THE last time I had the pleasure of being in your company, you did me the honour to request my opinion upon the AMUSEMENTS and PUNISHMENTS which are pro­per for schools. The subjects are of a very opposite nature, but I shall endeavour to comply with your wishes, by sending you a few thoughts upon each of them. I am sure you will not reject my opini­ons because they are contrary to received practices, for I know that you are accustomed to think for yourself, and that every proposition that has for its objects the interests of humanity and your country, will he treated by you with attention and candor.

I shall begin with the subject of AMUSEMENTS. Montesquieu informs us that the ex­ercises of the last day of the life of Epaminondas, were the same as his amusements in his youth. Herein we have an epitome of the perfec­tion of education. The amusements of Epaminondas were of a military nature; but as the profession of arms is the business of only a small part of mankind, and happily much less ne­cessary in the United States than in ancient Greece, I would propose that the amusements of our youth, at school, should consist of such ex­ercises as will be most subservient to their future employments in life. These are; 1. agriculture; 3. me­chanical occupations; and 3. the business of the learned professions.

1. There is a variety in the em­ployments of agriculture which may readily be suited to the genius, taste, and strength of young people. An experiment has been made of the efficacy of these employments, as amusements, in the Methodist Col­lege at Abington, in Maryland; and, I have been informed, with the happiest effects. A large lot is divided between the scholars, and premiums are adjudged to those of them who produce the most vege­tables from their grounds, or who keep them in the best order.

2. As the employments of agri­culture cannot afford amusement at all seasons of the year, or in cities, [Page 2] I would propose, that children should be allured to seek amuse­ments in such of the mechanical arts as are suited to their strength and capacities. Where is the boy who does not delight in the use of a hammer—a chissel—or a saw? and who has not enjoyed a high de­gree of pleasure in his youth, in constructing a miniature house? How amusing are the machines which are employed in the manu­factory of cloathing of all kinds! and how full of various entertain­ment are the mixtures which take place in the chemical arts! each of these might be contrived upon such a scale, as not only to amuse young people, but to afford a profit to their parents or masters. The Moravians, at Bethlehem in our state, have proved that this propo­sition is not a chimerical one. All the amusements of their children are derived from their performing the subordinate parts of several of the mechanical arts; and a consi­derable portion of the wealth of that worthy and happy society is derived from the labour of their little hands.—

If, in these amusements, an ap­peal should be made to that spirit of competition which is so common a­mong young people, it would be the means of producing more plea­sure to the children, and more pro­fit to all who are connected with them. The wealth of those manu­facturing towns in England, which employ the children of poor people, is a proof of what might be expect­ed from connecting amusement and labour together, in all our schools. The product from the labour ob­tained in this way, from all the schools in the United States, would amount to a sum which would al­most exceed calculation.

3. To train the youth who are intended for the learned professi­ons, or for merchandize, to the duties of their future employments, by means of useful amusements, which are related to those employ­ments, will be impracticable; but their amusements may be derived from cultivating a spot of ground; for where is the lawyer, the phy­sician, the divine, or the merchant, who has not indulged or felt a pas­sion, in some part of his life, for rural improvements?——Indeed I conceive the seeds of knowledge in agriculture will be most productive, when they are planted in the minds of this class of scholars.

I have only to add under this head, that the common amusements of children have no connection with their future occupations. Many of them injure their clothes, some of them waste their strength, and im­pair their health, and all of them prove, more or less, the means of producing noise, or of exciting an­gry passions, both of which are cal­culated to beget vulgar manners. The Methodists have wisely banish­ed every species of play from their college. Even the healthy and pleasurable exercise of swimming, is not permitted to their scholars, except in the presence of one of their masters.

Do not think me too strict if I here exclude gunning from among the amusements of young men. My objections to it are as follow.

1. It hardens the heart, by in­flicting unnecessary pain and death upon animals.

2. It is unnecessary in civilized society, where animal food may be obtained from domestic animals, with greater facility.

3. It consumes a great deal of time, and thus creates habits of idleness.

4. It frequently leads young men into low, and bad company.

5. By imposing long abstinence [Page 3] from food, it leads to intemperance in eating, which naturally leads to intemperance in drinking.

6. It exposes to fevers, and ac­cidents. The news-papers are oc­casionally filled with melancholy ac­counts of the latter, and every phy­sician must have met with frequent and dangerous instances of the for­mer, in the course of his practice.

