PUNISHMENT
In former days, and until very recently, the punishment of children,
both boys and girls, was taken as a matter of course, and was
universally regarded as indispensable in education. We have seen in an
earlier chapter what Dr. Arnold thought about flogging, and his views
were, at the time, exceptionally humane. Rousseau is associated with
the theory of leaving things to nature, yet in “Emile” he occasionally
advocates quite severe punishments. The conventional view, a hundred
years ago, is set forth in one of the “Cautionary Tales”, in which a
little girl makes a fuss because they are putting on her white sash
when she wants her pink one.
Papa, who in the parlour heard
Her make the noise and rout,
That instant went to Caroline,
To whip her, there’s no doubt.
When Mr. Fairchild found his children quarrelling, he caned them,
making the cane keep time to the verse “Let dogs delight to bark and
bite”. He then took them to see a corpse hanging in chains on a gibbet.
The little boy was frightened, and begged to be taken home, as the
chains rattled in the wind. But Mr. Fairchild compelled him to look for
a long time, saying that this spectacle showed what happened to those
who had hatred in their hearts. The child was destined to become a
clergyman, and presumably had to be taught to depict the terrors of the
damned with the vividness of one who has experienced them.
Nowadays, few people would advocate such methods, even in Tennessee.
But there is considerable divergence of opinion as to what should take
their place. Some people still advocate a fair amount of punishment,
while others consider that it is possible to dispense with punishment
altogether. There is room for many shades between these two extremes.
For my part, I believe that punishment has a certain very minor place
in education; but I doubt whether it need ever be severe. I include
speaking sharply or reprovingly among punishments. The most severe
punishment that ought ever to be necessary is the natural spontaneous
expression of indignation. On a few occasions when my boy has been
rough with his younger sister, his mother has expressed anger by an
impulsive exclamation. The effect has been very great. The boy burst
into sobs, and would not be consoled until his mother had made much
of him. The impression was very profound, as one could see from
his subsequent good conduct towards his sister. On a few occasions
we have resorted to mild forms of punishment when he has persisted
in demanding things we had refused him, or in interfering with his
sister’s play. In such cases, when reason and exhortation have failed,
we take him to a room by himself, leave the door open, and tell him
he can come back as soon as he is good. In a very few minutes, after
crying vigorously, he comes back, and is invariably good: he perfectly
understands that in coming back he has undertaken to be good. So far,
we have never found any need of severer penalties. If one can judge
from the books of old-fashioned disciplinarians, the children educated
by the old methods were far naughtier than the modern child. I should
certainly be horrified if my boy were half as badly behaved as the
children in “The Fairchild Family”; but I should think the fault lay
more with his parents than with himself. I believe that reasonable
parents create reasonable children. The children must feel their
parents’ affection--not duty and responsibility, for which no child is
grateful, but warm love, which feels delight in the child’s presence
and ways. And except when it is quite impossible, a prohibition must
be explained carefully and truthfully. Small misfortunes, such as
bruises and slight cuts, should sometimes be allowed to happen rather
than interfere with rash games; a little experience of this kind makes
children more willing to believe that a prohibition may be wise. Where
these conditions are present from the first, I believe children will
seldom do anything deserving of serious punishment.
When a child persistently interferes with other children or spoils
their pleasures, the obvious penalty is banishment. It is imperatively
necessary to take steps of some kind, because it would be most unfair
to let the other children suffer. But there is no use in making the
refractory child feel guilty; it is much more to the purpose to make
him feel that he is missing pleasures which the others are enjoying.
Madame Montessori describes her practice as follows:
As to punishments, we have many times come in contact with children
who disturbed the others without paying attention to our corrections.
Such children were at once examined by the physician. When the case
proved to be that of a normal child, we placed one of the little
tables in a corner of the room, and in this way isolated the child;
having him sit in a comfortable little armchair, so placed that he
might see his companions at work, and giving him those games and
toys to which he was most attracted. This isolation almost always
succeeded in calming the child; from his position he could see the
entire assembly of his companions, and the way in which they carried
on their work was an _object lesson_ much more efficacious than any
words of the teacher could possibly have been. Little by little,
he would come to see the advantages of being one of the company
working so busily before his eyes, and he would really wish to go
back and do as the others did. We have in this way led back again to
discipline all the children who at first seemed to rebel against it.
