FLOGGING IN SMALL SCHOOLS.
-Socf=v is in a state of transition and doubt as to corporal punishment, and individuals suffer for its inconsistencies. Mr. Michael Donovan, a schoolmaster in St. Aloysius Catholic School at Somers Town, has been committed for trial from Clerkenwell Police-office, on a charge of cruelly beating James Cavanagh, a little boy nine years of age. According to the accusation, the boy was beaten black and blue with a heavy leathern strap. Mr. Donovan denied the cruelty ; and his lawyer pleaded that he had inflicted no severer punishment than is used in the schools of Westminster and St. Paul's. Undoubtedly, it was not shown that he had done worse than Busby or Bowyer have done, and have been praised for doing, as the proper way to "make good scholars." However, society has begun to question the necessity or policy of flaying children to make them good ; and it has entered upon a kind of disjointed crusade against floggers, begin- ning with the smaller and more helpless class. Mr. Donovan was at once suspended from his situation : he is to be tried; and even if acquitted, he may be injured for life in his prospects, per- haps ruined. "The example" may be useful ; but its influence will be im- perfect and transitory. Few men in the act of flogging think that they are needlessly or excessively severe : on the contrary, they usually hold that they are performing a stern duty with consum- mate judgment, and that such an example by no means applies to them. The law, says Mr. Greenwood, the Magistrate, allows the master to use only "such reasonable degree of punishments as parents use " : Mr. Donovan, who belongs to the flogging section of society, thought that his punishment was reasonable ; Mr. Greenwood, who disapproves of all corporal punishment, thought it unreasonable; and the schoolmaster was sent for trial. But what is the particular "reasonable degree" of punishment used by parents ? Do they not use all degrees, from the maddest to none at all ? Does not the standard of reasonableness, if admitted at all, vary with every person and circumstance? The law imposes on the schoolmasters the obligation of an impracticable discretion. Before that was done, the absolute necessity of corporal punish- ment should have been proved ; which it never has been : it has been plentifully assumed, and justified by " experience,"—ex- perience, namely, all on one side, and consisting altogether of the very practice questioned ; for the experience on the other side was until recently but small. And when society begins to doubt the wisdom of a custom which it has itself taught, it would do better to revoke its law than to single out the more helpless of those who become entangled in the old common mistake. Let it settle what is the wise principle in the correction of children— whether little children or those of a larger growth. We suspect not only that all corporal punishMent is a very 'clumsy method of attempting to make up for past neglect on the part of the teacher, but that all retributive punishment is bad. Its moral meaning is not a wholesome one : it establishes a hostile relation between the teacher and the taught ; justifies violence, because making use of it in one shape ; confesses that revenge may be sanctified by its end; and opens the door to a host of equivocal constructions, besides the broad fact that it operates by dint of exasperating instead of controlling the passions, and some of the poorest passions too. Perhaps the proper distinction lies in the bearing of correction—not on a past act that cannot be recalled, but on future acts that come within the scope of choice: do not tell the trespasser that you inflict hurt upon him for what cannot be amended, but constrain him to abstain from future evil. That constraint may be imperative without being violent ; and if ap- plied betimes, it must obviate all question of greater force. The saying of Solomon, "He that spareth the rod hateth the child," has misled the superficial thinkers as much as anything. If we take it literally, we do the royal philosopher gross injustice, be- cause we suppose him to be incapable of entertaining an intellec- tual idea in itself higher than a form of expression current at his time. In the maxim, "rod" stands for the proper discipline of the child : we have outgrown the rod ; but if we indolently or laxly neglect and delay due s according to that method which we have substituted for the rod, we "hate the child." Let the child, from the earliest days, be com- pelled to behave rightly, and that habit which is stronger than nature will supersede all harsher constraints. The first error in any direction is usually the effect of inexperience or ignorance ; the second is the effect of success : but an adverse ex- perience encountered from the first soon bends the will to the proper rule for nothing so mortifies volition as uniform frustra- tion. Vigilance perseverance, and that mild judgment which makes the constraint rather felt than ostentatiously or pro- vokingly exhibited, are needed for this method of discipline— that is to say, it needs the parental qualities. But every teacher is in loco parentis. It is true, that the schoolmaster has to deal with confirmed bad habits sprung up before his influence came into play : his task is harder than that of the parent who exer- cises forethought ; but the object is the same, and to attain equal success the means should be similar.
In this matter society might do much by setting an example. The criminals of the country are inveterate bad pupils, usually most ill-taught; for the "reading and writin5" of criminal statis- tics means nothing at all. The system of discipline for maturer trespassers should be revised ; the sanction of school-flogging should be taken out of the statute-book ; aristocratic schools Should drop lazy and rude modes of keeping order; and take the
trouble to be more efficient and judicious ; methods of enforcing discipline should form a primary part of the inquiries and instruc- tions of state " model" schools or schools patronized by the state; and then charity-school-masters might be held accountable for
undue severities. . .
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