I know the early use of a gun is recommended in our country, to teach our young men the use of fire-arms, and thereby to prepare them for war and battle. But why should we inspire our youth, by such exercises, with hostile ideas towards their fellow creatures?— Let us rather instill into their minds sentiments of universal benevolence to men of all nations and colours. Wars originate in error and vice. Let us eradicate these, by proper modes of education, and wars will cease to be necessary in our coun­try. The divine author and lover of peace "will then suffer no man to do us wrong; yea he will re­prove kings for our sake, saying, touch not my anointed and do my people no harm." Should the na­tions with whom war is a trade, approach our coasts, they will re­tire from us, as Satan did from our Saviour, when he came to assault him; and for the same reason, be­cause they will 'find nothing in us' congenial to their malignant dispo­sitions; for the flames of war can be spread from one nation to another, only by the conducting mediums of vice and error.

I have hinted at the injury which is done to the health of young peo­ple by some of their amusements; but there is a practice common in all our schools, which does more harm to their bodies than all the a­musements that can be named, and that is, obliging them to sit too long in one place, or crowding too many of them together in one room. By means of the former, the growth and shape of the body have been im­paired; and by means of the latter, the seeds of fevers have often been engendered in schools. In the course of my business, I have been called to many hundred children who have been seized with indispo­sitions in school, which evidently a­rose from the action of morbid ef­fluvia, produced by the confined breath and perspiration of too great a number of children in one room. To obviate these evils, children should be permitted, after they have said their lessons, to amuse themselves in the open air, in some of the useful and agreeable exercises which have been mentioned. Their minds will be strengthened, as well as their bodies relieved by them. To oblige a sprightly boy to sit se­ven hours in a day, with his little arms pinioned to his sides, and his neck unnaturally bent towards his book; and for no crime!—what cruelty and folly are manifested, by such an absurd mode of instructing or governing young people!

I come next to say a few words upon the subject of PUNISHMENTS which are proper in schools.

In barbarous ages every thing partook of the complexion of the times. Civil, ecclesiastical, military, and domestic punishments were all of a cruel nature. With the pro­gress of reason and christianity, punishments of all kinds have be­come less severe. Solitude and la­bour are now substituted in many countries, with success, in the room of the whipping-post and the gal­lows.—The innocent infirmities of human nature are no longer pro­scribed, and punished by the church. Discipline, consisting in the vigi­lance of officers, has lessened the supposed necessity of military exe­cutions; and husbands—fathers— [Page 4] and masters now blush at the histo­ry of the times, when wives, chil­dren, and servants, were govern­ed only by force. But unfortunate­ly this spirit of humanity and civili­zation has not reached our schools. The rod is yet the principal instru­ment of governing them, and a school-master remains the only des­pot now known in free countries. Perhaps it is because the little sub­jects of their arbitrary and caprici­ous power have not been in a con­dition to complain. I shall endea­vour therefore to plead their cause, and to prove that corporal punish­ments (except to children under four or five years of age) are never necessary, and always hurtful, in schools.—The following arguments I hope will be sufficient to establish this proposition.

1. Children are seldom sent to school before they are capable of feeling the force of rational or mo­ral obligation. They may there­fore be deterred from committing offences, by motives less disgrace­ful than the fear of corporal punish­ments.

2 By correcting children for ig­norance and negligence in school, their ideas of improper and immoral actions are confounded, and hence the moral faculty becomes weakned in after life. It would not be more cruel or absurd to inflict the punish­ment of the whipping-post upon a man, for not dressing fashionably or neatly, than it is to ferule a boy for blotting his copy-book, or mis­spelling a word.

3. If the natural affection of a parent is sometimes insufficient, to restrain the violent effects of a sud­den gust of anger upon a child, how dangerous must the power of cor­recting children be, when lodged in the hands of a school-master, in whose anger there is no mixture of parental affection! Perhaps those parents act most wisely, who ne­ver trust themselves to inflict cor­poral punishments upon their chil­dren, after they are four or five years old, but endeavour to punish, and reclaim them, by confinement, or by abridging them of some of their usual gratifications, in dress, food or amusements.

4. Injuries are sometimes done to the bodies, and sometimes to the intellects of children, by corporal punishments. I recollect, when a boy, to have lost a school-mate, who was said to have died in consequence of a severe whipping he received in school. At that time I did not believe it possible, but from what I now know of the disproportion be­tween the violent emotions of the mind, and the strength of the body in children, I am disposed to be­lieve, that not only sickness, but that even death may be induced, by the convulsions of a youthful mind, worked up to a high sense of shame and resentment.

The effects of thumping the head, boxing the ears, and pulling the hair, in impairing the intellects, by means of injuries done to the brain, are too obvious to be mentioned.

5. Where there is shame, says Dr. Johnson, there may be virtue. But corporal punishments, inflicted at school, have a tendency to de­stroy the sense of shame, and there­by to destroy all moral sensibility. The boy that has been often public­ly whipped at school, is under great obligations to his maker, and his parents, if he afterwards escape the whipping-post or the gallows.

