administered by the head master or his deputy after due consid- 

 eration. The question of corporal punishment is a difficult one, 

 because school systems are in a transition state. In matters of 

 conduct, possibly when boys have been utterly badly trained 

 at home, it would require a master of much higher power than 

 those commonly met with to deal with them ; but the kind of 

 man safe to trust with the rod is scarcely less high. Possibly 

 the difficulty with such exceptional boys whose presence in a 

 school, as Bain says,* "is a discord and an anomaly," could be got 

 over by the means he suggests " in removing them to some place 

 where the lower natures are grouped together." 



Respecting the rod as a spur to learning, it is difficult to see 

 why children in Britain and slaves in other countries should be 

 the only portions of humanity whose work is extracted by the 

 rod. Would the subjection of other workers to the same rule be 

 tolerated ? Would a factory manager be sustained in flogging 

 his half-timers if they neglected duty ? Is the schoolboy of so 

 much less value than a mill doffer ?t 



In America corporal punishment is no longer in vogue. 

 Mr. William Workman, kindly permits me to quote the 

 following information on this point obtained last year by the 

 kindness of a friend through Professor Moore of Illinois, who 

 has been for twenty-five years connected with public schools in 

 that country and who writes : — 



" The most important change which has been brought about 

 with these later years, has been the coming in of more sympa- 

 thetic relations between teacher and pupil — in less show of 

 authority, and more real power ; in letting down the formal 

 barriers of restraint, and letting in a sweeter and truer control ; 

 in bringing the teacher's platform nearer the pupil's desk, and 



* Education as a Science, p. 116. 



fin an article entitled "The Education of Children" in Macmillan for January 

 last, I find : — '"Idleness is generally a sign either that the work is too difficult, or that 

 it is unsuited to the child .... When children are dull it is the business of the persons 

 who are educating them to find out why they are dull, and apply the right 

 remedy." This is exactly my view, and I recommend the exceedingly well-written 

 paper containing it to those interested in children. My attention was called to it since 

 the reading of my own paper. 



