Thrashing in Missouri, Turkey

Kansas City, Mo. still thrashes its naughty schoolchildren. But not so frequently as in the old days. Records published there last week showed that average daily school attendance in Kansas City for the year 1887-88 was 9,550. In that year, 466 pupils were whipped, 191 incorrigibles were suspended. Last year the city's pupils numbered 70,000. There were only 230 corporal punishment cases, 21 suspensions.

One oldtime teacher sniffed at the report. Said she: "If 466 cases were reported there must have been 10,000 which were not."

Great believers in thrashing of the young used to be the Turks. But under the Turkish Republic thrashing of servants by masters, wives by husbands, children by fathers, is no longer condoned. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, anxious to make his country as Western as possible, has abolished the schoolmaster's rod along with fezzes, women's veils and the complicated Turkish alphabet. Illegal in their implications now are the old Turkish sayings:

The serpent's head is crushed while young.

The one who does not beat his daughter, beats his knees.

Beating came out of Paradise.

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