§ 44. (3) Punishment based on the sense of honor may or may not be based on isolation. It implies a state of maturity on the part of the pupil. Through his offence the pupil has destroyed his equality with his fellows, and has in reality, in his inmost nature, isolated himself from them. Corporal punishment is external, but it may be accompanied with a keen sense of dishonor. Isolation, also, may, to a pupil, who is sensitive to honor, be a severe blow to self-respect. But a punishment founded entirely on the sense of honor would be wholly internal, and have no external discomfort attached to it.
§ 45. The necessity of carefully adapting the punishment to the age and maturity of the pupil, renders it the most difficult part of the teacher's duties. It is essential that the air and manner of the teacher who punishes should be that of one who acts from a sense of painful duty, and not from any delight in being the cause of suffering. Not personal likes and dislikes, but the rational necessity which is over teacher and pupil alike, causes the infliction of pain on the pupil.
§ 46. Punishment is the final topic to be considered under the head of "Form of Education."
In the act of punishment the teacher abandons the legitimate province of education, which seeks to make the pupil rational or obedient to what is reasonable, as a habit, and from his own free will. The pupil is punished in order that he may be made to conform to the rational, by the application of constraint. Another will is substituted for the pupil's, and good behavior is produced, but not by the pupil's free act. While education finds a negative limit in punishment, it finds a positive limit in the accomplishment of its legitimate object, which is the emancipation of the pupil from the state of imbecility, as regards mental and moral self-control, into the ability to direct himself rationally, When the pupil has acquired the discipline which enables him to direct his studies properly, and to control his inclinations in such a manner as to pursue his work regularly, the teacher is no longer needed for him—he becomes his own teacher.
There may be two extreme views on this subject—the one tending towards the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil, even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the prosecution of further study.
§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to be found in the individuality of the pupil—the limit to his natural capacity.
§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.
§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see § [46]), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a necessary instrumentality for further culture.
§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done, but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute" limit—i.e., has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of the experience of his fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience—this common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a great measure impossible.