The isolated child was always made the object of special care, almost
as if he were ill. I myself, when I entered the room, went first of
all directly to him, as if he were a very little child. Then I turned
my attention to the others, interesting myself in their work, asking
questions about it as if they had been little men. I do not know what
happened in the soul of these children whom we found it necessary to
discipline, but certainly the conversion was always very complete and
lasting. They showed great pride in learning how to work and how to
conduct themselves, and always showed a very tender affection for the
teacher and for me.[14]
The success of this method depended upon several factors not present in
old-fashioned schools. There was first the elimination of those whose
bad conduct was due to some medical defect. Then there was tact and
skill in applying the method. But the really vital point was the good
conduct of the majority of the class: the child felt itself opposed to
the public opinion which it naturally respected. This is, of course,
an entirely different situation from that of the schoolmaster who has
a class bent on “ragging”. I do not propose to discuss the methods
which he should employ, because they would never be needed if education
were properly conducted from the start. Children like to learn things,
provided they are the right things properly taught. The same mistake
is made in imparting knowledge as is made, at an earlier stage, in
regard to food and sleep: something which is really an advantage to
the child is made to appear like a favour to the adult. Infants easily
come to think that the only reason for eating and sleeping is that
grown-ups desire it; this turns them into dyspeptic sufferers from
insomnia.[15] Unless a child is ill, let it leave its food and go
hungry. My boy had been coaxed into eating by his nurse, and had grown
more and more _difficile_. One day when we had him for his mid-day
meal, he refused to eat his pudding, so we sent it out. After a while,
he demanded it back, but it turned out that the cook had eaten it.
He was flabbergasted, and never made such pretences with us again.
Exactly the same method should apply to instruction. Those who do not
want it should be allowed to go without, though I should see to it
that they were bored if they were absent during lesson-time. If they
see others learning, they will presently clamour to be taught: the
teacher can then appear as conferring a benefit, which is the truth
of the situation. I should have in every school a large bare room to
which pupils could go if they did not want to learn, but if they went
there, I should not allow them to come back to lessons that day. And
they should be sent there as a punishment if they behaved badly in
lesson-time. It seems a simple principle that a punishment should be
something you wish the culprit to dislike, not something you wish him
to like. Yet “lines” are a common punishment where the professed aim is
to produce a love of classical literature.
Mild punishments have their utility for dealing with mild offences,
especially such as are concerned with manners. Praise and blame are
an important form of rewards and punishments for young children, and
also for older boys and girls if conferred by a person who inspires
respect. I do not believe it possible to conduct education without
praise and blame, but in regard to both a certain degree of caution is
necessary. In the first place, neither should be comparative. A child
should not be told that he has done better than so-and-so, or that
such-and-such is never naughty: the first produces contempt, the second
hatred. In the second place, blame should be given much more sparingly
than praise; it should be a definite punishment, administered for some
unexpected lapse from good behaviour, and it should never be continued
after it has produced its effect. In the third place, praise should
not be given for anything that should be a matter of course. I should
give it for a new development of courage or skill, and for an act of
unselfishness as regards possessions, if achieved after a moral effort.
All through education, any unusually good piece of work should be
praised. To be praised for a difficult achievement is one of the most
delightful experiences in youth, and the desire for this pleasure is
quite proper as an added incentive, though it should not be the main
motive. The main motive should always be an interest in the matter
itself, whatever the matter may happen to be.
Grave faults of character, such as cruelty, can seldom be dealt with
by means of punishment. Or rather, punishment should be a very small
part of the treatment. Cruelty to animals is more or less natural to
boys, and requires, for its prevention, an education _ad hoc_. It is
a very bad plan to wait until you find your boy torturing an animal,
and then proceed to torture the boy. This only makes him wish he had
not been caught. You should watch for the first beginnings of what
may afterwards develop into cruelty. Teach the boy respect for life;
do not let him see you killing animals, even wasps or snakes. If
you cannot prevent it, explain very carefully why it is done in this
particular case. If he does something slightly unkind to a younger
child, do the same to him at once. He will protest, and you can explain
that if he does not want it done to him he must not do it to others.
