Jim Kershner’s this day in history
From our archives, 100 years ago
A noted educator and psychologist got the attention of 1,000 teachers at a convention in Spokane when he told them they should occasionally say “Damn!” in class.
The president of Clark University said he didn’t exactly want to argue “in favor of swearing.” But sometimes, even a teacher has to let some anger show, damn it.
“Anger is a tremendous passion,” said G. Stanley Hall. “… There is something wrong with these people who never show their temper.”
He also believed in occasionally provoking the temper of students. “We should teach the child to be angry aright,” he said.
Hall went even further, saying that he believed in “flogging the bad boy” and that babies should be allowed to cry. Education, he said, might be defined as “teaching people to fear aright.”
He was stating these harsh truths, he said, because women teachers – most of his audience – were inclined to be too sympathetic to their young charges.
Were they sympathetic to Hall’s doctrine? The story did not specify.
Also on this date
(From the Associated Press)
1614: Pocahontas, daughter of the leader of the Powhatan tribe, married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia. (A convert to Christianity, she went by the name Lady Rebecca.)