The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-23

A BRUTAL PEDAGOGUE.
Professor Adams, the Portland peda-
gogue, who is accused of having, in fit of
rage, severely choked one of his pupils to
cure him Of stupidity, ought. If he is
guilty, to be dismissed. The stupid prac-
tice of trying to keep school with club is
no longer permitted in the public schools
of Boston nor in those of st. Louis. The
whip, or passionate violence of any sort,
seldom does any good at home and is still
more ineffective at school. The best
teachers, whether we consider the
capacity to instruct or to govern,
seldom or never resort to corporal
punishment. It is rare man that can
be trusted to whip a scholar with judy
ment and without passion; it is a rare
scholar that is not made worse rather
than better by the humiliation of the
whip; it is a rare scholar that person fit
to be teacher cannot control without re-
sort to the ferule and the switch. If q
scholar becomes so incorrigibly insubor-
dinate that he cannot be controlled except
with club he had better be excluded from
the whipping or other corporal discipline
is a trivial correction it falls into con-
tempt, and If it is really severe the
scholar is hardened in heart rather than
helped by it, if he is boy of any promise
and spirit. If the boy is brutal young
ruffian, upon whom justice, kindness and
tact have been exhausted in vain, boy
who becomes more ruffianly every time he
is logged, he should be excluded from
school as an abnormal creature incurable
by any thing that properly belongs to q
teachers work.
School is no more the place for the whip
or passionate corporal violence than home
is the place for it. A boy worth his salt in
spirit will be the worse for the whip, and
a worthless boy grows more worth
less every time you conquer him
with a club. The whip makes a
timid child a liar, and makes a
fearless, proud-spirited child, a sullen
young bulldog. The whip is the weapon
of the slave-driver, the chain-gang and the
penitentiary; it is not the legitimate tool
of the teacher, whose strength for good lies
not in his 1ogglng arm, but in his firm
ness, justice, kindness, tact and general
force of character. The non-commis-
stoned officers in the regular army or navy
are never permitted to govern with club
as they were in the last century, when SER
geants in the German army logged their
men at will with staff and boatswains in
the navy piled the cat.
So frightfully barbarous were the Eng
lish schoolrnasters in the use of the rod
and the ferule that George Colman, a
famous humorist, published a satire called
"Rodiana," in which he dashed the peda-
gogues of that day vigorously for their
fiendish inhumanity. In the English
schools many masters, originally humane
seemed to become monomaniacs on the
subject OF fogging resorting to it on the
slightest pretext, and seeming to take a
fiendish delight in the spectacle of suffer-
ing produced by a barbarous fogging.
Marryatt in his novel of "Percival
Keene" delineates the schoolmaster
of his day as brutal creature; who horri-
bly, whipped the most delicate children
from morning to night from sheer delight
found in causing pain and witnessing suf-
fering. This horrible English practice was
once common in New England schools.
Oliver Wendell Holmes in his published
recollections of his school days at Andover
Phillips academy tells most dismal story
of the brutal foggings which he suf-
cred in common with all his school,
mates of those days. The ferule used
was a foot long. This was the
weapon of torture for ordinary offences.
For more serious sins against school
discipline heavy cowhide or big hickory
switch was used. In tho Sc days when the
whip was freely piled the boys were far
more unruly and insubordinate than at
present.
No boy that is worth an education was
ever any the better for severe whipping
or passionate bodily punishment of any
sort. Let the incorrigible boy lose the
privilege of the school until he obeys, and
If his acts amount to serious offenses
against law and order, like wanton de.
struction of property and injury to the
person, then let him be deal. with
by the law as all other per-
sons are who so offend. No
person fit to be a teacher ought to be ex-
pected to whip the scholar severely. 1t is
seldom that the parent, bound to the child
by ties of respect and affection, does not
injure a child of school age by severe
beating. and when inflicted by the hand
of a teacher it is worse than useless. Let
even humane man begin to whip and in
time it becomes an almost ungovernable
propensity to resort to 1t on all occasions.
great and small. The practice makes him
grow passionate and despotic, and the rod
becomes a pernicious prerogative of the
teacher. Any parent who would not wish
TO whip child of school age at home GER
tainly would not wish to have him edu-
Gated under the lash or cultured with a
club at school.
PROTECTION TO OUR SHIPPING.
The United States now only carries