Corporal Punishment

Some frontier teachers had a harsh rule they strictly enforced. They believed “Lickin’ and larnin’ goes together, No likin, no larnin.” (Now I’d start with “lickin” the teacher here, not only for the idea but for such poor spelling, but that’s just me). The forgoing dogma was basic to the educational philosophy of the old days. Lessons were regarded as a commodity to be pressed into reluctant vessels – the pupils – and a birch rod or hickory sick was used to accomplish this end. Legally in loco parentis, teachers relied upon it more heavily to enforce discipline, their devotion to scholarship often measured by the number of backsides they had reddened. Humanitarians, a tiny minority, thought otherwise, among them a former schoolmaster named Walt Whitman, who complained of the “military discipline” of the schools. “The flogging plan is the most wretched item yet of school-keeping,” he thundered. “What nobleness can reside in a man who catches boys by the collar, and cuffs their ears?” But such criticism posed no threat to corporal punishment, which was extremely hailed as a healthy and indispensable practice. (One inveterate disciplinary referred to his weapon as “my board of education.”) And concomitant with this belief went an austere mistrust of improvements to the physical plant because they were a “luxury.” A Washington Territory schoolmarm’s plea for the installation of toilets was turned down by the school board, which advised her that “there were plenty of trees in the yard to get behind.” Even her suggestion to replace the single well dipper with more hygienic individual cups was denied as being “undemocratic.”