Corporal Punishment as a Means of Education? Patterns of Interpretation in the German Educational Discourse in the First Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

In the last third of the 18th century, in the context of a general discursive reference to the child´s nature as a child and its naturalness there were attempts at making educational punishment more humane. Notwithstanding the critical debate on so called barbarious punishment, going as far as to a “campaign against stick and birch” (Möller), after all corporal punishment was not fundamentally questioned. Also suggestions in this respect did not push through in the discourse. This contribution is meant to explain the reasons for this, with the following central thesis: In the first half of the 19th century the debate on corporal punishment produced a contradicting context of justification - out of love for the child and in view of its future social activities, it was said, in case of inappropriate behaviour a child must indeed be punished, because although being capable of reason it is at first, like an animal, only open for sensory stimuli.

Keywords

• corporal punishment
• violence
• childhood
• means of education
• pedagogics