ABSTRACT
In former days, and until very recently, the punishment of children and boys and girls was taken as a matter of course, and was universally regarded as indispensable in education. We have seen in an earlier chapter what Dr Arnold thought about flogging, and his views were, at the time, exceptionally humane. Rousseau is associated with the theory of leaving things to nature, yet in Emile he occasionally advocates quite severe punishments. The conventional view, a hundred years ago, is set forth in one of the Cautionary Tales, in which a little girl makes a fuss because they are putting on her white sash when she wants her pink one.
