Your toddler has just thrown a tantrum and you are grappling with how to respond: Is it okay to set boundaries by sending them off to their bedroom? As the summer approaches, psychologists and families are still divided over these questions, reviving the debate around constraint or sanction-free education, otherwise known as ‘positive education’.
No one would disagree that the educational process should be rid of all physical and psychological violence. The brutality of past centuries is chilling. From the cane to the dunce’s cap to solitary confinement, the range of merciless punitive practices is almost endless, as shown by the recently published Whip and smack dictionary_(i.e. Dictionnaire du fouet et de la fessée)_.
However, banning violence is not the same as condemning authority. Coercion has its virtues, as does punishment. It is astonishing in this debate to see how educational history is often falsified or even simply forgotten.
