Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1880 — Keeping Children After School. [ARTICLE]

Keeping Children After School.

There is one common practice of the public schools which ought to be abolished at once and everywhere without question or parley. That is the practice of imprisoning the children in the school-nouses beyond the school hours. Pretty nearly every school-house in the land is thus turned into a penitentiary in which children are immured every day, some of them for imperfect recitations, others for faults of deportment. This method of punishment might, if the teachers were all judicious, De resorted to occasionally with good effect; but teachers are not all judicious, and thousands of children are thus detained every day to whom the detention is a serious injury, and a grave injustice. For some trifling breach of order, like turning in the seat or dropping a pencil, for some small failure in a recitation, and often for no fault at all—whole classes being kept on account of the indolence of some of their members, and the innocent thus suffering with the guuty—the children are shut up in the school-houses, sometimes during the intermissions, often aftec the close of school. Thousands of children in delicate health, to whom the regular school hours are too long, are permanently injured by this system of confinement. If only the stupid and willful and those in sturdy health were thus punished, there would be less reason of complaint; but any careful investigation will show that such discrimination is not generally made, and, from the nature of the system, cannot well be made; and that the injury to the health of the pupils resulting from the practice more than outweighs any good that may result from it. The health of the pupil is a subject to which the average schoolteacher gives but little consideration; any practice, therefore, which is liable to result in the impairment of the puEit’s health ought to be forbidden by w. This plea is based upon an observation of the working of this system in several towns and cities, and upon the concurrent testimony of many medical men. In some places the rules of governing boards forbids the imprisonment of children, but the rules are generally set at naught by teachers. They ought to be enforced. It must be that there are methods of discipline for schools less injurious and more effectual than imprisonment.— Good Company. - They say it takes nine tailors to comfortably make a man; but to make a man uncomfortable only one tailor with an unpaid bill is required. —The best trade-mark—f.