Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/13

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temperament or temper.

The best policed people have not felt called upon to abandon this instrument of government. If education was severe in Sparta, where children were submitted early to the most difficult exercises, it was hardly any milder at Athens, if we are to judge by this description of Greek customs. 'Hardly had a child escaped from the tyranny of his nurse, when he fell into the hands of the teacher, the grammarian, and the musician, and these took turns at flogging him to teach him their art. As he grows up, there arrive the arithmetician, the geometer, and the riding-master. Under these masters he gets no rest, he rises early, and is often flogged. A little older, and it is the tactician and gymnastic instructor who now flog and torture him.' And there have been philosophers to praise and poets to sing the happy results of this brutal method.

However, one voice is raised against this system—the voice of Plutarch, who considers that we should lead children to do their duty by kind words and gentle remonstrances and not by blows, for flogging is more suitable for slaves than the free. It hardens and deadens them, and the pain