Part 5

"Name an important event in British History for each of any eight of the following years:--1314, 1688, 1759, &c." ... and Wells says that teaching is the most creative profession of all!

"Write an essay of twenty lines or so on any one of these subjects:--School, Holidays, Examinations, Bursaries, Books." The examiners might have added a few other bright interesting topics such as Truth, Morals, Faith, Courage.

"Name the poem to which each of the following lines belongs, and add, if you can, the next line in each case, &c." There are ten lines, and I can only spot six of them. And I am, theoretically, an English scholar; I took an Honours English Degree under Saintsbury. But my degree is only a second class one; that no doubt accounts for my lack of knowledge.

That the compilers of the paper are not fools is shown by the fact that they ask a question like this:--"A man loses a dog, you find it; write and tell him that you have found it."

The Arithmetic paper is quite good. My bairns are to fail; I simply cannot teach them to answer papers like these.

X.

I tried an experiment to-day. I gave an exam. in History, and each pupil was allowed to use a text-book. The best one was first, she knew what to select. I deprecate the usual exam. system of allotting a prescribed time to each paper. Blyth Webster, the racy young lecturer in English in Edinburgh University, used to allow us an indefinite time for our Old English papers. I generally required a half hour to give him all I knew about Old English, but I believe that some students sat for five hours. Students write and think at different rates, and the time limit is always unjust.

I wish the Department would allow me to set the Higher Grade Leavings English papers for once. My paper would certainly include the following:--

"If Shakespeare came back to earth what do you think would be his opinion of Women's Suffrage (refer to _The Taming of the Shrew_) Home Rule, Sweated Labour, the Kaiser?"

"Have you read any Utopia? If not, it doesn't matter; write one of your own. (Note ... a Utopia is an ideal country--this side the grave.)"

"Discuss Spenser's idea of chivalry, and state what you think would be his opinion on table manners, Soho, or any slum you know, "the Present State of Ireland."

"What would Burns have thought of the prevalence of the kilt among the Semitic inhabitants of Scotland? Is Burns greater than Harry Lauder? Tell me why you think he isn't or is."

"Discuss the following humorists and alleged humorists:--Dickens, Jacobs, Lauder, Jerome, Leacock, Storer Clouston, Wells (in _Kipps_, and _Mr. Polly_), Locke (in _Septimus_), Bennett (in _The Card_), Mark Twain, your class teacher, the average magistrate."

"If you have not read any humour at all, write a humorous dialogue between a brick and the mongrel dog it came in contact with."

I hold that my exam. paper would discover any genius knocking about in ignorance of his or her powers. I intend to offer it to the Department ... when I am out of the profession.

* * *

It is extremely difficult for any teacher to keep from getting into a rut. The continual effort to make things simple and elementary for children is apt to deaden the intellect.

To-night I felt dull; I simply couldn't think. So I took up a volume of Nietzsche, and I now know the remedy for dullness. Nietzsche is a genius; he dazzles one ... and he almost persuades. To-night I am doubting. Is my belief in a great democracy all wrong? Is it true that there is a slave class that can never be anything else? Is our Christian morality a slave morality which is evolving the wrong type of human?

I think of the pity and kindness which is making us keep alive the lunatic and the incurable; I am persuaded to believe that our hospitals are in the long run conducing to an unfit race. Unfit physically; but unfit mentally? Is Sandow the Superman? Will Nietzsche's type of Master man with his physical energy and warlikeness prove to be the best?

I think that the journalists who are anathematising Nietzsche are wrong; I don't believe the Kaiser ever read a line of his. But I think that every German is subconsciously a believer in energy and "Master Morality"; Nietzsche was merely one who realised his nature. The German religion is undoubtedly the religion of the Old Testament; to them "good" is all that pertains to power; their God is the tyrant of the Old Testament. Nietzsche holds that the New Testament code of morals was invented by a conquered race; the poor were meek and servile, and they looked forward to a time when they would be in glory while the rich man frizzled down below.

No man can scorn Nietzsche; you are forced to listen to him. Only fools can dismiss him with the epithet "Madman!"

But I cannot follow him; I believe that if pity and kindness are wrong, then wrong is right. Yet I see that Nietzsche is wise in saying that there must always be one stone at the top of the pyramid. The question is this:--Will a democracy always be sure to choose the right man? I wonder.

