attention to their inevitable shortcomings, nor shall we attempt to conceal, under a gloss of eulogy, the many dangers, both intellectual and moral, which may assail those who are brought up from childhood under the shadow of their ancient walls. F. W. FARRAR.

VIII. ON SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

NOTWITHSTANDING all that has been so ably and earnestly written on the subject of discipline, the question of school punishment must still be considered as open for further discussion. There are wide differences of opinion as to the propriety of nearly all the minor forms of it in common use; and, in particular, as the public and the teaching profession have been more than once of late painfully reminded, the great problem of corporal punishment is pressing urgently for a solution more definite than that which has hitherto passed current. Exceptional cases apart, it is impossible to charge the public with having shown anything like dogmatism or intolerance on this subject. Recognising the importance of the teacher's office, they have, with a forbearance which it were ungrateful not to acknowledge, given full latitude to his discretion, and have not cared to scrutinize too closely cases in which scrutiny might have been deemed almost a duty. The results of this attitude have been, on the whole, satisfactory. The more humane and enlightened views of discipline which now prevail among teachers, could not have diffused themselves more rapidly under any other circumstances, we may say, not so rapidly; and it is undoubtedly better that improvement should be grounded on the convictions of the profession itself, than imposed on it from without. The elementary teacher, as a member of society, has shared in the advance which society itself has made in its views of all questions relating to life and upbringing; whilst, as a professional man, he has been led to reflect more on the resources of his own art. Much has been done; much-though, as we think, less-remains to be done; and we are persuaded that what is required is being attempted, and will, ere long, be accomplished.

All writers on education agree that the best punishment of a fault is the natural inconvenience which results from it; e.g., that falsehood should lead to a distrust of the offender's word, coarseness to a withdrawal from his society, and unpunctuality to the loss of some enjoyment fixed for a particular time, or to the enforced performance at leisure hours of the work which may have been evaded. Hence in family education, where the educator is in circumstances to choose what is absolutely the best for individual pupils, when punishment is resorted to at all, it is for the most part of this kind. The judicious teacher of a school will employ it as far as he can; but to rely on it entirely would be virtually to let many faults go unpunished. From the constitution of the school, he must use expedients for punishment

on whose operation he can count with certainty, yet without sacrificing to offenders that precious time which should be given to the work of instruction. Our concern at present, then, is, not with what may be called the natural punishment of faults, though that is a matter deserving of constant reflection from every teacher, but, mainly at least, with the artificial penalties which time has long sanctioned, and for which no adequate substitute has yet been suggested.

The punishments commonly relied on in elementary schools are four-reproof, impositions, corporal punishment, and expulsion.

Reproof by the teacher suggests itself as the punishment to be first resorted to for faults, both of school-work and of general conduct, which are free from any special aggravation. It may be administered in private or in public at the teacher's discretion, and in various degrees of severity, from the simple admonition up to the energetic condemnation uttered before the whole school, which shall carry with it the entire weight of the school opinion against the culprit. Where the teacher has gained an ascendency over his pupils, and administers reproof in a judicious spirit and with judicious graduation, this punishment will suffice as the ordinary means of correction for school faults.

The imposition of an exercise to be performed during the pupil's leisure is a form of punishment applicable to offences incident to class-work, viz., lateness, inattention, and want of preparation. In a good school these faults will be comparatively small in amount, for the pupil will have no motive to commit them, but the reverse. They are all mainly traceable to want of interest in the school work, which it is for the teacher to remedy rather than the pupil. Where the organization is judicious and the instruction intelligent, it will be found that a comparatively small margin remains for such faults; and the teacher should be able gradually to make this smaller as he advances in experience and skill. Where they are fairly chargeable upon the pupil, as, of course, they often are, they should be checked in the first instance by reproof, and the two last-mentioned by the loss of place in the class (when place-taking is practised) which they naturally entail; if these fail of effect, the teacher may fairly require the pupil to make good at his leisure time the lesson he has lost or neglected, or, where that is not practicable, to perform an equivalent amount of work in another form. This penalty is much objected to, on the ground that ordinary school work should not be prescribed as punishment. But is such an exercise ordinary school work? The stimulants of intelligence and curiosity are entirely wanting; the mere mechanical occupation remains. It seems to us to differ from school work very much as the labour of the tread-mill differs from free and spontaneous physical exercise. The principle of the penalty is just, and the penalty itself, if only inflicted with calm and passionless pertinacity, is of a nature which can hardly fail to secure its end. The deprivation of playtime is an intolerable burden; nor is the sacrifice compensated by any public credit resulting from the performance of the exercise prescribed.

