by teachers. They
'ught to be enforced. 1t must be that there
are methods of discipline for schools less
injurious and more effectual than imprison.
ment"