We publish elsewhere an extract from the Times on the dangers to civilisation involved in the continuance of corporal punishment in our schools. The resort to violence in setting children right must be admitted on all hands to be a confession of failure on the teacher’s part in his attempt at reform with other and better methods of chastisement. No doubt it serves to some as a convenient, though not always an effective short-cut in the classroom to get over some difficulty, save prestige or establish discipline. In some cases, it may be, according to a few, the only way to avert dangerous mischief or persistent disobedience. But the other and more important fact cannot be ignored that the remedy is of a temporary and invariably of a superficial nature. It leaves the root cause of the trouble, which is most psychological and organic in the pupil’s nature, unaltered and achieves its effects by brutal intimidation and physical force. Added to this ultimate futility is the moral degeneracy engendered in the impressionable mind of children by the apparent triumph of violence and the consequent necessity therefore in human relations.