The punishments which have been mentioned should serve the purposes of correction in the general case; but there will come emer

gencies in the life of every school, in which, if the teacher's authority is to be maintained at all, recourse must be had to severer measures. Corporal punishment or expulsion must be at hand as an ultimum supplicium. The difficulty is to ascertain their relative positions and their respective limits. He who denounces corporal punishment easily avoids the necessity of using it, by dismissing any pupil who appears insensible to the motives which he conceives himself at liberty to present. But the problem of punishment is not thereby solved; for we wish to know, not whether corporal chastisement can be dispensed with in this way, but whether a good discipline ought to dispense with it for such an alternative. He who resorts to it looks upon expulsion as a far more serious penalty, and on a frequent recourse to that step as attended with evils greater than any that are involved in corporal punishment; and he feels it incumbent on him to try the remedial power of this corrective, before publicly branding a pupil as one who is unworthy to remain in the society of his fellows.

The first question to be answered with respect to the employment of corporal punishment in school is one of right,-Is the teacher entitled to use it in any circumstances? The association of bodily pain with wrong-doing, so far from being unnatural as a means of discipline, is manifestly in analogy with the mode in which nature herself deals with children while they are acquiring their first knowledge. But with whom rests the responsibility of making this association? It would be preposterous to maintain that any one who has the oversight of a child is free to resort to it at his pleasure; the rights of tender childhood must be stringently guarded. The answer is clear. The parent who is responsible for the existence and upbringing of the child, is responsible also for the discipline employed to forward his education. Nature has given him the strength of affection which is required to make the child's happiness his supreme consideration, and has thus placed the responsibility in safe hands. But this natural right of discipline does by no means belong to the teacher in virtue of his office. The parent alone has received it, and it is for the parent to determine whether he shall delegate it or not. The question as to the teacher's right, therefore, resolves itself into this, whether the parent has delegated it to him at the same time that he delegated the duty of instruction. In delegating the latter he does not necessarily delegate the former: in some countries he has not done so. In this country, without doubt, he has. Society has sanctioned the teacher's use of corporal punishment. And individual members of society are not entitled, against the general voice, to impose restrictions on the teacher of a common school; they may propose, but he is free to decline. The right of this punishment being thus delegated by society to the teacher, he is amenable to public opinion for the use he makes of it; and he cannot successfully plead the dictates of his own conscience against the convictions of the public conscience.

On the question of the expediency of using corporal punishment in the common school, whilst we are not prepared to deny that its action will be found salutary in certain cases, we hold that in a good system of

discipline it will be altogether a rare and exceptional resort. We may remark at this point, that, in much that has been written on the opposite sides of this question, it has seemed to us that there would be found less difference in the practice of the disputants than their argumentation would lead us to suppose. We can see the difference between the position of him who would interdict the use of all chastisement whatsoever, and of him who works his discipline through its instrumentality; but it is less easy to discern the practical difference between those who adopt intermediate positions between these extremes. One maintains strongly the inexpediency of chastisement, but allows of some exceptions; another maintains strongly its expediency, but intends it to be confined to exceptional cases. To what purpose is an argument between the two, when they are practically in agreement? it is as likely to perplex as to edify. It may interest many of our readers to recall the fact, that the present question was keenly canvassed at the time when the only educational journal of which this country has had to boast (we trust the opprobrium will shortly be removed) was finishing its course, now a quarter of a century ago,* and that it was argued in the concluding numbers in a very able and interesting manner. But a careful perusal of these articles leaves on our mind the impression of a disputation as much as of a discussion. We think it necessary, then, to lay down our position clearly, that in maintaining the expediency of exceptional resort to chastisement, we may not be charged with advocating a system of government by blows.

