In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," how did Ichabod Crane treat his students?

Ichabod's behavior with his students
is best described in this paragraph:

he
administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs
of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong.Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the
least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were
satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch
urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch.All this he called
"doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a
chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that
"he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to
live."

What we get from this description by
"The Late Diedrich Knickerbocker"'s papers is basically that Ichabod was a stern
believer in the old Dutch school in which the likes of Van Eyck and many others can also
appreciate the old normative and extremely strict systems of instruction. Ichabod was no player
with the boys, but he was more than willing to "play" with the girls.

However, like the first poster said, he also wanted to fill in the spot a parent might
miss, and he also shared with his male students in after school activities. Yet, he always kept
that "old time" distance that is meant to exist between a philosopher and his
apprentice, and he meant business when it comes to that. Yet, as you can also infer from the
description, Ichabod did try not to punish the weak and confused more than he did the strong and
hard-headed. So, among his many flaws and contradictory actions with his students, he was
consistent in his direct assessment of what needed to be done to make his students serious about
what they had to be.

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