I found one arresting statement in the book:--"If we have a degenerate mean environment, the fittest will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy and meanness; he will survive." That is what is happening now. I believe that the people will one day be capable of altering this basis of society; Nietzsche believed that the people are mostly of the slave variety, and that a better state of affairs could only come about through the breeding of Supermen ... masters. "The best shall rule," says he. Who are the best? I ask, and I really cannot answer myself.

* * *

As I go forward with these notes I find that I become more and more impelled to write down thoughts that can only have a remote connection with the education of children. I think the explanation lies in the fact that every day I realise more and more the futility of my school-work. Indeed, I find myself losing interest sometimes; I go through a lesson on Geography mechanically; in short, I drudge occasionally. But I always awake at Composition time.

I find it useless to do home correction; a bairn won't read the blue pencil marks. I must sit down beside him while I correct; and this takes too much time ... from a timetable point of view.

But the mistakes in spelling and grammar are minor matters, what I look for are ideas. I never set a dull subject of the How-I-spent-my-holidays type; every essay must appeal to the imagination. "Suppose you go to sleep for a thousand years," I said, "and tell the story of your awaking." I asked my Qualifying to become invisible; most of them took to thieving and spying. I gave them Wells's _The Invisible Man_ and _When the Sleeper Wakes_ to read later.

"Go to Mrs. Rabbit's Garden Party, and describe it." One boy went as a wolf, and returned with the party inside. A girl went as a weasel and left early because she could not eat the lettuce and cabbage on the table. One boy went as an elephant and could not get in.

"Write a child of seven's account of washing day," I said to my Qualifying, and I got some delightful baby-talk from Margaret Steel and Violet Brown.

"Imagine that you are the last man left alive on earth." This essay produced some good work; most of the girls were concerned about the fact that there was no one to bury them when they died.

The best results of all came from this subject:--"Die at the age of ninety, and write the paragraph about yourself to the local paper." Most of them made the present minister make a few pious remarks from the pulpit; one girl was clever enough to name a strange minister.

A newspaper correspondence interests a class. "Make a Mr. James Smith write a letter to _The Scotsman_ saying that he saw a cow smoking a cigar one night; then write the replies." One boy made a William Thomson suggest that a man must have been standing beside the cow in the darkness. Smith replied that this was impossible, for any man standing beside a cow would be a farmer or a cattleman, and "neither of them can afford to smoke cigars."

* * *

I notice that many School Boards insist on having Trained Teachers. Is it possible to "train" a teacher? Are teachers not born like poets? I think they are. I have seen untrained teachers at work, and I have seen trained teachers; I never observed a scrap of difference. All I would say to a young teacher is: "Ask questions. Ask why there is a fence round the field, ask why there is a fence round that tree in the field, then ask whether any plant or tree has a natural fence of its own."

And I think I should say this: "A good teacher will begin a lesson on Cromwell, touch, in passing, Jack Johnson, Charlie Chaplin, Votes for Women, guinea pigs, ghosts, and finish up with an enquiry into Protective Coloration of Animals."

The Code seems to be founded on the assumption that the teachers of Scotland don't know their business. Why specify that Nature Study will be taught? Any good teacher will refer to Nature every five minutes of the day. To me teaching is a ramble through every subject the teacher knows.

No, I don't think a teacher can be trained, but I am prejudiced; I took the Acting Teachers' Certificate Exam ... and passed Third Class. In the King's Scholarship I was ninety-ninth in the list of a hundred and one. Luckily, the Acting Teachers' list was given in alphabetical order.

I had a friend at the university, Anderson was his name, a medical. He had passed in Physics, and naturally his name was near the beginning of the list. His local paper had it "A Brilliant Student." Anderson got through at the ninth shot.

* * *

To-day I talked about crime and punishment. I told my bairns that a criminal cannot help himself; heredity and environment make a man good or bad. I spoke of the environment that makes millions of children diseased morally and physically, and of the law that punishes a man for the sins of the community. I told them that there should be no prisons; if a man is a murderer he is not responsible for his actions, and he must be confined ... but not in prison.

Our present system is not justice; it is vengeance. I once saw a poor waif sent to prison for stealing a pair of boots, sent to the care of warders, sent to acquire a hatred of his fellowmen. Justice would have asked: "Why did he steal? Why had he no boots? What sort of life has he been forced to lead?" and I know that the waif would have been acquitted.

