MAJORITY REPORT.

IN SCHOOL COMMITTEE,

BOSTON, Dec. 24, 1889.

I had no thought, until within a few days, of taking part in this discussion on corporal punishment. Knowing it would come up at some time, I last summer read the literature of the School Board upon the subject, going back to 1868 and reading what has been written on both sides from time to time. But I became greatly interested in the hearing before the Committee on Rules and Regulations about two weeks since, and was afterwards instructed by the majority of the committee to prepare a report, that no further legislation is necessary. In the hasty preparation of this report, I have not attempted to again go over much of the ground that has already been reviewed by others. The principles which were laid down in the celebrated report made in 1868 by Henry A. Drake, and the nineteen reasons given by the late Hon. John D. Philbrick in favor of corporal punishment, in School Document 19, 1880, have, to my mind, never been answered; and I think they cannot be answered until we get nearer the millennium than we are to-day. I have tried, in this report, to show our objection to the modification or amendment proposed by the chairman of the committee, and then to point out the injury resulting from this constant agitation; to show that the comparison made with other cities is unfair, because Boston is attempting and accomplishing what no other great city with our conditions has done or is doing. I have also tried to show that the plan to abolish corporal punishment has not been a success in other cities:

that it often puts into the streets the very boys who most need to be educated, or permits substitute punishments which are more objectionable still. I have further ventured to make two or three practical suggestions under our present rules.

The majority of the Committee on Rules and Regulations, consisting of Mrs. Fifield and Messrs. Murphy, Emery, and Capen, dissent from the order offered by the chairman of the committee, to amend Section 221 with regard to corporal punishment, believing that no further legislation is needed at the present time. The order requires that, on or before the first meeting of the Board in each month, each member shall be furnished with a tabulated record of the punishments of the preceding month, with the names of pupils, instructors, masters of schools, and all the details. The chairman of the committee is frank in his statement to the committee, that he wishes these facts upon his desk so that, if he chooses, he may read them aloud and the papers may publish them. object to this order in its letter and its spirit. It might bring into notoriety and cause permanent injury, wholly undeserved, to individuals and families. It would certainly bring odium and unfair criticism upon some of the best teachers in the service. In its practical working it could not be other than a scheme of intimidation.

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This whole question of corporal punishment is largely one of civilization, and the amount required for the discipline of a school depends mainly upon the character of the pupils composing that school. That character, of course, depends upon the homes from which these children come. If a child has learned to obey in the family, he comes naturally under restraint in the school. But suppose he has never had a home, as we understand the term; has lived in the street and slept anywhere at night, which is true of some of the children in our schools, then the case is different. We have one School District in this city from which one-third of all the arrests for

crime are made. There are one hundred bootblacks in this school, who, when out of school, lounge about saloons, pitch coppers, etc. There are twenty boys in the building who sleep at night in barrels or wherever they can find a corner. To illustrate further, in another District with which I am familiar, there is a boy whose mother is dead, and whose father is rarely at home, being engaged in the noble occupation of enticing strangers from the country into gambling hells, where they are robbed, and he has half the profit! That boy, left absolutely without restraint, is a terror to the neighborhood when he is out of school, and you can judge what he is in school. We have, in one of our schools, two hundred and eighty boys from Russia and Italy. The teachers in some of these schools who are trying to rescue and save these boys from ruin are engaged in a mission almost as holy as the ministers of religion. To have these teachers who by their surroundings are compelled to punish, when others more fortunate in their environment are not make reports which are brought up into this chamber, and looked over, away from the locality, is a wrong to them. They can readily see that the remark may be made to their prejudice that Miss Brown does not punish a scholar for a year, while Miss Smith, of the same grade, has punished twenty times. It is laying upon them a reproach which they do not deserve; their positions are hard enough at the best, without any addition to their burdens. It is no answer to this to say that the committee and the community will discriminate. It is impossible for them to do so; they cannot, unless they go upon the ground and see things as they are. The mathematical fact is all that will be left in most minds ; one teacher does not punish at all, and punishments by other teachers can be numbered by fives or tens.

But this only leads to a broader discussion of the whole subject. It has been before this Board again and again, and report after report has been made on one side and on the other.

Progress has been made, and yet not in straight lines. That is ever true in this world. A ferryboat enters a slip, and it strikes first at one side, and then at the other, before it reaches the wharf. I fear, in this discussion, we are passing through a period when some of us may be in danger of swinging to an extreme on the sentimental side, to the injury of the teachers and our schools as a whole, of the few incorrigibly bad boys themselves, and of the community.

In order to understand this question fully, as we ought, let us keep clearly before us the character of many of the scholars, and what the State of Massachusetts is trying to do by compulsory education. There have been great changes in our population during the past few years. In a room of fifty pupils there may often be found six or eight nationalities. Many of these children come from homes of vice and crime. In their blood are generations of iniquity. From the land from which they come, they have looked, and often justly, upon their rulers as oppressors. They hate restraint or any obedience to law. They know nothing of the feelings which are inherited by those who were born on our shores. Yet, by the compulsory education laws of this State, our schools are obliged to take these children; and we have an efficient corps of truant-officers, very different from that of many cities, who enforce the law and compel attendance. Let me give an illustration out of one School District, and it is not one of the worst by any means, for I can take you to at least three other sections that, in the judgment of the police, are worse. In this school, within a short time, a dozen boys have been arrested for stealing; one boy struck his teacher a very heavy blow and nearly killed her; another drew a loaded bludgeon two feet long, and tried to strike three teachers, calling on the other boys to help him, and threatening to "swipe out all the teachers." Three boys, within a month, have tried to kick a lady teacher. Recently a boy, in a Primary School, drew a revolver upon his teacher. At

the present time, eight boys in one Primary School belong to a "Band of Forty Thieves," who meet regularly, read dime novels, and plan stealing expeditions. Of course this is an extreme case and can apply to only a very few districts, although into many of our schools a few boys of this sort are sure to enter. If the question is asked why they are not arrested, I reply, that is often done, and then a kind-hearted but mistaken judge releases them on probation and sends them back to school for the teachers again to deal with. This is the problem, How to control and mould such boys as these into worthy citizens.

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We believe that the constant agitation of this subject, and the attempt on the part of some, directly and indirectly, to have corporal punishment abolished, is doing a great injury, first, to our teachers. Surrounded, as some of them are, with the class of pupils of whom I have spoken, anything which tends to weaken their authority in the slightest degree only adds to their burdens. It is a cruel wrong to say that any number of these teachers like to inflict punishment. There is not one among them all that would not be glad from this hour to see corporal punishment abolished, if, in any other way, proper discipline could be maintained. They ask for this only as a last resort. They suffer themselves, when ishment is inflicted, far more than any scholar. I know from their own lips and from letters which I have received, how conscientious they are about this matter. In the light of these discussions they hesitate; they wish to be faithful to their trusts, but are inclined to relax the discipline of the school, rather than insist, as they have in the past, upon absolute obedience. The result of this is to increase the difficulty. Restless boys are quick to discover any sign of weakness, and their restlessness is soon communicated to the whole room. This is not theorizing. One master, who has many of the class of which I have spoken, traced a rising spirit of insubordination at once, to the discussions which