SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.
Sooth to say, the schoolmasters of that time were not likely to be remembered with much favor by their pupils in after years. There is abundant testimony to the severity of their discipline in Ascham, Peacham, and other writers of the 16th century.
Thomas Tusser tells of his youthful experiences at Eton in verses that have been often quoted:
"From Paul's I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightways the Latin phrase,
When fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had:
For fault but small or none at all
It came to pass, thus beat I was.
See, Udall, see the mercy of thee
To me, poor lad!"
Nicholas Udall was the master of Eton at the time.
Peacham tells of one pedagogue who used to whip his boys of a cold morning "for no other purpose than to get himself a heat." No doubt it warmed the boys too, but it is not recorded that they liked the method.
Some of the grammars of the period have on the title-page the significant woodcut of "an awful man sitting on a high chair, pointing to a book with his right hand, but with a mighty rod in his left." Lilly's Grammar, on the other hand, has the picture of a huge fruit-tree, with little boys in its branches picking the abundant fruit. I hope the urchins did not find this more suggestive of stealing apples than of gathering the rich fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Mr. Sidney Lee remarks: "A repulsive picture of the terrors which the schoolhouse had for a nervous child is drawn in a 'pretie and merry new interlude' entitled 'The Disobedient Child, compiled by Thomas Ingeland, late student in Cambridge,' about 1560. A boy who implores his father not to force him to go to school tells of his companions' sufferings there—how
"'Their tender bodies both night and day
Are whipped and scourged, and beat like a stone,
That from top to toe the skin is away;'
and a story is repeated of how a scholar was tormented to death by 'his bloody master.' Other accounts show that the playwright has not gone far beyond the fact."
We will try to believe, however, that Master Hunt of Stratford was of a milder disposition. Holofernes seems well disposed towards his pupils, and is invited to dine with the father of one of them; and Sir Hugh Evans, in his examination of William Page, has a very kindly manner. It is to be noted, indeed, that in few of Shakespeare's references to school life is there any mention of whipping as a punishment.
Roger Ascham, in his Scholemaster, advocated gentler discipline than was usual in the schools of his day. His book, indeed, owed its origin to his interest in this matter.
In 1563, Ascham, who was then Latin Secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was dining with Sir William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh), when the conversation turned to the subject of education, from news of the running away of some boys from Eton, where there was much beating. Ascham argued that young children were sooner allured by love than driven by beating to obtain good learning. Sir Richard Sackville, father of Thomas Sackville, said nothing at the dinner-table, but he afterwards drew Ascham aside, agreed with his opinions, lamented his own past loss by a harsh schoolmaster, and said, Ascham tells us in the preface to his book: "'Seeing it is but in vain to lament things past, and also wisdom to look to things to come, surely, God willing, if God lend me life, I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap to little Robert Sackville, my son's son. For whose bringing up I would gladly, if it so please you, use specially your good advice. I hear say you have a son much of his age [Ascham had three little sons]; we will deal thus together. Point you out a schoolmaster who by your order shall teach my son's son and yours, and for all the rest I will provide, yea, though they three do cost me a couple of hundred pounds by year; and besides you shall find me as fast a friend to you and yours as perchance any you have.' Which promise the worthy gentleman surely kept with me until his dying day." The conversation ended with a request that Ascham would "put in some order of writing the chief points of this our talk, concerning the right order of teaching and honesty of living, for the good bringing up of children and young men."
Ascham accordingly wrote The Scholemaster, which was published in 1570 (two years after his death) by his widow, with a dedication to Sir William Cecil.
In the very first page of the book, Ascham, referring to training in "the making of Latins," or writing the language, says: "For the scholar is commonly beat for the making, when the master were more worthy to be beat for the mending or rather marring of the same; the master many times being as ignorant as the child what to say properly and fitly to the matter."
Again he says: "I do gladly agree with all good schoolmasters in these points: to have children brought to good perfectness in learning; to all honesty in manners; to have all faults rightly amended; to have every vice severely corrected; but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these points we somewhat differ. For commonly, many schoolmasters—some, as I have seen, more, as I have heard tell—be of so crooked a nature, as, when they meet with a hard-witted scholar, they rather break him than bow him, rather mar him than mend him. For when the schoolmaster is angry with some other matter, then will he soonest fall to beat his scholar; and though he himself should be punished for his folly, yet must he beat some scholar for his pleasure, though there be no cause for him to do so, nor yet fault in the scholar to deserve so. These, you will say, be fond [that is, foolish] schoolmasters, and few they be that be found to be such. They be fond, indeed, but surely over many such be found everywhere. But this will I say, that even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct faults. Yea, many times the better nature is sorely punished; for, if one, by quickness of wit, take his lesson readily, another, by hardness of wit, taketh it not so speedily, the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished; when a wise schoolmaster should rather discreetly consider the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young."
The result of ordinary school training, with the free use of the rod, as Ascham says, is that boys "carry commonly from the school with them a perpetual hatred of their master and a continual contempt for learning." He adds: "If ten gentlemen be asked why they forget so soon in court that which they were learning so long in school, eight of them, or let me be blamed, will lay the fault on their ill handling by their schoolmasters." The sum of the matter is that "learning should be taught rather by love than fear," and "the schoolhouse should be counted a sanctuary against fear."
But Ascham, like Mulcaster and Brinsley, was far in advance of his age, and it is doubtful whether his wise counsel with regard to methods of discipline met with any greater favor among teachers than theirs concerning the importance of the study of English.