St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-12-11
WHIPPING THE KIDS.
Prof. White Addresses the
City Teachers on Corporal
Punishment.
He Says the Scholar Who Re-
bells Should Be Whipped
Into Line,
But Force Should Only Be
Used as a Last Re-
sort.
Knocked SenseleSS With q
Ruler for Mispronounc-
ing a Word.

There was a large attendance of teach
ers last evening at the High School
lecture hall to listen to an address on
the subject of Punishment" by Prof.
E. z. White, formerly superintendent
of schools at Cincinnati. The speaker
treated his subject specially with rel
erence to the necessity or ACCESSIBILITY
of corporal punishment In the schools,
and discussed philoSophically on the
result of and necessity for punishment
generally. In his opinion there was
place in the public school for law. and
that law should make for every offenSe
committed by scholar in the school a
punishment commensurate with the
crime. Punishment had an end,
and one of the principal ends of punish
ment was the prevention of crime and
wrong doing. There were, however,
more specific ends. One of these was
reformation: another the condemnation
of wrOng-doing. If, when the occasion
arose for the inffiction of punlShmenton
a child, doubt existed in the mind of the
teacher as to the effect that punishment
would be likely To haye-Whether the
child would be benefited thereby or the
reverSe-that teacher should hesitate
long time before inflicting the punish
ment. There should also be taken into
consideration the effect. likely to result
upon the minds of the children witness
ing the administration of questionable
juStice-whether it would convey to
their minds a more rational understand
ing of the offense and the punishment
to follow It's commission. He did not
those teachers WIN
tered and
BELIEVED IN WHIPPING
as punishment he merely differed with
them. The teacher which punished to-
day that which might be overlooked to-
morrow was emphatically the wrong
man for such a position. The chief
merit of law as preventative of crime
lay IN the ineviIability of the punish
ment provided by that law following the
offense. The chief weakness in the
matter of government in Americas cit
les to-day was the titful and uncertain
manner in which the laws of those cit
les were enforced. The child should
be made to understand that a
penalty was attached to wrOng-doing.
The dread of punishment had a greater
effect in preventing crime than had
punishment itself. Twenty-Five years
W
ishable by light sentences of imprison-
ment, perhaps. were crimes punishable
by death. The removal of all but few
of the 160 offenses which twenty-five
years ago in England had been included
in the category OF capital crimes, pun
iShable by death. had not had the effect
of increasing the number of these
OffensPs. but of decreasing them. The
punishment had now been made TO fit
the crime, thanks to the efforts of Sir
Edward Cope.
Again, punishment should be rational.
Uuder Gods government wrong is loss
and right is gain. Il wish could burn
that sentence into the brain of every
young man in America, it is golden
truth" Spencer says that rational
punishment has no limitation: he
thought It had. Only in case of rebell-
ion should the whip be brought into
play. While the
PUPIL IS SUBMISSIVE
there is no occasion for whipping.
When rebellion came there should be
no hesitation as to the remedy-that
remedy was force. The scholar who
rebelled must be whipped into line. The
teacher was the objective point of all
the finest sarcasm in the English litera-
ture. This was explained by the great
difference which existed in the meth
DDS of the teachers of the day in which
those books we're written and the teach
ers of to-day. An essay of Steele'S in
the Spectator showed with what horror
the mind of child could be inspired by
the presence of brutal punishment in
the school. Steele recalled it even IN
his later youth. and would walk two
miles rather than pass the hated struc-
ture in in which he was knocked sense
less with a rule for miSprOnOunc-
ing Latin word. All that
had changed now. The sentiment
of the country and of the teachers on
the matter of punishment had changed.
1t had been discovered that laws could
be made to govern the most unruly
scholars, who knew full well the result
that would follow their violation. That
result need not be corporal punishment;
there were penalties which Appealed to
the pupils sense of right and justice
rather than to his sense of physical Suf-
fering. That the former method was
more rational and effective in every de-
sirable way than the latter had been
proven beyond all doubt.
The speaker diversified his address
with light anecdotes and "reminiscences,
being frequently applauded through
out. w. E. Sheldon, of the Boston
School Journal. was present on the plat
form with the speaker and Prof. Gil
bert.