SPARING THE ROD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 154, 8 October 1910, Page 4

SPARING THE ROD.

We have lately been treated to an exposition of the exceedingly difficult task a school teacher has in performing the everyday duties of the profession. Such cases are very frequent in New Zealand, and most of them —quite apart from the one recently reported—have been victories for undisciplined youngsters, careless and "soft" parents, an<l stupid school committeemen. The utility of any school depends on its internal discipline. If .children do not with the consent of their parents conform to school discipline, they are a source of danger not only to a school but to the country at large. The habit of many parents in refusing to believe that their children are not immaculate in behaviour and that there is therefore no need for them to be punished outside the home is the chief reason why many school teachers allow lax discipline, for it is generally found that in any trouble arising between children, parents and teacher, committeemen are ranged against the teacher. With one or two notable exceptions, there has been no abuse of school teachers' powers in New Zealand. The position is a very extraordinary one. Few adults of to-day who by their protests advocate bad manners, bad habits and undiscipline in their children, came through their own schooldays without: punishment. There are few parents who at some time do not boast of the punishment t'hev received in their school days; few who do not admit that they deserved the punishment, and none that will own that if inflicted for a fail* reason the punishment did them good. In a country whose old people have pioneered and put in a particularly hard time it seems to have become almost a religion that children must be coddled and never corrected. The result of this is everywhere apparent. The average messenger boy bounces into a private office with his hat on, generally smokine. whistling, or making uncouth noises. He never apologises for rudeness, is quite unacquainted with the ordinary "please" and "thank you," and he generally throws the message or parcel down as if the recipient were some kind of animal. This rudeness is too common to be natural to an odd youngster here and there. It is the result of the pitiful system of undiscipline fomented by the parents of many school children and by interfering school committees. To take an illustration of the class of boy referred to above, any person in his calm moments will agree that if he had been soundly caned for every breach of rudeness, insolence, bad manners and idleness in his schooldays he would not carry insolence and ill-manners into business life. The pitiful part of it is that school teachers who are harassed by fear of losing their appointments into relaxing their discipline necessarily hand over the reins of government to the youngsters. A local citizen, commenting on such cases, mentioned that in his early days he had been caned for ill-behaviour by the teacher. He, together with another boy, ran away from school, the headmaster in chase. One boy reported to his father. Nowadays, the enraged father would probably have "raised Cain," and endeavored to wet the teacher removed with the help of a one-eyed committee. This oldtime parent, however, took his boy back to school and administered the rod himself dn the presence of the scholars. This was a little piece of discipline that the boy will remember to his eightieth birthday, if he has one. If the average New Zealand parent were told that his youngsters were so tender that they should be put in a glass case he would be annoyed, but the parent w.ho aids and abets his children in disobedience to teachers or any of their elders in authonty over them do not give themselves very good characters as the fathers and mothers of a strong manly or womanly race. It is an iniquity to ill-treat a child at any time, and the greatest ill-treat-ment that can be inflicted on any child is to allow it to go uncorrected for breaches of discipline and to permit it to dominate those who should control it.