Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/11



DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL AND CLOISTER

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