The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1920-02-26
WHIPPING CHILDREN AT
HOME AND IN SCHOOL
A Story of Children And Their
Impulse to Wrong-Doing
[By Owen K. Washburnl

lust left here on his way home from
school. | stopped him because saw
that he was crying and very unhappy.
He has a mother who is tender, but
not strong enough to defend hlm. his
fathers rule is to whip Johnny when
he gets home if he is whipped at
school. No inquiries as to the justice
of what the teacher had done are
made. The teacher is woman who
is mentally too lazy to review her own
ideas or to put herself in Johnny S
place, so the little fellow who is SEN
sitive, well-intentioned and heart nun
CRY has hard time of 1t.
All who practice the whipping Oh
children should remember that the
more bigoted, the more ignorant and
superstitious and stupid the age, the
more freely the rod has been used
Just in proportion as civvlllzation'
science, and humane ideals In otner
matters have advanced, the use OF 'ne
whip on children, adults-and am
mails TOBIAS decreased.
Almost every case Of whipping not
arising from the stupidity of the
teachers and parents arises from their
ignorance of the limitations OF the
powers of the little victims. AS rule
every child wants to do right, his in
stincts is to be right. When he is
wrong there are adequate reasons for
it, and until We understand those rea-
sons and are sure those reasons can
not be removed except by the whip,
we have no right to resort to the
whip.
1t is evident that child should not
be whipped for his hereditary endow-
ment. You cannot whip child away
from its ancestry, and it is unjust to
try. The quick temper which is usual
ly an accompaniment of a quick mind
though often not of powerful mind
and never of a trained mind, can be
improved only by teaching, never by
the whip. Aside from quick temper,
no evil tendencies are inherited. The
children of murderers, thieves, drum
kards and those given to vice often
become like their parents, due to
teaching, environment, poverty and
poor nutrition.
Nor is it just to whip a child for
the effects of its environment. If you
were brought up in family where
"jawing" was constant, where physi-
cal force was the rule, bullying the
means of getting what was justly
your due, fighting common mode OF
self expression. hunger a constant
source of irritation, and lack Of op-
portunity to express ones active i'm
pulse was chronic, you would proba-
bly, during school age be "bad boy"
or "bad girl". Manifestly the way
to overcome the effects of bad home
environment is to substitute good
environment in the home and school,
and if the home cannot be reached,
then the need in school is greater for
kindness, carefulness to be just, rea-
soning on all disputed points. Peace,
not the use Of force, is the cure for
such habits of mind as a bad home
produces. There is no hope of 'improv-
ing the child of a home spoiled by
bullying by using the methods of the
bully and demanding obedience with
out reason, or inflicting whippings
for failures that the child could not
perhaps avoid.
But it is the physical equipment
that the teacher and parent most need
to understand before the whipping is
tried. 1t takes a certain amount of
nerve vigor to stand up to temptation.
The sick are notedly unjust while
their nerves are in bad condition. We
never want to whip a SICK man Tor
his inability to overcome the tempta-
ton to fret or to see things unfairly.
The keepers used to whip horribly
for nervous diseases in the old insane
asylums; many parents and teachers
still whip horribly as a cure for lack
of nerve vigor. Both practices are un-
worthy of parent or teacher of or
dinary common sense. Before whip
ping child you should first discover
if the thing you are whipping for is
,cacsed by an inherited quick temper.
If so, you will get no good results
from whipping. Remember, too, that
only self-respect makes good citi-
zen, and a whipping, especially if it
be in public, is the greatest blow to