Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-10-06

~ uIspdtcn from Manchester, new
| Hampshire, announces that: Gov
ernor Bartlett has personally investi-
gated complaints that boys have been
fiogged with rubber whips at the State
reports to be true and had ordered the
practice stopped.
THE Governor said he had been
shown the room at the school where
the fioggings took place and the in
struments used. These he said con-
sisted of pieces of solid rubber a foot
long with wooden handles"
wonder how many boys have been
| brutalized beyond the point of reclaim
| ing by those solid rubber whips a
foot long. with wooden handles?'
And il is safe to conclude that the
taxpayers of the State will be pay
| ing for this error in discipline till the
| law takes it's final toll of these unfor-
| turate boys.
That children are not made better
| by brutality is the experience of re
form school" keepers all over the
country. They explain their failure by
saying, the children are incorrigible
! Then. why allow these paid thugs to
| brutalize a child that is irreclaimable
| For that is the meaning of "incor-
rigible" according to the dictionary -
"depraved beyond the possibility Of re-
form. irreclaimable." ...
! Humane, intelligent people have
taken these so-called incorrigibles and
turned them into useful, law abiding
citizens But they did not do 1t by
| fiogging, whipping and other forms OF
murderous assault Whatever has
| been done in the way of Improvement
has been done by an appeal to reason
by trying to awaken sensibilities thu
have been deadened by cruelty and in.
humanity.
Advantages of the Binet System
| The Binet system has completely
| routed old methods of dealing will,
children. First know your child. is
the principle on which the system Is
founded. Is he normal or abnormal?
Arc certain of his faculties defective,
what are his tendencies, what are his
faults, in what does he excel, in what
does he fail?
The whole question of the child. his
possibilities of development, his rela-
lively weak or wholly lacking powers
are worked out by the Binet tests with
| the simplicity and exactness of a
problem in arithmetic.
The child Is put before you as a
| workable problem to which you apply
intelligence and patience. You have
no more need Of whips, cat-o'-nine-
tails and instruments of torture in
bringing up girls and boys than you
would require them to do an example
in arithmetic,
The popularity of whips, switches,
clubs and other instruments of, chas-
tisement Is to be found, not in the good
done the child, but in the relief af-
forded the angry adult. And reform
schools" unfortunately are not the
Only examples of this first aid to the
angry.
Parents. even kind and afrectionate
parents, often fall into this mistake
OF the dark ages in attempting to
bring up their children.
The Law OF Self Preservation
In beating child parent wholly
forgets that self-preservation Is the
strongest law Of nature. And they
wonder, these mothers and fathers of
cruelty whipped children, why their
boys and girls will lie, run away
from home and do other violent deeds
to escape such punishment. The child
Is merely obeying law as old as life
itself-the law of seif-preservation.
Children seldom forget such erhibi-
tions on the part of their parents and
are never deceived by any such Phar-
isacial nonsense as 1T hurts me worse
than 1t does you"
When a child Is beaten cruelty,
either in reform school" or at home
something of courage. power. fineness
goes out of that child. something that
all the kings horses and all the kings
men" can never give back. You have
hurt the chld's self-respect; he knows
himself to be the victim of another's
ar ger; against this he has no redress
it marks the first dawn OF reckless
ness.
generation ago people spoke un-
blushingly of breaking a child's will"
not realizing they were killing the
little spark of divinity that God gave
him to go through life.