Before resorting to corporal punishment, we should expect the teacher to use all the educative influences which are at his disposal. Let the general work be made interesting, by appealing to the pupil's intelligence and engaging his activity. Then, let the teacher deal with him generously; regulate exactions by the power of performance; endeavour to estimate his motives correctly; manifest a desire to have the pupil on pleasant terms with himself, rather than to catch at his failings, and find in them opportunity for censure; appeal to his better feelings to the utmost extent that he can, and rely on them to the utmost extent that he dare; concern himself with his general welfare and happiness; and, when difficulties arise, deal with him openly, justly, and resolutely. He may thus hope to establish for himself a strong personal ascendency over his pupils, which will make itself felt to the furthest limits of their duty; and in his school a healthy public opinion, which will dispose all to be guided by him, to regard not only his regulations, but his wishes, as their law, to covet his approbation as their highest happiness, and to shrink from his censure as the source of their greatest uneasiness. If, in addition to all this, he set before them a good and consistent example, he has in operation a series of educative influences which will, in the general case, keep the moral machinery of the school in sound and vigorous operation, and which will keep punishment in the subordinate place which belongs in education to corrective stimulants, as the remedy for exceptional or abnormal acts and dispositions. When he has done all this, the minor

The Quarterly Journal of Education.

penalties still stand between him and chastisement. Let him not make up his mind, as a matter of course, to the use of chastisement, because thousands before and around him have used it; but let him act on the conviction that other means of influence and restraint are open to him, which, as many have found sufficient for their purpose, he may find sufficient for his. Let him aim at prudence, patience, firmness, and dignity in administering these: prudence to adapt them in kind and degree to the various offences he has to check; patience and selfcontrol to restrain the passion of the moment, and to exhaust the influence of the minor penalties his law allows him, remembering that discipline attains its ends by the certainty of reasonable penalties, and not by harsh and sudden strokes; firmness to disregard the promptings of partiality on the one hand, and of caprice and humour on the other; and dignity which shall banish from the judgment-seat everything like a flippant and jesting spirit in the serious work of discipline.

Supposing the master to act thus prudently in general discipline, will there still remain any necessity for using chastisement at all? We think there will with boys of exceptional character and disposition. Will the master necessarily forfeit the respect and goodwill of his pupils by having recourse to it? Neither necessarily nor probably so: we think it more reasonable to suppose that the character he has established for himself will sanction the punishment in the eyes of the school, and even of the offender himself, rather than that the punishment will destroy the character which he has established on so good a foundation. Is such a punishment degrading to the pupil? Degrading certainly, in so far as it must be accompanied by a deep sense of shame at having deserved it from a master who acts towards his pupils in so good a spirit of discipline; but not degrading in the sense in which it is so to the adult, who, even when deserving punishment of some sort, feels that physical coercion is an unworthy form of it to be applied to a rational being of matured understanding, and who is therefore either broken in spirit by it or driven to desperation. We are not to speak of the child or the youth, still in the sensuous stage of his being, as if he had the self-consciousness and reflection of a man.

It is generally conceded, where corporal punishment is used at all, that it should be used for the correction of offences against morality. And certainly falsehood, dishonesty, impurity of speech, cruelty, and the like, meet their deserts when subjected to the strong check which it involves. Only we assume that there is a clear understanding between the teachers and the pupils as to the features of temper and conduct to which the penalty is attached. Where there is no law, there is no transgression; justice requires, therefore, that the law be clearly promulgated, whether in the course of general moral instruction, or in the form of specific and intelligible enactment, before violation of the law is punishable. There is the greater necessity for this, considering that in dealing with such offences the passage is abrupt from minor punishment to severer: there is here no medium between censure and chastisement, a penalty of the nature of an impo