Quintillian: On the treatment of children
"I
disapprove of flogging, although it is the regular custom... because in
the first place it is a disgraceful form of punishment and fit only for
slaves, and is in any case an insult, as you will realize if you
imagine its infliction at a later age. Secondly if a boy is so
insensible to instruction that reproof is useless, he will, like the
worst type of slave, merely become hardened to blows...
And though you may compel a child with blows, what are you to do with
him when he is a young man no longer amenable to such threats and
confronted with tasks of far greater difficulty? Moreover when children
are beaten, pain or fear frequently have results of which it is not
pleasant to speak and which are likely subsequently to be a source of
shame, a shame which unnerves and depresses the mind and leads the child
to shun and loathe the light....I will not linger on this subject; it
is more than enough if I have made my meaning clear. I will content
myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and
that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them." -
Quintilian
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