On habits and manners

As to the punishment of children, the best authorities upon the subject of education are, in the main, agreed ; but even yet there is much left to the ingenuity and patience of parents. Corporal punishment, either in schools or in the family, has no part in the best modern systems of education, and there are very few teachers or parents who should permit themselves to use it. It is commonly a wrong to the child, and is almost always inflicted in a spirit of anger, which alone would effectually prevent it from having any good effect. In these days it is usually very ignorant, very careless, or very cruel people who depend upon corporal punishment to assist them in governing their children, and any thoughtful and moderately patient person ought to be able to find many expedients which are far more useful and reasonable, and which will win from children obedience through respect instead of through mere physical fear. If children were simply and wholly animal in their nature, then we might consider blows a suitable form of punishment, (though even animals, as modern experience has proven, get far too much of this crude and barbarous discipline), but as they have another and a higher nature, it is only logical that the highest and most successful system of education should appeal to that rather than to the merely brutal instincts. I dare say that most of you feel that you would be almost helpless if the power of whipping your children were to be taken away from you, and are quite sure in your own minds that nothing can take the place with a child of what is popularly called, "a good whipping" ; but in this, as in other things, your safest course is to accept the facts established by those who are wiser and more experienced than you are. If reason and affection both fail, say the wisest modern teachers, there still remain a variety of punishments, which will affect children without injuring them or making them feel that they are treated with injustice. you can deprive children of some pleasure, take their liberty away from them for a shorter or longer time, by shutting them up, or confining them within certain limits ; you can in various ways treat them differently from the other children of the family , you can take away from them some article of food of which they are fond ; in short, a little thought will show you that there are numberless ways of inflicting real punishment upon children without striking a blow. In selecting from these it is well, so far as possible, to suit the punishment to the offence ; for example, if a child does harm or mischief with its hands, as by striking another child, wilfully breaking or tearing anything, punish it by securely tying the offending members, or, again, if a child errs by saying anything wrong or untruthful, punish it by keeping it alone, where no one can be hurt or annoyed by what it may say. But, whatever your punishment may be, never inflict it when you yourself are angry ; wait always until your passion is cooled and you can use your sober judgment, for this is the chief safeguard both for yourself and the child, and one without which you will be almost certain to do the child injustice. Example, love, truthfulness, firmness, each and all are necessary if you would rightly train your children ; and to