Chastisements and punishments in the Lancasterian method: (un)humanist education in the 19th century

Abstract

The Lancasterian punishments contained in the Decree Law of 1827 were attached to a fragment of the Book of Lancaster translated by William Skinner. The literature on the history of education and the description of Lancasterian punishments in Brazil are described in a hermeneutic overlap of this manuscript without going to the primary source. We did an on-site search at the British Museum in London on Joseph Lancaster's original books. The objective was to understand directly from the author's work the description of punishments in the schools of first letters and their form.  We used as methodology the indicia method with an on-site research and qualitative, documentary and bibliographic interpretation. The results show that Lancasterian punishments were human and contrary to physical suffering, but represented moral embarrassment, psychological suffering and physical constriction: punishments similar to those used in adult prisons.