Phenix Gazette

From the Boston Patriot,

A school on the plan of Pestalozzi, the distinguished Swiss teacher, is to be commenced at Lexington, Kentucky, by the Rev. Benjamin Parker. Pestalozzi's method of instruction is almost universally approved, and his principles are in a great measure adopted by the most judicious instructors in this country, who have been acquainted with it. The most prominent points in his method, are, to lead children to exercise their own powers of reasoning, and never to take anything for granted until they have investigated it. The first design of the instructor is to gain the love and confidence of his pupils, and to discountenance every appearance of disingenuousness in their intercourse with him and with one another. The time will soon arrive when the frown of the instructor will be more terrible than the birch or the cowskin; and those terrors to the delinquent or mischievous urchins of present & stronger generations, will be viewed by the happy children of future years, as we now view the whipping-post and the pillory. The human mind should not be degraded by corporal punishment if it can possibly be avoided. Let brutes be forced to obedience, and instructed in their duty by the lash and the goad, if kindness has no effect, but let man be guided by reason, and punished for departing from moral rectitude, by mental suffering, unconnected with bodily pain, whenever it may be practicable. It will be found so perhaps more often than is imagined, whenever attention shall be directed to discriminate between the various kinds of offences, and to discover in punishing which, bodily pain may be dispensed with.