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JESUIT EDUCATION
History of the Rod.[1] In the higher schools of Saxony it was the custom, even in the eighteenth century, for all the members of the faculty to punish offenders before the whole school. When, in 1703, the teachers remonstrated against this, they were told by the highest authorities to continue doing their duty.[2] Matters were different in Jesuit colleges. The offender was punished in private and only few strokes were administered. Father Nadal made a regulation in Mentz, in 1567, to the effect that not more than six strokes should be given with the rod. The boys were not to be struck in any other way.[3] The above cited Italian School Order adds that not only the poor boys should be punished but the wealthy and noble as
- ↑ As a curious illustration the case of the Suabian schoolmaster may be mentioned, who kept a diary and jotted down in the course of his fifty-one years' schoolmaster's career the number of times he administered punishment to his recalcitrant pupils. Schoolmaster John records that he distributed 911,517 strokes with a stick; 240,100 "smites" with a birchrod; 10,986 hits with a ruler; 136,715 hand smacks; 10,235 slaps on the face; 7,905 boxes on the ears; 115,800 blows on the head; 12,763 tasks from the Bible, catechism, the poets and grammar. Every two years he had to buy a Bible, to replace the one so roughly handled by his scholars; 777 times he made his pupils kneel on peas, and 5,001 scholars had to do penance with a ruler held over their hands. As to his abusive words, not a third of them were to be found in any dictionary.
- ↑ Neue Jahrbücher, 1902, vol. X, p. 296.
- ↑ Pachtler, vol. I, p. 160, 207, 279; IV, 164-170. – It is not improbable that the moderation required by the rules was not always observed through the fault of some individuals. Hence the one instance of excessive flogging quoted by Compayré, Hist. of Ped., p. 14, was certainly an exception.
