On discipline

It is disgraceful to call them hurtful names... Keep an eye on that Brother who slaps the students and see to it that he stops doing it.St. John Baptist de la Salle

In general, the system we ought to adopt is called Preventive, which consists in so disposing the hearts of our students that they ought to be willing to do what we ask of them without need of external violence. I would like to think that coercive means are never to be used, but only and exclusively those suggested by patience and charity.~ Don Bosco

I found this about St. Anselm, but couldn't find the original quote: It’s best brought home to us in a story about St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. An abbot told Anselm of the difficulties he was having in bringing up boys in his care. The abbot was a disciplinarian, beating the boys for each and every misdemeanour. Anselm could not contain his disagreement: "In God’s name", he burst out, "I would have you tell me why you are so incensed against them. Are they not human? Are they not flesh and blood like you?" The boys, he said, need "the encouragement and help of fatherly sympathy and gentleness", not just blows.

"Just as love is the supreme commandment with regards to the personal God, so too only love can be our fundamental obligation toward the human person, created in God's image and likeness." JPII, Memory and Identity