In this way the fact that others have feelings like his own is brought
vividly to his attention.
It is obviously essential to this method that it should be begun
early, and applied to minor forms of unkindness. It is only very small
injuries to others that you can retort in kind upon the child. And when
you can adopt this plan, do not let it seem that you are doing it as a
punishment, but rather as an instruction: “See, that is what you did to
your little sister.” When the child protests, you say: “Well, if it was
unpleasant, you mustn’t do it to her.” So long as the whole incident
is simple and immediate, the child will understand, and will learn
that other people’s feelings must be considered. In that case, serious
cruelty will never develop.
All moral instruction must be immediate and concrete: it must arise
out of a situation which has grown up naturally, and must not go
beyond what ought to be done in this particular instance. The child
himself will apply the moral in other similar cases. It is much easier
to grasp a concrete instance, and apply analogous considerations to
an analogous instance, than to apprehend a general rule and proceed
deductively. Do not say, in a general way, “Be brave, be kind”, but
urge him to some particular piece of daring, and then say, “Bravo, you
were a brave boy”; get him to let his sister play with his mechanical
engine, and when he sees her beaming with delight, say, “That’s right,
you were a kind boy.” The same principle applies in dealing with
cruelty: Look out for its faint beginnings, and prevent them from
developing.
If, in spite of all your efforts, grave cruelty develops at a later
age, the matter must be taken very seriously, and dealt with like
an illness. The boy should be punished in the sense that unpleasant
things should happen to him, just as they do when he has measles, but
not in the sense that he should be made to feel wicked. He should be
isolated for a while from other children and from animals, and it
should be explained to him that it is not safe to let him associate
with them. He should be made to realize, as far as possible, how he
would suffer if he were cruelly treated. He should be made to feel
that a great misfortune had befallen him in the shape of an impulse to
cruelty, and that his elders were endeavouring to shield him from a
similar misfortune in the future. I believe that such methods would be
completely successful in all except a few pathological cases.
Physical punishment I believe to be never right. In mild forms, it does
little harm, though no good; in severe forms, I am convinced that it
generates cruelty and brutality. It is true that it often produces no
resentment against the person who inflicts it; where it is customary,
boys adapt themselves to it and expect it as part of the course
of nature. But it accustoms them to the idea that it may be right
and proper to inflict physical pain for the purpose of maintaining
authority--a peculiarly dangerous lesson to teach to those who are
likely to acquire positions of power. And it destroys that relation
of open confidence which ought to exist between parents and children,
as well as between teachers and pupils. The modern parent wants his
children to be as unconstrained in his presence as in his absence;
he wants them to feel pleasure when they see him coming; he does not
want a fictitious Sabbath calm while he is watching, succeeded by
pandemonium as soon as he turns his back. To win the genuine affection
of children is a joy as great as any that life has to offer. Our
grandfathers did not know of this joy, and therefore did not know that
they were missing it. They taught children that it was their “duty” to
love their parents, and proceeded to make this duty almost impossible
of performance. Caroline, in the verse quoted at the beginning of this
chapter, can hardly have been pleased when her father went to her, “to
whip her, there’s no doubt”. So long as people persisted in the notion
that love could be commanded as a duty, they did nothing to win it as a
genuine emotion. Consequently human relations remained stark and harsh
and cruel. Punishment was part of this whole conception. It is strange
that men who would not have dreamed of raising their hand against a
woman were quite willing to inflict physical torture upon a defenceless
child. Mercifully, a better conception of the relations of parents and
children has gradually won its way during the last hundred years, and
with it the whole theory of punishment has been transformed. I hope
that the enlightened ideas which begin to prevail in education will
gradually spread to other human relations as well, for they are needed
there just as much as in our dealings with our children.