I told my bairns that to cure any evil you must get at the root of it, and I incidentally pointed to the Insurance Act, and said that it was like treating a man with a suppurating appendix for the headache that was one of the symptoms. I told them that their fathers have not tried to get at the root of evil, that their prisons and cats and oakum are cowardly expedients. The evil is that the great majority of people are poor slaves, while the minority live on their earnings. That isn't politics; it is truth. I told them that if I had been born in the Cowgate of Edinburgh I should have been a thief and a drunkard ... and society would have added to my curse of heredity and environment the pains and brutishness of a prison. And yet men accuse me of attaching too much importance to material reforms.

* * *

I have not used the strap for many weeks now. I hope that I shall never use it again. I found a boy smoking a cigarette to-day. Four years ago I should have run him into the school and welted him. To-day I spoke to him. "Joseph," I said, "I smoke myself, and at your age I smoked an occasional Woodbine. But it isn't really good for a boy, and I hope you won't get into the habit of buying cigs. with your pocket money." He smiled and told me that he didn't really like it; he just smoked for fun. And he tossed the cigarette over a wall.

A very clever friend of mine talks about the "Hamlet cramp." I've got it. Other men have a definite standard of right and wrong; I have none. The only original sin that I believe in is the cruelty that has come to man from the remote tree-dweller.

XI.

A villager stopped me on my way to school this morning. "Look at that," he cried, pointing to a broken branch on a tree in his garden, "that's what comes o' yer nae discipline ideas. That's ane o' yer laddies that put his kite into ma gairden. Dawm it, A'll no stand that! Ye'll jest go doon to the school and gie that boy the biggest leathering that he's ever had in his life."

I explained patiently that I was not the village constable, and I told him that the broken branch had nothing to do with me. He became angry, but he became speechless when I said, "I sympathise with you. Had it been my garden I should have sworn possibly harder than you have done. On the other hand, had it been twenty years ago and my kite, well, I should have done exactly what the boy did. Good morning."

Although it was no concern of mine I called the boy out, and advised him to try to think of other people. Then I addressed the bairns. "You might convey to your parents," I said, "that I am not the policeman in this village; I'm a schoolmaster."

I think that many parents are annoyed at my giving up punishment. They feel that I am not doing their work for them; they think that the dominie should do the training of children ... other people's children, not their own. I find that I am trying to do a very difficult thing. The home influence is bad in many cases; the children hear their parents slight the teacher, and they do not know what to think. The average parent looks upon the teacher as an enemy. If I hit a boy the parents side with him, if I don't hit the boy who hit their boy, they indignantly ask what education is coming to. Many a night I feel disheartened. I find that I am on the side of the bairns. I am against law and discipline; I am all for freedom of action.

* * *

At last I have attained my ambition. As a boy my great ambition was to possess a cavalry trumpet and bugle. I have just bought both. I call the bairns to school with "Stables" or the "Fall In," and I gleefully look forward to playtime so that I may have another tootle. The bairns love to hear the calls, but I think I enjoy them most.

I try hard to share the bairns' joys. At present I am out with them every day flying kites, and I never tire of this. The boys bring me their comic papers, but I find that I cannot laugh at them as I used to do. Yet, I like to see _Chips_; Weary Willie and Tired Tim are still figuring on the front page, but their pristine glory is gone. When I first knew them they were the creation of Tom Browne, and no artist can follow Tom in his own line.

I miss the old "bloods"; I used to glory in the exploits of Frank Reade and Deadwood Dick. I have sat on a Sunday with _Deadwood Dick_ in the covers of a family Bible, and my old grandmother patted my head and told me I was a promising lad.

Then there was Buffalo Bill--tuppence coloured; I never see his name now. I wonder why so many parents and teachers cuff boys' heads when they find them reading comic papers and "bloods." I see no harm in either. I wish that people would get out of the absurd habit of taking it for granted that whatever a boy does is wrong. I hold that a boy is nearly always right.

I see in to-day's _Scotsman_ that a Sheriff substitute in Edinburgh has sentenced two brothers of nine and ten to twelve stripes with the birch rod for stealing tuppence ha'penny. The account remarked that the brothers had previously had a few stripes for a similar theft. That punishment is no prevention is proved in this case.

