ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN IN ENGLAND (1880)

Abstract

The annotation cited below concerning corporal punishment may strike modern readers as excessively cruel. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, few would have been offended by the use of a birch-rod in disciplining children. No one who has had much to do with children can doubt that punishment is necessary to their proper discipline, or that sometimes it needs to be administered with considerable severity. The sentimental theory that children can be trained and taught "wholly by kindness" generally issues in a practice which is the converse of the principle laid down by Hamlet—"I must be cruel to be kind." There are, however, certain forms of punishment which compare most unfavourably with the old-fashioned birch, and ought to be discouraged, if not interdicted. We have repeatedly pointed out the evils and injuries likely to result from the boxing of ears and the smacking of faces. These "methods" should be summarily repressed by those who are the masters of school-masters and school-mistresses. Cases which have recently occurred have too forcibly illustrated the truth and need of our many warnings, Nevertheless, punishments of this class are still daily inflicted, and until some hard lessons have been taught the pedagogues who resort to this stupid mode of stimulating the dull intellect, there will be consequences of which the few that come to public knowledge are probably a small percentage. The practice of keeping children without their proper food, of locking them in dark closets, or even of placing them in solitary confinement in light rooms, cannot be defended, because they are injurious to body or mind. The imposition of tasks is a shortsighted policy, seeing that it makes learning a terror, whereas it ought to be a delight. Can no disciplinarian devise a suitable discipline for youth"? Until that discovery is made, it would be better to fall back on the old birch, properly and moderately applied. It made the flesh smart, but it broke no bones; and few, if any, of its so-called victims failed to profit by its occasional administration.