Discipline in School and Cloister

DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL & CLOISTER Subscriber’s copy.
BY Dr. JACOBUS X....
PARIS ISIDORE LISEUX MCMII
Five hundred copies. Printed in France C. Unsinger, Paris
The subject dealt with in the present work touches one of the dark patches of our social life. Flogging as an aid to education, a mode of discipline, or a means of repression is universal in time and space. The subject has always had a strange fascination for curious minds. The facts presented here are all drawn from authentic sources. They are stated plainly, without any attempt at colouring them.

Right up to the beginning of the present century the birch rod was an ordinary part of a school’s equipment, and only a few years have elapsed since it was looked on by the schoolmaster as the ultima ratio . Indeed, we would not swear that, in certain out-of-the-way places where, in spite of the railway, civilization has not yet penetrated, the teacher is not still known by the insulting but picturesque name of bum-brusher. Today, at any rate in our French schools, this method of correction has been abandoned; and yet, is the time so far gone when it would have been regarded as revolutionary not to use the whip or rod?
But was corporal punishment really effi cacious with vicious and undisciplined children? Was there no risk of defeating one’s own object—might not a slumbering vice be aroused in the attempt to train an ill-formed character?
This consideration had not escaped the wisdom of a theologian, who was also a medical man, Father Debreyne: ‘Flagellation may have a result quite different from what one expected. It is therefore very important to abolish this form of punishment from our homes and schools as being indecent, disgraceful, and dangerous to morals.’
Should we have a more perverse imagination than our ancestors if we credited them with malign thoughts; or must we believe that a wind of sadism has blown over our poor humanity during long centuries? Assuredly, the intentions of most of them were pure, but how many black sheep there may have been in the flock!