Arnold's view of the functions of a
headmaster and the proper governance of a public school. Clearly,
it was not for such as he to demean himself by bellowing and
cuffing, by losing his temper once an hour, and by wreaking his
vengeance with indiscriminate flagellations. Order must be kept
in other ways. The worst boys were publicly expelled; many were
silently removed; and, when Dr. Arnold considered that a flogging
was necessary, he administered it with gravity. For he had no
theoretical objection to corporal punishment. On the contrary, he
supported it, as was his wont, by an appeal to general
principles. 'There is,' he said, 'an essential inferiority in a
boy as compared with a man'; and hence 'where there is no
equality the exercise of superiority implied in personal
chastisement' inevitably followed.
He was particularly disgusted by the view that 'personal
correction',as he phrased it, was an insult or a degradation to
the boy upon whom it was inflicted; and to accustom young boys to
think so appeared to him to be 'positively mischievous'. 'At an
age,' he wrote, 'when it is almost impossible to find a true,
manly sense of the degradation of guilt or faults, where is the
wisdom of encouraging a fantastic sense of the degradation of
personal correction? What can be more false, or more adverse to
the simplicity, sobriety, and humbleness of mind which are the
best ornaments of youth, and offer the best promise of a noble
manhood?' One had not to look far, he added, for 'the fruits of
such a system'.
Pages:
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264