6. Corporal punishments, inflict­ed at school, tend to beget a spirit of violence in boys towards each o­ther, which often follows them through life; but they more cer­tainly beget a spirit of hatred, or revenge, towards their masters, which too often becomes a ferment [Page 5] of the same baneful passions towards other people. The celebrated Dr. afterwards Baron Haller declared, that he never saw, without horror, during the remaining part of his life, a school-master, who had treated him with unmerited severi­ty, when he was only ten years old. A similar anecdote is related of the famous M. de Condamine. I think I have known several instan­ces of this vindictive, or indignant spirit, to continue towards a cruel and tyrannical school-master, in persons who were advanced in life, and who were otherwise of gentle and forgiving dispositions.

7. Corporal punishments, inflict­ed at schools, beget a hatred to in­struction in young people. I have sometimes suspected that the devil, who knows how great an enemy knowledge is to his kingdom, has had the address to make the world believe that feruling, pulling and boxing ears, cudgelling, horsing, &c. and, in boarding-schools, a lit­tle starving, are all absolutely neces­sary for the government of young people, on purpose that he might make both schools, and school-mas­ters odious, and thereby keep our world in ignorance; for ignorance is the best means the devil ever contrived, to keep up the number of his subjects in our world.

8 Corporal punishments are not only hurtful, but altogether unne­cessary, in schools. Some of the most celebrated and successful school-masters, that I have ever known, never made use of them.

9. The fear of corporal punish­ments, by debilitating the body, produces a corresponding debility in the mind, which contracts its ca­pacity of acquiring knowledge. This capacity is enlarged by the tone which the mind acquires from the action of hope, love, and con­fidence upon it; and all these pas­sions might easily be cherished, by a prudent and enlightened school-master.

10. As there should always be a certain ratio between the strength of a remedy, and the excitability of the body in diseases, so there should be a similar ratio between the force employed in the govern­ment of a school, and the capacities and tempers of children. A kind rebuke, like fresh air in a fainting fit, is calculated to act upon a young mind with more effect, than stimu­lants of the greatest power; but corporal punishments level all capa­cities and tempers, as quack-medi­cines do all constitutions and diseases. They dishonour and degrade our species; for they suppose a total ab­sence of all moral and intellectual feeling from the mind. Have we not often seen dull children sudden­ly improve, by changing their schools? The reason is obvious. The successful teacher only accom­modated his manner and discipline to the capacities of his scholars.

11. I conceive corporal punish­ments, inflicted in an arbitrary manner, to be contrary to the spi­rit of liberty, and that they should not be tolerated in a free govern­ment. Why should not children be protected from violence and inju­ries, as well as white and black ser­vants?—Had I influence enough in our legislature to obtain only a sin­gle law, it should be to make the punishment for striking a school­boy, the same as for assaulting and beating an adult member of socie­ty.

To all these arguments I know some well disposed people will re­ply, that the rod has received a di­vine commission from the sacred Scriptures, as the instrument of correcting children. To this I an­swer that the rod, in the Old Tes­tament, by a very common figure [Page 6] in rhetoric, stands for punishments of any kind, just as the sword, in the New Testament, stands for the faithful and general administration of justice, in such a way as is most calculated to reform criminals, and to prevent crimes.

The following method of govern­ing a school, I apprehend, would be attended with much better ef­fects, than that which I have en­deavoured to shew, to be contrary to reason, humanity, religion, li­berty, and the experience of the wisest and best teachers in the world.

Let a school-master endeavour, in the first place, to acquire the confidence of his scholars, by a pru­dent deportment. Let him learn to command his passions and tem­per, at all times, in his school.— Let him treat the name of the Su­preme Being with reverence, as often as it occurs in books, or in conversation with his scholars.— Let him exact a respectful behavi­our towards himself, in his school; but in the intervals of school-hours, let him treat his scholars with gen­tleness and familiarity. If he should even join in their amusements, he would not lose, by his condescen­sion, any part of his authority over them. But to secure their affection and respect more perfectly, let him, once or twice a year, lay out a small sum of money in pen-knives, and books, and distribute them a­mong his scholars, as rewards for proficiency in learning, and for good behaviour. If these prudent and popular measures should fail of pre­venting offences at school, then let the following modes of punishment be adopted.

1. Private admonition. By this mode of rebuking, we imitate the conduct of the divine Being to­wards his offending creatures, for His first punishment is always in­flicted privately, by means of the still voice of conscience.

