IV
Different Opinions
One evening at sunset, Jane Andrews, Gilbert Blythe, and Anne Shirley were lingering by a fence in the shadow of gently swaying spruce boughs, where a wood cut known as the Birch Path joined the main road. Jane had been up to spend the afternoon with Anne, who walked part of the way home with her; at the fence they met Gilbert, and all three were now talking about the fateful morrow; for that morrow was the first of September and the schools would open. Jane would go to Newbridge and Gilbert to White Sands.
“You both have the advantage of me,” sighed Anne. “You’re going to teach children who don’t know you, but I have to teach my own old schoolmates, and Mrs. Lynde says she’s afraid they won’t respect me as they would a stranger unless I’m very cross from the first. But I don’t believe a teacher should be cross. Oh, it seems to me such a responsibility!”
“I guess we’ll get on all right,” said Jane comfortably. Jane was not troubled by any aspirations to be an influence for good. She meant to earn her salary fairly, please the trustees, and get her name on the School Inspector’s roll of honour. Further ambitions Jane had none. “The main thing will be to keep order and a teacher has to be a little cross to do that. If my pupils won’t do as I tell them I shall punish them.”
“How?”
“Give them a good whipping, of course.”
“Oh, Jane, you wouldn’t,” cried Anne, shocked. “Jane, you couldn’t!”
“Indeed, I could and would, if they deserved it,” said Jane decidedly.
“I could never whip a child,” said Anne with equal decision. “I don’t believe in it at all. Miss Stacy never whipped any of us and she had perfect order; and Mr. Phillips was always whipping and he had no order at all. No, if I can’t get along without whipping I shall not try to teach school. There are better ways of managing. I shall try to win my pupils’ affections and then they will want to do what I tell them.”
“But suppose they don’t?” said practical Jane.
“I wouldn’t whip them anyhow. I’m sure it wouldn’t do any good. Oh, don’t whip your pupils, Jane dear, no matter what they do.”
“What do you think about it, Gilbert?” demanded Jane. “Don’t you think there are some children who really need a whipping now and then?”
“Don’t you think it’s a cruel, barbarous thing to whip a child … any child?” exclaimed Anne, her face flushing with earnestness.
“Well,” said Gilbert slowly, torn between his real convictions and his wish to measure up to Anne’s ideal, “there’s something to be said on both sides. I don’t believe in whipping children much. I think, as you say, Anne, that there are better ways of managing as a rule, and that corporal punishment should be a last resort. But on the other hand, as Jane says, I believe there is an occasional child who can’t be influenced in any other way and who, in short, needs a whipping and would be improved by it. Corporal punishment as a last resort is to be my rule.”
Gilbert, having tried to please both sides, succeeded, as is usual and eminently right, in pleasing neither. Jane tossed her head.
“I’ll whip my pupils when they’re naughty. It’s the shortest and easiest way of convincing them.”
Anne gave Gilbert a disappointed glance.
“I shall never whip a child,” she repeated firmly. “I feel sure it isn’t either right or necessary.”
“Suppose a boy sauced you back when you told him to do something?” said Jane.
“I’d keep him in after school and talk kindly and firmly to him,” said Anne. “There is some good in every person if you can find it. It is a teacher’s duty to find and develop it. That is what our School Management professor at Queen’s told us, you know. Do you suppose you could find any good in a child by whipping him? It’s far more important to influence the children aright than it is even to teach them the three R’s, Professor Rennie says.”
“But the Inspector examines them in the three R’s, mind you, and he won’t give you a good report if they don’t come up to his standard,” protested Jane.
“I’d rather have my pupils love me and look back to me in after years as a real helper than be on the roll of honour,” asserted Anne decidedly.
“Wouldn’t you punish children at all, when they misbehaved?” asked Gilbert.
“Oh, yes, I suppose I shall have to, although I know I’ll hate to do it. But you can keep them in at recess or stand them on the floor or give them lines to write.”
“I suppose you won’t punish the girls by making them sit with the boys?” said Jane slyly.
Gilbert and Anne looked at each other and smiled rather foolishly. Once upon a time, Anne had been made to sit with Gilbert for punishment and sad and bitter had been the consequences thereof.
“Well, time will tell which is the best way,” said Jane philosophically as they parted.
Anne went back to Green Gables by way of the Birch Path, shadowy, rustling, fern-scented, through Violet Vale and past Willowmere, where dark and
