of a shilling, till he has studied the whole science of law, and obtained a certificate from a college of wise and experienced lawyers and judges; and our civil constitutions exclude men from all participation in the business of legislation and even from the business of choosing legislators, till they have attained some maturity. But little or nothing is required as to age, experience, a knowledge of the business, or moral character, to take a part in the great business of education, of forming the moral and intellectual character of the country, on which everything else depends.'

[For the Annals of Education.]

ERRORS IN DISCIPLINE; OR REMINISCENCES OF A SCHOOLMASTER.

[We insert the following account of the errors of a teacher whom we believe to have been among the best and most judicious of his day and neighborhood, as an illustration of some of the remarks of a correspondent, in our last article. We do it also with the hope of convincing those of their error, who think that our common schools need no reform, and of persuading them that it is important to impart some of the lessons of wisdom and experience to a young man, before he is intrusted with the care of the minds and bodies of children. Who can calculate the evils which might result from the frequent employment of such teachers, and who can doubt that among those who enter upon their task, untaught and untrained, many will commit similar errors?]

CAN it be, I sometimes say to myself, that at the commencement of my pedagogical efforts, I seized a pupil by the collar for some trifling act of improprietry, and with evident marks of anger, drew him over a writing desk? Yes, the deed was done; and done by these hands; and under the direction of this understanding and will!

And what, think you, was the consequence? At that time I did not perceive that the act made any impression at all, good, bad, or indifferent, except to excite a prejudice against me in the mind of the victim of my displeasure. The school, in general, took very little notice of it; and those who noticed it, appeared soon to forget it. The truth is, that I was so much in the habit of violent and angry acts, that a single attack on an individual produced very little surprise; though my general conduct had the effect to alienate, by degrees, their affections from me.

Nor is it single acts in schools that produce so much mischief, after all, as the prevailing disposition which the teacher manifests. If he is usually kind and affectionate, and only indulges in an angry fit occasionally, bad as the consequences are, they are as nothing in

28

Dangerous Punishments.

comparison with those which result, where a teacher indulges wrong feelings or wrong temper habitually. In the former case, the pupils only lose their respect for him; in the latter, they not only cease to respect, but they cease to love him.

I loved my pupils, and was generally kindly disposed towards them, and they knew it. They therefore did not cease to love me at once, but their alienation was, as I said before, gradual. I took them all to be young knaves, at the very opening of school, and made laws accordingly; and what I took them to be, many of them slowly became. They constantly watched their opportunity to evade my laws, and I watched my opportunity to detect them, and enforce the penalty.

My punishments were most of them summary. Sometimes there was a formal feruling or flogging, but this was rare. It took up too much time. I knew of a shorter method. This was to carry a rule under my arm, and when I discovered a transgressor, to strike him across the head with the rule. As to endangering the brain, I never thought of that. Indeed I scarcely knew that there were brains in the cranium. I was only eighteen years of age; and as inexperienced in human nature, as you can possibly conceive.

One day, in striking a boy across the head with my rule, I broke it. To add to my confusion, a lady was present in the school, and witnessed the transaction. It was now no longer whispered that 'the master was very severe in school.' It was talked aloud.

The noise of the transaction did me much injury, though it partly cured me of striking the head with a rule. I now used my flat hand, or a book. But my term of teaching, which was only three months, expired about this time, and I was glad of it; and so were most of the pupils and their parents.

However, I was employed, the next winter, to teach again in a neighborhood about two miles distant. Here I commenced with less severity than formerly; but afterwards fell into bad habits. I did not strike with my rule, it is true; but I used to throw it. One day I threw it at little George, who was only six years old, and hit him with the end of it, near the outer corner of one of his eyes. Had it struck an inch further towards his nose, it must inevitably have put out his left eye. But it cured me completely of throwing rules. Indeed, I made my resolution the moment the rule struck, and I rejoice that I have never broken it, from that day to this.

Still I governed too much by force of arms, and too little by the force of suasion and love. I hated monarchy and tyranny; but I thought the exigency of the case required both, and both monarch and tyrant I accordingly became.

But I got through the winter, and without much open complaint; and some said they had enjoyed the benefits of a good school. I knew better, however; but I did not contradict the reports.

Discipline of Force and of Kindness.

29

The next fall I had a pressing invitation, and the offer of a pretty round price, if I would take the charge of another school several miles distant. Their teachers of late had not governed well; and they said they wanted a 'smart master;' one that would keep the power in his own hands.

I was employed and went to my work. All went on pretty well for a time. At length, one or two boys began to be troublesome. Partly to punish the individual, and partly to put the rest in awe of me, I punished one with the rod, and with considerable severity. However, the boy was subdued, and I supposed I had gained my point, for some time afterwards. At last, news came to my ears that an endeavor had been made to have me punished for abusing one of my pupils. The circumstances were as follows.

When I was in the act of flogging my pupil, a piece of the stick, which was rather dry, flew off, and, hitting another boy on the cheek, drew blood. The boy went home and told the story, and showed his wound to his guardian who, being a passionate man, at once took fire at the transaction, and what was really bad enough, his busy imagination wrought into a high degree of violence. He complained at once to the grand jury of the town, and endeavored to have me prosecuted. Why he did not succeed better, I never knew; but the civil authority took no notice of it. After all was over, it got to my ears. I called on the gentleman to whom I had given so much offence, obtained some partial concessions, and in the end came off with flying colors.