2. Confinement after school-hours are ended; but with the knowledge of the parents of chil­dren.

3. Holding a small sign of disgrace, of any kind, in the middle of the floor, in the presence of a whole school.

If these punishments fail of re­claiming a bad boy, he should be dismissed from school, to prevent his corrupting his school-mates. It is the business of parents, and not of school-masters, to use the last means for eradicating idleness and vice from their children.

The world was created in love. It is sustained by love. Nations and families that are happy, are made so only by love. Let us extend this divine principle, to those little com­munities which we call schools. Children are capable of loving in a high degree. They may therefore be governed by love.

The occupation of a school-master is truly dignified. He is (next to mothers) the most import­ant member of civil society. Why then is there so little rank connect­ed with that occupation? Why do we treat it with so much neglect, or contempt? It is because the voice of reason, in the human heart, associ­ates with it the idea of despotism and violence. Let school-masters cease to be tyrants, and they will soon enjoy the respect and rank, which are naturally connected with their profession.

We are grosly mistaken in look­ing up wholly to our governments, and even to ministers of the gospel, to promote public and private order in society. Mothers and school-masters plant the seeds of nearly all the good and evil which exist [Page 7] in our world. Its reformation must therefore be begun in nur­series and in schools. If the ha­bits we acquire there, were to have no influence upon our future happiness, yet the influence they have upon our governments, is a sufficient reason why we ought to introduce new modes, as well as new objects of education into our country.

You have lately been employed in an attempt to perpetuate our ex­istence as a free people, by esta­blishing the means of national cre­dit and defence; ^* but these are feeble bulwarks against slavery, compared with habits of labour and virtue, disseminated among our young people. Let us establish schools for this purpose, in every township in the United States, and conform them to reason, humanity, and the present state of society in America. Then, Sir, will the ge­nerations who are to follow us, re­alize the precious ideas of the dig­nity and excellence of republican forms of government, which I well recollect you cherished with so much ardor, in the beginning of the American revolution, and which you have manifested ever since, both by your public and private con­duct.

We suffer so much from tradi­tional error of various kinds, in e­ducation, morals, and government, that I have been led to wish, that it were possible for us to have schools established, in the United States, for teaching the art of forgetting. I think three-fourths of all our school-masters, divines, and legislators would profit very much, by spending two or three years in such useful in­stitutions.

An apology may seem necessary, not only for the length of this letter, but for some of the opinions contain­ed in it. I know how apt mankind are to brand every proposition for innovation, as visionary and Uto­pian. But good men should not be discouraged, by such epithets, from their attempts to combat vice and error. There never was an improvement, in any art or science, nor even a proposal for meliorating the condition of man, in any age or country, that has not been con­sidered in the light of what has been called, since Sir Thomas More's time, an Utopian scheme. The application of the magnet to navigation, and of steam to mecha­nical purposes, have both been branded as Utopian projects. The great idea in the mind of Columbus, of exploring a new world, was long viewed, in most of the courts of Europe, as the dream of a vi­sionary sailor. But why do we go to ancient times, for proofs of im­portant innovations in human af­fairs having been treated as Utopi­an schemes. You and I recollect the time, when the abolition of ne­gro slavery in our state, as also when the independence of the U­nited States, and the present wise and happy confederacy of our re­publics, were all considered by ma­ny of our sober prudent men, as subjects of an Utopian nature.

If those benefactors of mankind, who have levelled mountains in the great road of human life, by the discoveries or labours which have been mentioned, have been stigma­tized with obloquy, as visionary projectors, why should an indivi­dual be afraid of similar treatment, who has only attempted to give to [Page 8] that road, from its beginning, a straight direction.

If only a dozen men like your­self, approve of my opinions, it will overbalance the most illiberal op­position they may meet with, from all the learned vulgar of the United States.

For the benefit of those persons who consider opinions as improved, like certain liquors, by time; and who are opposed to innovations, only because they did not occur to their ancestors, I shall conclude my letter with an anecdote of a minis­ter in London, who, after employ­ing a long sermon, in controverting what he supposed to be an heretical opinion, concluded it with the fol­lowing words, "I tell you, I tell you my brethren,—I tell you again, —that an old error is better than a new truth."

P. S. Since writing the above letter, an ingenious German friend of mine has informed me, that a curious work has lately appeared in Germany, entitled, "A trea­tise on human misery," written by a Mr. Salzman, an enlightened school-master, in which a striking view is given of the misery inflict­ed upon part of the human race, by the present absurd, and cruel modes of conducting education in public schools. The author concludes this part of his work, my friend informs me, with a dream, in which he beholds with ineffable joy, the avenging angel descending from heaven, and afterwards consuming in an immense bonfire, certain ab­surd school-books, and all the fe­rules in the world.