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PUNISHMENT OF BOYS.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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404 The header and Saturday Analyst . [ May 26 , 1860 .
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these Downs ; in minutes , hours hence , when the telegraph has flashed the news to expectant multitudes ; in * every part of the country ! The winner has -passed through the same feverish excitement , and his is a delirium of jov , differing little in its moral influence from'this man ' s wild despair . Happy we who have only hazarded a few crowns in a sweepstake , or posted a few shillings with our fair friends in the barouche . We cannot look on without excitement—for what Englishman can witness a horse-race without experiencing a thrill of the most delightful emotion ? But we do not pale before those ghostly white figures , and our appetite for the pie and salad is in no way damaged , whether our favourite was up at the post or " nowhere . ' * hets ! Onltwo
Alas ! for the reputation of the sporting prop y hesitated about " Thormanby . " The great authority , " Mr . Bell , gave Wizard as the winner in the most emphatic type , thereby showing-, as the result has proved , that he is no wizard himself . The venerable Priam in heroic verse sang"' He wins / ' he wins / such is the cry I hear , The winner , ' Umpire , ' such he will appear . " Oh for Priam ' s prophetic ear ! " Vates " was quite delphic in his oracles , and gave a choice of four . " Argus , " probably contemplating a parallel to the Benicia B » y , " calculated" upon the American Umpire claiming the blue ribbon . " Touchstone ' also fixed his " fiat " upon Umpire ; and " Linkboy" threw the light of his oracular torch upon Wizard . The nearest hits were made by our non-professional contemporary , the Telegraph , and by the old sagacious Advertiser , whose oracles very confidently gave Thormanby . ' ¦ , ¦ ¦ ¦ , . ¦ ¦ Well , which is to win the next ^ Derby ? and what is Derby himself going to enter for in the political race P
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ever made to any wisdom or notions except their own , with vague crenernlities about the improvement of human nature , ' « ui ad pauca respiciunt de facili pronuntiaht . " Want of space , and want of space only , prevents us from showing in their own words . the opinions of many of the highest authorities on the subject ot punishment ; of jurists , as Pufjfbndorf ; of poets , as Shakspeare , Pope , Cowley , Ben Jonson , Bdtler ; of statesmen , us bir Richard Sackville ; of « ehooltr asters , n » Ascham and Arnold ; of Meini-schoolinasters , as Mimmn , Dr . Johnson , and Goldsmith ; with instances of the various discipline under which such men as Alcttin , Augustine , Luther , and Montaigne were brought up ; the balance of opinion-in the practical men beinjr , either directly or by the ( airest inference , in favour of corporal punishment ; though , as a treneral rule , clever men might be expected almost invariably to take the lenient side of the question , that is , if they judged only from their own easy running in the parhs of learning . dark and views
In ancient times there certainly were some strange on this subject ; bodily pain seems to have been viewed as the great stimulator and strengthener of memory . Benvencto Cellini s father gives him a knock-down blow that he might not forget that lie had seen a salamander ! Earlier still , when the order ot knighthood was conferred , a blow was imparted to the knight to make him remember his duty ; and when a charter was confirmed , a hearty slap was given to the witnesses to prevent obliviousness . John Gregory says , " It hath been a custom to whip children on Innocents' Day morning , that the memory of the murder of the Innocents might stick the closer . " What we call beating the parish bounds , was formerly simply beating the children round the bounds , that the ancient limits might not be forgotten . In his " origin of laws , " Spence says , "At livery and seisin , six of twelve boys were present , according to the value , whom the purchaser was to ' lash and pull by the ears , that they might the bettej remember if called to give evidence . "
All this making public use of private pain we as much disapprove of as of the vicarious sufferings of Edward VI . ' s and James I . s whipping boys , who smarted to save the sacred flesh of the young Tudob and Stuabt , who could only be industrious from delicacy and sympathy with the suflferer . All this is the crude and barbarous form of what is only irrational when used cruelly , excessively , and on wrong occasions . We have thought over the many objections to corporal punishment of all sorts and degrees—tliat it destroys shame by _ too frequently producing it ; we do not believe that either parents or boys , from our own experience , view it very keenly in thatiight ; nor is ife-Avise even in a schoolmaster either to look at it or represent it as a sput of dark opprobrium boys rarely think or talk of it as such amongst each other , and the benevolent five-shilling- uncle probably makes a joke about it as he administers the coin . It is represented as breaking the spirit ; this is not true , as our forefathers proved often enough ; they have feared the
master more than the enemy : — - " Ei terror de * gran guerrier , temea Del vecchio inerme un cenno un guardo eatrano , E quella destra , che poi vinsc Ettore , A la verga temuta , ivi a supporre . "—( Mariwo . ) ^ heHrutrhHtar ^ orporal ^ uiushmenM inent proper for incapacity ; it is for obstinacy , indolence , and wilful inattention ; it ought only to be viewed as a certain amount of bodily inconvenience , incurred by a certain amount of self-indulgence , of which evident perverseness , insolence , and carelessness are forms . No parent has a right to expect that un instructor who owes the duty of education to many , should waste his time , and that of the best boys in a class , in explaining and re-expluining to two or
three of the worst . In this respect some parents are most inconsiderate , willingly milking a man , whose intellect and timo are valuable , a mere slave to the caprices of their children . We knowother punishments are in use ; fresh punishment tasks , which are just as likely to be resisted us the original lesson , or wearisome impositions , which consume in mechanical drudgery what ought to be allowed for health and play ; sometimes the dreary monotony of being shut up , leaving time for brooding , and every bad passion ; long lectures , of . which sonio Uuls will absorb any quantity , and delight iu the time thus abstracted from the general work ,., nn exultation in which their sciioollb . lows share . Some starve tho
refractory , which is , of course , a bodily infliction much mure irrational than that suggested by Solomon , and thoao of his school . There will , of course , be considerable excitement about this last terrible case , and moat justly , for it gives a sad lesson ; still wo question whether even this either will or ought to put a stop to moderate and rational corporal punishment in schools . Ziet us close , then , with a few hints to school musters;—punish the young whilst comparatively gentle punishment will do , and if you do this temperately ami regularly , you will have little need to punish at an ajre when to be eflletivo a punishment must bo severe . Set lessons which you are quite sure are within the power of your pupils .
