Rush- Thoughts Upon The Amusements and Punishments which are Proper for Schools

This essay by Rush was first printed in this magazine. Fox notes this in her bibliography. A subsequent printing was done in 1790. This is an example of that first printing. It is also included in his Essays, Literary, Moral & Philosophical.

In a letter to Jeremy Belknap August 5, 1790 Rush writes : I have concluded to publish my "Thoughts on the Amusements and Punishments Which are Proper for Schools" in the next number of the Columbian Magazine. If you think it will do good in your state, you can procure a place for it in your magazine of in any other of your periodical publications."

From Catalog II

Rush extended his arguments about punishment from the penitentiary to the schoolroom: the same principles that made public flogging counterproductive in criminal justice made corporal punishment counterproductive in education. Children, like criminals, were to be reformed through structured moral environments -- not degraded through pain. The pamphlet is characteristic of Rush's reach: he saw no category boundary between medical reform, penal reform, and educational reform. They were all aspects of the same project -- building a republic of virtuous citizens -- and medicine, properly understood, had something to say about all of them.