NRS-17186 | Punishment Book [Stewart's Brook Public School]

Regulations under the Public Schools Act of 1866, adopted by the Council [of Education] 27 February 1867 regulated the punishment of children in schools by stipulating: “In the government of the pupils, all degrading and injurious punishments are to be avoided. The Teacher’s discipline must be mild but firm, his manner kindly, his demeanour cheerful and calculated to gain the confidence of his pupils, and his language marked by strict propriety. While he should overlook no offence, his aim should be to prevent the necessity for punishment by the improvement of the offender.”In relation to corporal punishment the regulations continue: “Corporal punishment should be inflicted in extreme cases only, and then as a last resource; and the teacher must keep a record of the time and place at which pupils were corporally chastised, the amount of such punishment and the nature of the offence.”Uniform stationery soon evolved to enable compliance with these regulations. These punishment books are registers of all cases in which corporal punishment was given to pupils. The information they detail includes: the pupil’s name; age; nature of offence; amount of punishment (i.e. number of strokes); by whom sent; the date of the punishment; and by whom the punishment was inflicted.It appears that the portion of this volume dealing with the period from 1897 to 1900 is not the original record, but a transcription of an original set of entries which had been kept separately. The penmanship speaks to continuous transcription in this section of the volume, as do several obvious errors in the copying of dates, and the circumstance that there is an hiatus between the entries for May, 1897 and November, 1898 which coincides with the turning of a page. No Inspector’s signature occurs between 1894 and 1906. Again, the entries from late 1912 until the end of 1913 appear all to have been transcribed into the volume on one occasion prior to the visit of the Inspector in September, 1914.

《1866年公立学校法案》下的规定于1867年2月27日由教育委员会通过，其中对学校儿童的惩罚作出如下规定：“在学生管理中，应避免所有有辱人格及有害的惩罚。教师的管教须温和而坚定，态度亲切，举止开朗且旨在赢得学生信任，语言需恪守得体准则。虽不应忽视任何过错，但教师的目标应是通过促使违规者改正来避免惩罚的必要性。”

关于体罚（corporal punishment），规定进一步指出：“体罚仅应在极端情况下作为最后手段实施；教师须记录学生受体罚的时间、地点、惩罚程度及违规性质。”

统一文具很快应运而生，以助于遵守这些规定。这些惩罚记录簿是所有学生体罚案例的登记册，详细信息包括：学生姓名、年龄、违规性质、惩罚程度（即鞭数）、由谁下令、惩罚日期及由谁执行。

似乎本册中涉及1897年至1900年的部分并非原始记录，而是对单独保存的原始条目集的转录。笔迹表明该部分为连续转录，日期抄写中的若干明显错误及1897年5月至1898年11月条目间存在的空白（恰与翻页时间一致）也印证了这一点。1894年至1906年间无督学签名。此外，1912年末至1913年底的条目似乎均在1914年9月督学到访前一次性转录入册。