The methods by which children were prepared to be honest, trustworthy, responsible and productive adults evolved over the course of human history and are still evolving. While the methods may differ from culture to culture, discipline is seen as important in all cultures.
The regular administration of harsh (and sometimes very severe) physical punishment was widely seen as the best method of disciplining children (in what we call the Western World at least, which is the only culture that I have direct experience of) over many centuries [1]. This was as true (in different ways) for children born into privileged backgrounds as it was for the children of the poor.
The connection between consistent and enduring misbehaviour in young children and the fact that they may have experienced, or be in need of protection from trauma or traumas was not (generally) made until quite recently, though I would argue that there was always a felt awareness of the link between traumatic experiences as a small child and problematic behaviour as an older child and/or young adult among people in general.
I intuit, (and also I conclude, from talking to many people who have been to prison and who spent many years of their childhood in institutions) that at some point in time in Ireland in the mid-20th Century the link between the two was made by those with responsibility for children’s education and development.
However, the lack of understanding of how complex a job protecting such children is, (combined with the prevailing culture of the time), led to the decision that a controlled kind of physical abuse (which, to make it appear less harmful, was known as corporal punishment) would be the dominant method by which the behaviour of children would be corrected or improved so that they would grow up to be the responsible, productive, (and indeed happy) [2], adults that I referred to above.
Nowadays, discipline is still seen as the key to healthy upbringing. However, the methods of disciplining children have changed from dishing out beatings and shouting harsh critical put-downs to offering encouragement, praising of what is going well and reinforcing all that is positive in the child – in theory at least.
I fear, though, that sometimes harshness has been replaced by something else that is, perhaps, not as damaging as hitting and insulting children, but potentially has a very negative effect nonetheless. My fears in this regard are described in various posts throughout the blog and particularly in this post.
I will come back to this subject in the Chapter on Important Descriptions, particularly in the Sub-Chapter on Academia and Education.
[1]. I refer to this again in the Chapter on Anthropology in Section Three – in respect of raising children in hunter-gatherer societies, where, as many researchers have shown, methods of disciplining were/are far different.
[2]. I am sure that most of you would have heard the expression spare the rod and spoil the child!