The Punishment of Children

by Felix Adler

This was no mere coincidence. As the manners of the people are so will their religion be. Savage parents who treat their children in a cruel, passionate way naturally entertain the idea of a god who treats his human children in the same way. If we wish to purify the religious beliefs of men, we must first ameliorate their daily life.

There was once a schoolmaster who boasted that during his long and interesting career he had inflicted corporal punishment more than a million times. In modern days the tide of public opinion has set strongly against corporal punishment. It is being abolished in many of our public institutions, and the majority of cultivated parents have a decided feeling against availing themselves of this method of discipline.

But the mere sentiment against it is not sufficient. Is the opposition to it the result possibly of that increased sensitiveness to pain which we observe in the modern man, of the indisposition to inflict or to witness suffering? Then some stern teacher might tell us that to inflict suffering is sometimes necessary, that it is a sign of weakness to shrink from it, that as the surgeon must sometimes apply the knife in order to effect a radical cure, so the conscientious parent should sometimes inflict physical pain in order to eradicate grievous faults. The stern teacher might warn us against "sparing the rod and spoiling the child."

We must not, therefore, base our opposition to corporal punishment merely on sentimental grounds. And there is no need for doing so, for there are sound principles on which the argument may be made to rest. Corporal punishment does not merely conflict with our tenderer sympathies, it thwarts and defeats the purpose of moral reformation. In the first place it brutalizes the child; secondly, in many cases it breaks the child's spirit, making it a moral coward; and, thirdly, it tends to weaken the sense of shame, on which the hope of moral improvement depends.

Corporal punishment brutalizes the child. We may be justified in beating a brute, though, of course, never in a cruel, merciless way. A lazy beast of burden may be stirred up to work; an obstinate mule must feel the touch of the whip. Corporal punishment implies that a rational human being is on the level of an animal.[1] Its underlying thought is: you can be controlled only through your animal instincts; you can be moved only by an appeal to your bodily feelings. It is a practical denial of that higher nature which exists in every human being, and this is a degrading view of human character. A child which is accustomed to be treated like an animal is apt to behave like an animal. Thus corporal punishment instead of moralizing serves to demoralize the character.

In the next place corporal punishment often breaks the spirit of a child. Have you ever observed how some children that have been often whipped will whine and beg off when the angry parent is about to take out the rattan: "O, I will never do it again; O, let me off this time." What an abject sight it is—a child fawning and entreating and groveling like a dog! And must not the parent too feel humiliated in such a situation! Courage is one of the noblest of the manly virtues. We should train our children to bear unavoidable pain without flinching, but sensitive natures can only be slowly accustomed to endure suffering; and chastisement, when it is frequent and severe, results in making a sensitive child more and more cowardly, more and more afraid of the blows. In such cases it is the parents themselves, by their barbarous discipline, who stamp the ugly vice of cowardice upon their children.

Even more disastrous is the third effect of corporal punishment, that of blunting the sense of shame. Some children quail before a blow, but others, of a more obstinate disposition, assume an attitude of dogged indifference. They hold out the hand, they take the stinging blows, they utter no cry, they never wince; they will not let the teacher or father triumph over them to that extent; they walk off in stolid indifference.

Now, a blow is an invasion of personal liberty. Every one who receives a blow feels a natural impulse to resent it. But boys who are compelled by those in authority over them to submit often to such humiliation are liable to lose the finer feeling for what is humiliating. They become, as the popular phrase puts it, "hardened." Their sense of shame is deadened.

But sensitiveness to shame is that quality of our nature on which, above all others, moral progress depends. The stigma of public disgrace is one of the most potent safeguards of virtue. The world cries "Shame" upon the thief, and the dread of the disgrace which is implied in being called a thief acts as one of the strongest preventives upon those whom hunger and poverty might tempt to steal. The world cries "Shame" upon the lawbreaker in general, but those who in their youth are accustomed to be put to shame by corporal punishment are likely to become obtuse to other forms of disgrace as well. The same criticism applies to those means of publicly disgracing children which have been in vogue so long—the fool's cap, the awkward squad, the bad boy's bench, and the like. When a child finds itself frequently exposed to ignominy it becomes indifferent to ignominy, and thus the door is opened for the entrance of the worst vices.

There is one excellence, indeed, which I perceive in corporal punishment; it is an excellent means of breeding criminals. Parents who inflict frequent corporal punishment, I make bold to say, are helping to prepare their children for a life of crime; they put them on a level with the brute, break their spirit and weaken their sense of shame.