There is one excellence, indeed, which I perceive in corporal punishment; it is an excellent means of breeding criminals. Parents who inflict frequent corporal punishment, I make bold to say, are helping to prepare their children for a life of crime; they put them on a level with the brute, break their spirit and weaken their sense of shame.
The second special question which we have to consider relates to the mark system. As this system is applied to hundreds of thousands of school children, the question whether that influence is good or evil concerns us closely. I am of the opinion that it is evil. The true aim of every school should be to lead the pupils to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and to preserve a correct deportment in order to gain the approbation of conscience and of the teacher whose judgment represents the verdict of conscience.
I object to the mark system because it introduces a kind of outward payment for progress in study and good conduct. The marks which the pupil receives stand for the dollars and cents which the man will receive later on for his work. So much school work performed, so many marks in return. But a child should be taught to study for the pleasure which study gives, and for the improvement of the mind which is its happy result.
I know of a school where the forfeiture of twelve marks was made the penalty for a certain misdemeanor. One day a pupil, being detected in a forbidden act, turned to the teacher and said, "I agree to the forfeit, you can strike off my twelve marks," and then went on openly transgressing the rule, as if he had paid out so many shillings for an enjoyment which he was determined to have; as if the outward forfeit could atone for the antimoral spirit by which the act was inspired. But how is it possible by any external system of marks to change the antimoral spirit of an offender?
I object, furthermore, to the marking system because the discrimination to which it leads can never be really just. One boy receives an average of ninety-seven and one half per cent, and another of ninety-five. The one who receives ninety-seven and one half thinks himself superior to, and is ranked as the superior of the one who has received only ninety-five. But is it possible to rate mental and moral differences between children in this arithmetical fashion?