Though I had now become fully enthroned in the pedagogic chair, I was not firmly enthroned in the affections of the pupils or their parents. Some still considered me severe; but many were on the whole, satisfied. The term closed, however, satisfactorily.

For two or three successive winters following, I was employed in the same school. I laid aside severity more and more, and governed more and more by the law of kindness. There were some occasional acts of violence; but not enough to injure me materially. With all my errors, I was regarded as a very good teacher. The saying sometimes repeated, that such was the order of the school room, that a pin might be heard to fall on the floor, had with many minds, great weight. Such at that time, were their views and my own, of thorough and appropriate school discipline.

For a year and a half after this, I was employed in another and a much larger school. There were some turbulent spirits, with whom a degree of severity seemed unavoidable; but the instances of severe or corporal punishment were very unfrequent. The less they were resorted to, the better things, on the whole, appeared to go.

This has been the result of my experience in teaching many times since. In proportion as I have laid aside all corporal punishment, and governed solely by persuasion and love, just in the same proportion has been my success; and just in the same proportion as I have failed to govern myself-my temper, feelings and conducthas the school, and the discipline of the school, gone wrong.

I do not mean to infer that all punishment, or even all corporal punishment, should in every instance, be dispensed with; but only to leave the impression on the minds of others, that used in my hands-often injudiciously by reason of an improper state of temper and feeling, it has frequently—indeed, almost always-been a greater evil in its results, than that which it was designed to cure. In other cases, and in other hands, I believe corporal punishment is sometimes, the less evil.

Of boxing ears and striking the head with a rule, I am now unable to think without shuddering. Did teachers dream of a tithe of the mischief these concussions of the young and tender brain may produce, we should probably hear no more of blows on the head. There are places enough on which blows can be inflicted, with more safety than on the cranium. Besides, a very small rod, suitably applied, if corporal punishment must be inflicted occasionally, will be found greatly preferable to many of the shorter, and of course more popular modes of correction.

When we commence a school with a small number of pupilsthe children of parents who have first governed themselves and then governed their offspring, and when we only increase our number by small additions at once, and those remote from each other, I do not believe punishment, in any ordinary sense of the term, is often necessary. But when the children of all sorts of parents, judicious and injudicious, and of both sexes, and all ages and habits, are thrown together to the number of sixty or eighty, under the care of a teacher who is a stranger, he must be something more than man, who can reduce such a motley and heterogeneous mass to good order and right discipline, without the occasional adoption of rigid measures.

[For the Annals of Education.]

DEVOURING BOOKS.

Ir is recorded of Madame de Stael Holstein, that before she was fifteen years of age, she had devoured' 600 novels in three months; so that she must have read more than six a day upon

Evils of Intellectual Gluttony.

31

an average. Louis XVI., during the five months and seven days. of his imprisonment, immediately preceding his death, read 157 volumes, or one a day.

If this species of gluttony is pardonable in circumstances like those of Louis, it is less so in a young lady of fourteen or fifteen. No one can have time for reflection, who reads at this rapid rate. And whatever may be thought, these devourers of books are guilty of abusing nature, to an extent as much greater than those who overcharge their stomachs, as the intellectual powers are higher than the animal propensities.

If we find but few cases of mental gluttony equal to that of M. de Stael, there are many which fall but little short of it. Thousands of young people spend their time in perpetual reading, or rather in devouring books. It is true, the food is light; but it occupies the mental faculties, for the time, in fruitless efforts, and operates to exclude food of a better quality.

I should be among the last to engage in an indiscriminate warfare against reading, but when I see the rapid increase of books in our market, and their general character, and consider, that the condition of the market indicates the character and strength of the demand, when to this is added the conviction_forced upon us, by facts within the range of daily observation, I cannot resist the conclusion, that it strongly behoves those who are friendly to mental as well as physical temperance, to sound an appropriate alarm.

Perpetual reading inevitably operates to exclude thought, and in the youthful mind to stint the opening mental faculties, by favoring unequal development. It is apt either to exclude social enjoyment, or render the conversation frivolous and unimportant; for to make any useful reflections, while the mind is on the gallop, is nearly out of the question; and if no useful reflections are made during the hours of reading, they cannot of course be retailed in the social circle. Besides, it leads to a neglect of domestic and other labors. The law, that man shall eat bread in the sweat of his face,' is not to be violated by half or three fourths of the human race with impunity. It is a UNIVERSAL LAW; and that individual, let the sex, rank or station be what it may, who transgresses, must suffer the penalty-not mere poverty, but a loss of actual enjoyment, if not of health. Even if we do not intrude upon the hours sacred to repose, sleep becomes disturbed, unsound and unsatisfying. Food loses its relish, life its zest, and instead of seeing the fair and goodly Eden we read and dream of, the world becomes less and less interesting, and we actually begin to complain of our Creator, while the fault is in ourselves.