Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/668

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wiser than he, and is responsible for his protection and guidance. The parent and teacher in a sense represent the child in the world, and then the child must put his faith in them and follow their bidding. But this is not an argument for much chastisement. Indeed, the more pain we administer, the more likely we are to do the child injury. Pleasure is upbuilding, while pain kills, and should be used only sparingly as a curative agency when other remedies fail. The rod is becoming less and less prominent as a means of moral training, and to the great advantage of the whole life of the child. But we are probably not ready to abandon it altogether. It would be better for a child to be whipped soundly once than to be scolded for wrong- doing day after day. Especially would it be more advisable for the child to suffer acutely for a short period in childhood, in breaking up some noxious habit or curtailing some instinct, than to carry the habit or instinct into maturity, and bear the ills of it there continuously. Then, when punishment is clearly deserved, and the child realizes it, it is probable he does not feel the humiliation of it so much as we adults sometimes imagine he does, but that in the end he feels the stronger and happier for it.

Locke would whip a child for nothing except obstinacy. But it is important to distinguish between a refusal to obey authority for the sake merely of opposition, and a desire to carry out one's own enterprises, in which case the question of obedience does not really enter at all. Most of our troubles in disciplining the young arise from bad methods in infancy, when we often encourage the very traits which later we have to cudgel out of a child. Obsti- nacy in the infant is amusing, but in the ten-year-old it is a monstrous thing.

If the teacher were a true leader, he would have comparatively little need for the rod. But in the past, and it is true still in some places, the school has been the stronghold of dolts and dullards who did not have sufficient force of intellect or character to main- tain a place in the world of affairs. Consequently they could not lead the young, and so they tried to drive them. The typical pedagogue of literature is a blunderer and tyrant whose hands "drip with infant's blood." We realize today, however, that we