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it to lie in the constant reference of moral questions to higher considerations than those of expediency and of results to the inward sense of right and of moral fitness, to the sentiment of honour "which feels," as Burke finely says, "a stain like a wound," to a perception of the beauty of holiness, to the desire to do what our heavenly Father meant us to do and to be what he fitted us to be, whether happiness and prosperity come of it or not.

And as you succeed in cultivating the sentiment of The best honour and the habit of referring school merits and kinds of punishoffences to the standard of what is in itself right and ment. fitting, and worthy of your scholar's best self, it will come to pass that your most effective punishments— indeed almost your only punishments, will consist in the loss of honour. Bad marks, a low place in the class, the withholding of office and responsibility, and of all signs of esteem and confidence ;-these after all fulfil in the best way, the two most important conditions of all right punishment. For there is nothing arbitrary or capricious about them, since they are the natural and appropriate consequences of the faults to which they pertain. And at the same time they are eminently reformatory; for they indicate clearly the way to repentance and improvement. So my counsel to all schoolmasters is: Look in this direction for the punishments which you may lawfully and wisely use: and be dissatisfied with yourself and with your own plan of discipline so long as you find it needful to employ any others.

Yet we must not omit a brief reference to corporal Corporal punishment, the ultima ratio of the puzzled and baffled punishschoolmaster when all other means fail.

Shall we begin

by denouncing it altogether? I think not. The punishment of the body for certain offences is nature's way of discipline, and it is not necessarily degrading to young

ment.

children, nor unsuited to the imperfect state of their mental and moral development. Arnold, though I suspect that his views on this subject would have altered in later years, was not wholly wrong when he vindicated flogging in certain extreme cases. "The proud notion of independence and dignity which revolts at the idea of personal chastisement is not reasonable and is certainly not Christian," he said. After all it is sin which degrades and not the punishment of it. And if there be certain forms of vice which can be cured more readily by the infliction of such chastisement than by any other means, the chastisement will need no other vindication. And yet while allowing full weight to this view of the case, I am convinced that corporal punishment is almost wholly unnecessary, that it does more harm than good, and that in just the proportion in which teachers understand their business they will learn to dispense with it. In boarding schools it seems to me wholly indefensible; for there, where the whole discipline of the life and the control of leisure is in the teachers' hands, there are many other ways open to him of imposing penalties. And there is scarcely less necessity for it in day schools. The largest and one of the best day schools I ever examined, where the whole tone of the discipline is singularly high, manly, and cheerful, has never once during its whole history had a case of corporal punishment. But the master, when I was reporting on the school, begged me not to mention this fact. "I do not mean to use it," he said, “but I do not want it to be in the power of the public or the parents to say I am precluded from using it. Every boy here knows that it is within my discretion, and that if a very grave or exceptional fault occurred I might exercise that discretion." I believe that to be the true attitude for all teachers to assume. They should not have their dis

How to dispense with punishments.

123

cretion narrowed by any outward law, but they should impose a severe law on themselves. And in carrying it out I venture to make two or three suggestions only:

(1) Never inflict corporal chastisement for intellectual faults; for stupidity or ignorance. Reserve it exclusively for vices, for something morally degrading. (2) Never inflict it while under the influence of heat or passion. (3) Never permit an assistant or an elder scholar to inflict it in any circumstances. (4) Do not let any instrument of punishment be included as part of the school furniture, and as an object of familiar sight, or flourished about as a symbol of authority. (5) Do not strike with the hand.

On this whole subject of the mode and manner of inflicting punishment you will find some useful hints in Jeremy Bentham's Chrestomathia, which I advise every teacher to read.

But we return finally to this consideration. The How to great triumph of school discipline is to do without dispense with punpunishments altogether. And to this end it is essential ishments. that we should watch those forms of offence which occur oftenest, and see if by some better arrangements of our own, temptation to wrong may be diminished and offences prevented. If your government is felt to be based on high principles, to be vigilant and entirely just, to be strict without being severe, to have no element of caprice or fitfulness in it; if the public opinion of the school is so formed, that a scholar is unpopular who does wrong, you will find not only that all the more degrading forms of personal chastisement are unnecessary, but that the need of punishment in any form will steadily disappear.

V. LEARNING AND REMEMBERING.

Practical

THERE is no one department of educational work in rules must which the difference between skilled and unskilled teach

be ulti

mately de- ing is so manifest as in the view which is taken of the pendent on philosophy. faculty of memory, the mode of training it, and the uses to which different teachers seek to put it. We are here at the meeting point of practice and of speculative psychology; and it is impossible for you or me to arrive at entirely right rules of action in reference to this subject unless our attention is also directed to the nature of the intellectual process which we call remembering, and to the laws which determine its action. I shall however abstain from encroaching on the domain of my successor here, whose duty it will be to expound to you the philosophy of memory. But it may be well to say that this line of enquiry will prove very fruitful, and that some study of what Locke, Reid, Dr Thomas Brown and Professor Bain have said on the laws of association; of what Dr Carpenter and Dr Maudsley have said respecting the physical basis of memory; and of the wise and practical distinction which Mr Latham in his book on Examinations has drawn between what he calls respectively the "portative," the "analytical," the "assimilative," and the

The law of mental suggestion.

125

"index" memory would be of great value in forming your

own judgment upon it.

For my present purpose it must suffice to mention The law one or two very simple truths as a basis for the few of mental suggestion. practical rules which we hope to arrive at on this important matter. By a wonderful process, which is sometimes called mental suggestion or association, we find that every thought and action in our life links itself with some other thought or action. No piece of mental or spiritual experience is thoroughly isolated. No act, even of sensible perception, takes place without associating itself with some previous thought, or suggesting a new one. When we come to analyse these phænomena we find that there are, roughly distinguishable, two classes of associations. We may, when we are told of a fact, think also of the reason or consequence of that fact; and two distinct ideas may come before our minds together, because we perceive the logical nexus which unites them. Thus the thought of a good vintage in France suggests to me that claret may be cheaper; the history of Caxton and the early printers may make me think of the revival of learning; heavy war expenditure suggests national debt; bad government suggests revolution. In like manner a particular problem in Euclid reminds me of the axioms and postulates on which its solution depends; and a solecism in speech makes me think of the grammatical rule which has been violated. In all these cases the character of the associations which are formed and the ease with which they may hereafter be recalled together, depend on the degree in which the judgment and the reflective power have been cultivated on the subjects to which they relate.

But besides these logical and natural associations as we may call them, there are many others which are purely

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