productive of happiness to the individual himself and his environment.
So the child learns to love the good. By teaching the child that
punishment is a consequence drawn upon oneself he learns to avoid the
cause of punishment.
Despite all the new talk of individuality the greatest mistake in
training children is still that of treating the "child" as an abstract
conception, as an inorganic or personal material to be formed and
transformed by the hands of those who are educating him. He is beaten,
and it is thought that the whole effect of the blow stops at the moment
when the child is prevented from being bad. He has, it is thought, a
powerful reminder against future bad behaviour. People no not suspect
that this violent interference in the physical and psychical life of
the child may have lifelong effects. As far back as forty years ago,
a writer showed that corporal punishment had the most powerful somatic
stimulative effects. The flagellation of the Middle Ages is known to
have had such results; and if I could publish what I have heard from
adults as to the effect of corporal punishment on them, or what I have
observed in children, this alone would be decisive in doing away with
such punishment in its crudest form. It very deeply influences the
personal modesty of the child. This should be preserved above everything
as the main factor in the development of the feeling of purity. The
father who punishes his daughter in this way deserves to see her some
day a "fallen woman." He injures her instinctive feeling of the sanctity
of her body, an instinct which even in the case of a small child can
be passionately profound. Only when every infringement of sanctity
(forcible caressing is as bad as a blow) evokes an energetic,
instinctive repulsion, is the nature of the child proud and pure.
Children who strike back when they are punished have the most promising
characters of all.
Numerous are the cases in which bodily punishment can occasion
irremediable damage, not suspected by the person who administers it,
though he may triumphantly declare how the punishment in the specific
case has helped. Most adults feel free to tell how a whipping has
injured them in one way or another, but when they take up the training
of their own children they depend on the effect of such chastisement.
What burning bitterness and desire for vengeance, what canine fawning
flattery, does not corporal punishment call forth. It makes the lazy
lazier, the obstinate more obstinate, the hard, harder. It strengthens
those two emotions, the root of almost all evil in the world, hatred and
fear. And as long as blows are made synonymous with education, both of
these emotions will keep their mastery over men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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