The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1912-08-30

with him a piece of rubber hose about
an inch and half ia diameter and two
feet long; one end of which was slip
} ped over a stick about the size of a
large chair round The loose end was
cut in strips making some seven or
eight circular strings little over r
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 il you use
a whip, the ignorant and brutal will
use club because you use a whip"
If the teachers in our public schools
will follow the natural inclinations of
pupils, draw out from them their pc
culiar aptitudes, 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 l stated in my
former article, learning that is useful
here and now is what parents want
their children to secure.
What after all, is our highest aim?
The highest aim is the only good, Hap
piness is the only good which we can
lby 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 Bran6
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 felIed to
the earth in an effort to mould them
into certain shapes.
Find out from these pioneers in
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
l"Fairy Land of Science" that "Opens
out before them on every hand. Teach
them the wonders of evaporation and
preeipitation-the cause of rains and
.dews, the attraction Of gravity and all
the easy and familiar experiments in
natural philosophy that can be made
: in the class room without expensive
apparatus Send your charges out into
the world with an explanation for
drops of water gathering on a glass of
cold water, other than the old notion
that the moisture passed through the
glass.
In conclusion. | want to use the
WORDS of the instructor of the famous
historian Plutarch, written over two
thousand years ago. yet as true today
as then
1t was happy circumstance in the
. discipline of those schools. that a par
ent only had the power of corporal
punishment; the rod and the ferule
were snatched from the hand of the
petty tyrant; his Office alone was to
INFORM THE MIND; he had no au-
thority TO dastardize the spirit; he
had no power TO extinguish the gener-
! GUS flame Of FREEDOM, or to break
down the noble independency of the
soul. by the slavish, debasing, and de-
grading application of the rod, This
mode of punishment in our public
: schools is one Of the worst remains Of
barbarism that prevails among us.
9 Sensible minds, however volatile and
inattentiye in early years, may be
e drawn to their duty by many means,
which shame, and fears of more lib
t eral nature than those of corporal
: punishment. will supply. Where there
: is but little sensibility, the effect
, which that mode of punishment pro
3 duces is not more happy. 1T destroys
$ that little though it should be the
e first care and labor of the preeeptor
5 to increase 1t. To BEAT the body is