learning. When the children have reached this point it is no longer so hard with them or the schoolmaster. When all who stand with me in this calling consider rightly how dear such young souls are in the eyes of God, and that we must give an account of our housekeeping, although they may have the power to punish, they will much rather work with me to bring the young into such a state that they will do willingly out of love what before they had to be driven to with the rod. Then the words Thou shalt and must, and the words I follow with pleasure will have a different tone. At the sound of the last the schoolmaster will use no rods and they will be more pleasant to hear and easier to answer. It is said, Ps. ex, 3, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of holiness.” What is done willingly, in bodily and spiritual work, needs no force and driving. It is further said, Ps. xxxii, 8, 9, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle.” From this it can be seen that those who will be instructed and guided by the eye have no need of bit and bridle. This difference can be seen in unreasoning beasts. One wagoner does not use half as hard shouts, scourges and blows as another, and yet drives as hard or even harder over mountain and valley, and when the work is done the willing horses and the wagoner have had it the easier. The horses have felt less blows and it has not been necessary for the wagoner to drive by punishment. They have done willingly what others must have done through severity.[1]
- ↑
All of this is the more admirable because in such strong
contrast with the ordinary methods of that period, both among English
and Germans. About the same time the father of Nathaniel Greene,
who was a Quaker preacher, felt that duty required him to flog his
son with a horsewhip.
“ Students” he said “like horses on the road, Must be well lashed before they take the load; They may be willing for a time to run, But you must whip them, ere the work be done.” Crabbe's Schoolmaster. Cooper's History of the Rod, pp. 429-457, says “Shrewsbury school, about the beginning of the present century, was presided over by a great flogger in the person of Dr. Butler.” “Dr. Parr * * had a firm belief in the utility of the birch. At his school in Norwich, there was usually a flogging levee before the classes were dismissed. His rod maker was a man who had been sentenced to be hanged.”
“Flogging went on briskly at Rugby in Dr. James' time, about 1780, and there was in addition plenty of caning on hand.” Charles Lamb says “I have been called out of my bed and waked for the purpose in the coldest winter nights, and this not once but night after night, in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong.” In Scotland we are told, “The dull boys were birched for their own demerits and the bright lads suffered for the deficiencies of their fellows.”
The same authority, Cooper, says that in England at the close of the last century, “I have seen marriageable girls flogged for breaches of discipline, before all their school fellows, the necessary portions of their dress being removed.”
