The Vinita daily chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1902-1913, 1912-08-27

OiuCu viii nave q law mdhlHS tuG COT
poral punishment of children felony
and prescribing for conviction a good
respectable term of years in the peui-
tentiary-a penitentiary, if one could
be found, where corporal punishment
was used so that the petty tyrant
could reflect on the error of his ways
with the object lesson always before
him.
A short time ago, met an alleged
teacher who was on his way to pre-.
serve the majesty of the law. He had
with him a piece of rubber hose about
an inch and half in diameter and two
feet long; one end of which was slip
ped over stick about the size of
large chair round. The loose end was
cut in strips making some seven or
eight circular strings little over a
quarter of an inch in diameter and
ten or twelve inches in length. This
inhuman fiend very glibly explained
to me that this kind of whip did not
cut the flesh, but bruised it raising
great welts, and volunteered the in
formation that parents didn't object
so long as the child's flesh wasn't cut
or split open. He further disclosed the
secret of the heavy stick in the end.
He said: IF the pupil turns on you,
you can hit him on the head with the
other end of the club and put him out
Of business" Yet, you believe that
in some instances corporal punishment
is right! This account which has the
merit of being true is just one of sew
eral cases; and while these instru-
ments OF order may not be in use in
many schools, one case would forever
damn the method. A great orator has
said: Abolish the whip from your
schools and your home, for If you use
whip, the ignorant and brutal will
use club because you use whip"
/ If the teachers in our public schools
will follow the natural inclinations Of
pupils, draw out from them their PEI
culiar aptftudes, encourage them in
Investigations and bestow praise when
praise is due, criticism when it is due,
they will make friends Of their charges
instead OF enemies. AS | stated in my
former article, learning that is useful
here and now is what parents want
their children to secure.
4 What after all, is our highest aim?
The highest aim is the only good. Hap
piness is the only good which we can
by any possibility conceive. Of This
is made possible by means of intellec-
tual and physical development, not by
stripes given by some 2x4 school
teacher. want to say again to teach
ers: Study the methods of Brand
Whitlock, Judge Ben Lindsey, Kate
Barnard, (Our own Katel, and many
other of our humanitarians who are
proving to the world that children have
rights; that children are not ours to
be beaten into cringing, crawling sub
! mission, or young lions to be felled to
the earth in an effort to mould them
into certain shapes.
Find out from these pioneers in
j methods of child government that the
sharp eye Of childhood is as quick to
recognize justice as the adult and
many times more candid.
Teach your pupils all about the
Fairy Land of Science, that opens
, out before them on every hand. Teach
: them the wonders of evaporation and
precipitationthe cause of rains and
dews, the attraction of gravity and al
the easy and familiar experiments i
natural philosophy that can be made
; in the class room without expensive
apparatus. Send your charges out into
the world with an explanation fol
t drops of water gathering on glass o.
t cold water, other than the old notion
that the moisture passed through tht
, glass.
In conclusion, | want TO use th'
, words of the instructor Of the famous
/ historian Plutarch, written over tive
| thousand years ago, yet as true today
as then.
: 1t was happy circumstance in thc
! discipline of those scEools, that a par
t ent only had the power of corpora
} punishment; the rod ana the ferul'
were snatched from the hand of thu
E petty tyrant; his Office alone was t
!, INFORM THE MIND; he had no au
3 thority to dastardize the spirit; h
had no power to extinguish the gener
t GUS flame OF freedom, or to breal
: down the noble independency of th'
+ soul, by the slavish, debasing. and de
) grading application of the rod, Thi
& mode of punishment in our publi'
5 schools is one of the worst remains o