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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4454, 29 June 1875, Page 2

We have lately had a good deal of nonsense talked and written in reference to the question of corporal punishment in schools. Perhaps the advocates of the " moral suasion" system will read the following from a recent number of the Melbourne Aryus, as it seems to point conclusively to an error in their conclusions:— " The sucking philanthropists of Victoria, who have as much horror of a supple birch as James I. of happy memory had of a naked sword, and who hold that the cuticle and the conscience are so inextricably related that a smart cut on the former leaves a scar on the latter, should read the thirty-second annual report of the Board of Education for the city of New York. They applauded Mr. Wilberforce Stephen's ill-judged missive to the State teachers on corporal punishment, and invariably throw an old woman's jegis over a larrikin when his skin is threatened with a whip. It would appear that they have congeners m New York who gushed over the tender spots left by the schoolmaster's birch, and whose sentimental theory of the inviolability of the human surface prevailed. We are not informed whether the stick of hickory was exchanged for a stick of sugar-candy ; if not, it was probably because the adoption of the latter would cost philanthropic money, whereas the abolition of the former only cost a few philanthropic tears. According to the doctrines preached by the coddlers of youthful Victorian scamps, who alternately grace the schoolroom and the street, the New York gamins, who, since the beginning of the present year, have all been compelled to attend the public schools, ought to be models of all the virtues. They cannot under the circumstances kiss the rod, so it may be supposed they, kiss their slates and lessonbooks, and conduct themselves as good little boys, who know that their teachers love them far too well to thrash them. We grieve to hurt the feelings of the friends for whose information we write, and regret exceedingly to upset so beautiful a theory ; but truth compels us to state that the anti-birch reformers of New York have secured an opposite result. The city superintendent of the school complains that there is " a large class of vicious boys whom the public schools do not and cannot restrain, and yet who are permitted to pursue their lawless career from school to school until they are pronounced " incorrigible," and then the doors of all schools are closed against them, after which they roam the streets until they too pften find themselves in prison.' This is one side of the result of the abolition of corporal punishment, which was effected several years ago. The other side is even more serious, and is° thus put :—' The discipline in the_ boys' schools has seriously deteriorated, and in consequence of the absorption of an unprecedentedly large part of their time and energy in simply maintaining order, hundreds of _ our experienced teachers, whose skill as principals or as class teachers has been again and again demonstrated, are no longer able to secure results equal in quality and quantity to those of past years. The vital element of every true educational system, the discipline of, the will by means of reasonable and effective restraint, is in many instances disappearing or is virtually resolving itself into an appeal of the teacher who is in the right to the forbearance of the pupil who is in the' wronff." The strain upon the nervous systems of the teachers is further said to be visibly impairing their health and strength, and driving them into the use of injudicious modes of enforcing obedience. This is serious enough, and has had its due effect; for all. the leading school officials, and also a committee appointed specially to investigate the matter, have reported unanimously in favor of tho restoration of corporal punishment. The board, however, having probably a majority of tender-hearted and birch-abhorring creatures on it, has not yet persuaded itself to adopt this salutary advice, and in the meantime teachers are fairly at their wits' end to know what to do with persistently disobedient and disorderly pupils."