Evening star., 1932-10-16

n have carried an unusual number OF
astounding accounts of parental
NJ cruelty. DeviliSh ingenuity and
fendish persistence in the punish
ments are revolving to the average
person. who wonders if parents can be human
and what makes them. behave SO inhumanly TO
their own flesh and blood. Torture chambers
of medieval tIle3, pilage of barbaric armies
and the depravity Of Bluebeard are all brought
to mind by these ptiable accounts
Yet knowledge of human emotions makes 1t
fairly easy to understand why few parents
behave so extraordinarily as this Why the
usual object Of parents greatest pr1de ana
affection is tortured, chained. beaten; in short,
treated the exact opposite OF what we Shoulo
expect from normal love and pride.
Psychological history also shows that this Is
not a new emotional disorder" not new men,
tai epidemic but something that has long his
torical antecedentS
The ancient Spartans, under the sway of
their peculiar hard-boiled philosophy Of life's
values beat their children especially the boys
to tougher and harden them for the later
hard knocks that life itself, SO they thought.
was bound to give them. So, too, IN Germany
after the unfortunate Thirty Years War.
IN these periods, practically all parents habit
] ually administered what we would call excess
sive corporal discipline to their children; they
did this, not because the parents were more
brutal or hard boiled than we might be- but
leaders held such procedure up to them as a
noble ideal that accomplished desirable results
for the nation, for the family, or for the unfor-
tunate boys soul
Our group thinking in contrast to this, dur
ing the past few decades has tended in the op-
positc direction. Corporal punishment has been
outlawed for school children in some States.
In addition, women's magazines and psyche
logical writers have shown the ideal Of handling
children by diplomacy and tact and rewards,
rather than by severe physical discipline.
In other words severe punishment has gone
out of style. This makes such instances as we
now read about in the newspapers novel and
unusual: it makes them news now, While back
In Sparta it would have made news If Johnny
Smithropolis had gone week without having
beating
We have only to read of Mark Twain's child
hood to discover how recently the Spartan idea
still prevailed to a large extent. This vogue
for severe punishment among most families
shortly after our own Civil War is one Of the
reasons why many as II per cent OF boys ran
away from home at some time or other before
they reached voting age; perhaps they were i'm
PEELED to return after few days or weeks due
to sentiment and homesicknesS, but they re-
volted and at least tried to get away and keep
away from the cruelties that were aimed to
make men out of them. Child suicides have also
been traced to this same situation.
How we are improving in dealing with chill
dren is shown by records from the st. Louis
Public Schools. In 1881 there were 141 out of
every 900 pupils given corporal punishment IN
school, but this declined so markedly that in
1924 there were only IT cases OF corporal pun
iShment for 1000 pupils
Contrast that decline with the following rec
ord kept by an old German SchOOlmaster OF the
punishments he had given during his 81 years
and seven months of work as teacher:
Gil 527 blows with cane, 1874 900 blows with
rod, 2o,9s9 blows with ruler blows to the
number of 136715 with his hand and in addi-
tion 1O295 over the mouth, not to neglect the
1905 ear-boxngs or the Ill 800 times he slap
ped his school children on the head.
And for devilish ingenuity look at these items
from his carefully kept record: TIT times he
had schoolboys kneel with peas under their
knees, 613 times he had them kneel on three
cornered blocks of wood
THERE may be something, as yet undiscov-
! cred, about the postwar psychology of a
people that inclines their national thinking
more in favor of punishment than Is ordinarily
the case. If such IS true then the large num-
ber Of news items about parental brutality is
due only partly to the fact that this is news
to a great extent because it contrasts with the
previously accepted prohibition of such punish
ments.
At any rate, we see judges sentencing grown
up offenders for all sorts of crimes to be whip
ped with cat-o'-nine tails, sometimes even de-
creeing that the flogging should be in public.
Other evidence that we may be changing toward
q boiled philosophy in our thinking is the
way boxing and wrestling have become SO pop
ular, with even society women as fans, and with
1t used to be in the mauve decade. And we dis
cover that most of the new books are mystery
stories of murder and torture.
Aside from these changing social forces we
constantly have ignorance as a cause for some
Of these exceptional brutalities toward chill