Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1890-07-05
CORRESPONDENTS.
\ "Teacher" CrOsS-EXamiues an Editt

y "reacher" CrOSS-EXamiueS an Editor.
GRANT COUNTY, w. Va, June y, 1890
To the MINING JOURNAL.
The editorials of the Kevser Tribune
denouncing teachers as ''brutish" and
holding up children as objects of SYM
pathy against school government are
the most childish things ever written.
For instance, the Tribune says there
is something wrong" when the teacher
fails to correct Il child by moral
Suasion and uses the switch instead.
This is true; but the wrong is not sole
ly with the teacher. but with the whole
outfit mankind If this editor
would stop at this point and reflect for
q moment he would find the ''logical'
reason for the rod in school. Did you
just open your book Of knowledge and
find that there is something wrong,'
and that something" is the ''brutish
whipping" of the teacher? Why, it
has been known for centuries that
there is something wrong and the
schoolmaster has been on the ground
many years helping to correct the
wrong by the use of the rod and other
means.
When child becomes pupil of a
school he joins Il little republic and
surrenders certain rights for the com
mon good. Among the things he
must observe are justice, courtesy and
order. and when he violates any of them,
the president, if he be a good one, will
compel him to make amends by "moral
suasion,' if he can-by the rod, if he
must.
Is it wrong to whip child for
wrong-doing after the teacher has
exhausted every other means of
pupil be permitted to do wrong that
the teacher may not whipe
But the Iribune prescribes "moral
suasion," and it will please inform us
how much should be used in a school
of hundred, and in what doses it
| should be administered to boy to
whom "moral suasiou" is an unknown
quantity Which is the better for
civilization-a "brutish" whipping or
to permit british boys to grow up
brutishly?
This wise paper says-''but no rea-
son can exist that he is morally his
superior" meaning that the teacher
is not morally the superior of the
pupil yet morally inferior teacher is
to govern morally superior pupil by
moral suasion, What an absurdity |!
And here is still more logic from this
'moral suasion" philosopher
If we draw our conclusions from logical
reasoning we submit that in ninety nine
cases out of one hundred the teacher is not
| morally the equal of the pupil; we say this
without fear Of contradiction from the fact
| that the environment of the teacher is such
that opportunities occur day by day to de-
! velop all the latent viciousness of his nature
| This does not apply to the pupil, because it
! has home Influences, home teaching bind
ing and controlling all his moral nature.
This beats "a Trip to the Moon" or
Eighty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea-" When you see ninety-nine
teachers they are bad aud the one boy
in sight is good 1t is strange, too, that
you never heard one of those little
schoolboys curse u blue streak, or
knew one to steal, tell lies, fight, nor
| in fact do anything only be good.
children get street education that is
rotten with ylclousness. And does
the teacher go home from school to
| roast Ill pefulLlOn Wnlle lne pupils
take their books to their boudoirs to
bask in celestial realms
SO the environment of the teacher is
such that day by day his viciousness
is developed till he is carried to the
depths of the damned. This is q
pretty piece of comment on the labor
of the good women and men by whose
patient tuition you have become able
to write.
the best thing you can do is to go to
school this winter; improve your
powers of observation use less
ink; study some philosophy and you
will be less eXtravagant in YOUR
gratuitous opinions against the logical
necessity of giving the rod its proper
place in the schoolroom.
TEACHER.