Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878, page 199 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download200
ool to school is effectually prevented, while the retention of a decidedly vicious boy would obviously be a most unprofitable policy. I have seen a rich English parent bring back his truant offspring to be soundly flogged in presence of his grinning schoolmates--an ugly spectacle, and now happily a rare one in England; but the reverse of the picture, though far less shocking, is by no means pleasantly suggestive. I have heard an American lady express her surprise to a principal, with unmistakable tartness in her tone, that her son, who was at once the idlest and most troublesome boy in his class, always brought home averages of sixty or seventy, "when young A----, who lives next us, and is considered quite a slow boy, receives ninety and over every time. Don't you think there must be some mistake, or--or unfairness--in the marking?"
Only ten of my sixteen boys had been in the school before that year, and of those ten only four had passed through the regular curriculum of the school from the primary department to the graduating class. Those four were notably the most advanced and the only thoroughly-grounded boys of the sixteen. A few of the others had attended nearly all the private schools in the city, while two of them had been oscillating between the public and private schools for years at their own sweet wills, and could never decide whether the commercial or classical department of the school in question was the one for which they were best fitted. It may well be understood, therefore, what a medley my classes presented, and how unlikely it was, in the face of all these drawbacks, that their acquirements should be above mediocrity. On the score of natural abilities, however--in quickness of perception, facility in generalization, readiness and coherence of expression, and clearness of head generally--it would not be at haphazard one could find an equal number of boys in any English school to match them.
As to the vexed subject of discipline, my experience leads me to say that, provided