Bepuuso a high-spirited boy will not ninchr do nottancy that he is not sufficiently punished ; do not establish u contest betwoun your determination mid iiin obstinncy , for you may be beaton , uud you are suro to bo crnel ; give a p « niahm , ent which ia reasonable , mid dismiss the case , ami , if possible , commence with your pupil the next day us if nothing hud- happened . If the boy is incurable , dismiss him . If you hvo conscious of a bad tetnper , neck some ' other line of life , for you are not fit to be a' schoolmaster ; mid if you' aro riot amenable to your conscience , you may become , liko Mr . Hopton , nmennble to your country . There aw , wo are awwro , Home Jew largtj schools in which' punishment of 11 corporal kind is altogether dispensed with ; in such schools there are always enough williug » ud
Punishment Of Boys.
PUNISHMENT OF BOYS .
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E VERY two or three years the public is horrified and the scholastic profession scandalised by some flagrant case of excessive corporal chastisement . One of these has recently occurred , the victim a youth named CawcelloR , his death attributed to the effect of blovv's received from a JVtr . Hopton , schoolmaster , at Eas % bourne . The result of a seven hours' investigation was , that the master was committed for manslaughter , bail beiug accepted , himself in ^ BIOOO , and ^ two sureties in £ 500 each . There lias rarely been a committal waich has given us more satisfaction first , on the broad ground of humanity , and very especially for the sake-bottrbf parents arid-the scholastic profession . We . are not going into the details of this" particular case , but we shall confine ourselves to a few remarks on the subject generally , about which there is much violent fueling , of course irrational in proportion to the general ignorance of the grade of those who discuss it;—in other-words , those most furious in the condemnation of corporal punishment altogether , are not , as a general rule , persons on whose judgment we should depend in other matters . An intelligent , kind , and thoroughly educated father of a boy at Kugby , or at Eton , would probably never be heard declaiming against corporal punish-TOeTrtHn ~ Tril ~ degree ^~« nd- ' -Tn ^^ hearty and indignant disapproval as the ignorant and passionate father of a boy who has been whipped at a fourth-class school . To these latter we have little to say ; but as education is extending and is becoming every day more and more a subject of counsel and reflection , and as codes of educational , as well as other laws , are worth nothing without their sanctions and penalties , it is worth while to address a few words to intelligent men , and ' we suspect there are few of them w ho would expel unreservedly corporal castigation of every kind from our codes and places of instruction . Our own belief in its occasional necessity or expediency makes us the more glad that all approaches to its abuse should bo visited on the guilty head with the most unmitigated severity . People are quite wrong who speak ot the corporal punishment of children and schoolboys as an exploded barbarism at its last gasp , not worth an argument , and coining under the same category with the whipping of soldiers and sailors . The nystern of child-correction ia not exploded , nor is it likely to bo , evou in consequence of the occasional recurrence of such cases us that which has led to the present reinurks . It has been , and will be moderated , with the advance of refinement and intelligence . Sinco tho dead set made against it , of which the most intelligent schoolmaster—a man who knew all the ins and outs of liberalism , and one of the most beloved of the present century—us « d to complain , as tho result of a political rather than a parental feeling , this violent fueling on the subject of corporal punishment has been almost dying away , revived but occasionally , by some such abuse as that which now startles us . Whatever improvements may tuko place , us time runs on , in tho virile and mature intelligence , making the man less and less amenable to bodily suffering us inflicted by others , and more and mtro amenable to insti-uction and g-ciulonessi , we are quite sure of theiionarrivulof n goldon age , either now or hereafter , in which child and boy nature will be without its inherent infirmities and imperfections , the guidance mid correction of which , in some way or , other , will be tho eternul tank of suceeasive generations of parents and instructors . In this point it is astonishing * how little we lmvo gained upon our ancestor * , ut any rate upon the intelligent men and weighty writers of the last two or three contnrif s . There is scarcely an opinion which has been expressed on the subject during the lust twenty years which is not an echo of what has been said before , by those who have left records of their study of human nature ; though by boy-phUunthropists Very little reference is , we have observed ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 26, 1860, page 494, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2349/page/10/
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