The danger of an excessive use of powers of administering corporal
punishment, and more especially the danger of awakening the sexuality of
children prematurely and with perverse associations, may be minimised by
the proper treatment of schoolmasters. We must not treat our
schoolmasters in such a way that behind them they always feel the
presence of the inspector, compelling them to force the pupils through
the prescribed, but excessive tasks. Nor must the schoolmaster's own
work be excessive, for nervous overstrain will very readily lead to
outbreaks of violence. It seems also desirable that the right of
administering corporal punishment should not be entrusted to masters who
are still quite young, for a certain experience is needed to guide them
to a reasonable moderation. What I have said of schoolmasters applies,
_mutatis mutandis_, to schoolmistresses and governesses. There are many
reasons for the belief that the danger that the right to inflict
corporal punishment may be utilised to procure erotic excitement for the
person exercising that right, is considerably greater in women than it
is in men. Even if we take no notice of erotic literature, in which
sadism in women manifested by the mishandling of children is so frequent
a _motif_, we shall find quite a number of experiences of actual life
which compel us to admit the frequency of such perverse sensibilities in
women. Among various records bearing upon this matter, I may remind
readers of those of the upper class women of ancient Rome, and of the
horrible punishments they inflicted upon their female slaves; and also
of American women of the slave-owning class, in the South before the
war, who sometimes flogged young male slaves in the most terrible way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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