The Sheriff Substitute must have a very definite idea of righteousness; I envy him his conscience free from all remembrance of shortcomings in the past. For my part had I been sitting in judgment on the poor laddies I should have recollected the various times I have travelled first with a third ticket, sneaked into circuses by lifting the tent cover, laid farthings on the railway so that they might become ha'pennies, or, with a special piece of luck--a goods train--pennies. Then I should have invited the boys to tea, and sent them home with _Comic Cuts_, two oranges, and a considerable bit of chewing gum. Anyhow, my method would have brought out any good in the boys. The method of the judge will bring out no good; it may make the boys feel that they are enemies of society. And I should like to ask the gentleman what he would do if his young son stole the jam. I'm sure he would not send for the birch rod. The damnable thing about the whole affair is that he is probably a very nice kindly man who would not whip a dog with his own hand. His misfortune is his being part of a system.

* * *

I have just added a few volumes to my school library. I tried to recollect the books that I liked as a youth; then I wrote for catalogues of "sevenpennies." The new books include these:--_The Prisoner of Zenda_ and its sequel, _Rupert of Hentzau_, _King Solomon's Mines_, _Montezuma's Daughter_, _The Four Feathers_, _A Gentleman of France_, _White Fang_, _The Call of the Wild_, _The Invisible Man_, _The War of the Worlds_, _The War in the Air_, _Dr. Nikola_, _A Bid for Fortune_, _Micah Clarke_. I find that the average bairn of thirteen cannot appreciate these stories. Margaret Steel was the only one who read _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ and asked for the sequel. Most of them stuck half way with _Zenda_. Guy Boothby's novels, the worst of the lot possibly, appealed to them strongly. The love element bores the boys, but the girls rather like it. One boy sat and yawned over _King Solomon's Mines_; then he took out a coloured comic and turned to the serial. I took the book away and told him to read the serial. Violet Brown prefers a book about giants from the infant room to all the romantic stories extant. After all, they are but children.

* * *

I am delighted with my sketching results. We go out every Wednesday and Friday afternoon, and many bairns are giving me good work. We usually end up with races or wading in the sea. There was much wonder when first they saw my bare feet, but now they take my feet for granted.

Modesty is strong here. The other day the big girls came to me and asked if they could come to school slipshod.

"You can come in your nighties for all I care," I said, and they gasped.

We sit outside all day now. My classes take books and wander away down the road and lie on the banks. When I want them I call with the bugle. Each class has a "regimental call," and they come promptly. They most of them sit down separately, but the chatterers like to sit together.

I force no bairn to learn in my school. The few who dislike books and lessons sit up when I talk to the class. The slackers are not always the most ignorant.

I am beginning to compliment myself on having a good temper. For the past six weeks I have left the manual room open at playtime and the boys have made many toys. But they have made a woeful mess of the cutting tools. It is trying to find that your favourite plane has been cracked by a boy who has extreme theories on the fixing of plane irons. But it is very comforting to know that the School Board will have to pay for the damage. Yes, my temper is excellent.

* * *

On Saturday I went to a Bazaar, and various members of the aristocracy talked to me. They talked very much in the manner they talk to their gardeners, and I was led to muse upon the social status of a dominie. What struck me most was the fact that they imitate royalty in the broaching of topics of conversation; I knew that I presumed when I entered new ground of conversation. The ladies were very polite and very regal, and very well pleased with themselves. One of them said: "I hope that you do your best to make these children realise that there are classes in society; so many of their parents refuse to see the good in other classes!"

"For my part," I answered, "I acknowledge one aristocracy--the aristocracy of intellect. I teach my children to have respect for thinking." She stared at me, and went away.

I am not prejudiced against the county people, but any superiority of manner annoys me. I simply have no use for ladies who live drifting lives. The lady-bountifuls, or should it be the ladies-bountiful? of Britain would be much better as typists; in these days of alleged scarcity of labour they might come down and mix with the lower orders. Their grace and breeding would do much to improve us, and we might be able to help them in some ways. I am not being cynical, I have a genuine admiration for the breeding and beauty of some society women.

The doctor and the minister are seldom patronised. I cannot for the life of me see why it is more lowly to cure a child of ignorance than measles.

I have heard it said that the real reason of the teacher's low social status is the fact that very often he is the son of a humble labourer. There is some truth in this. At the Training College and the University the student meets men of his own class only; he never learns the little tricks of deportment that make up society's criterion of a gentleman. But for my part I blame the circumstances under which a dominie works. In Scotland he is the servant of a School Board, and a School Board is generally composed of men who have but the haziest notion of the meaning of education. That is bad enough, but very often there is a feud between one or two members and the teacher. Perhaps the teacher does not get his coals from Mr. Brown the Chairman, perhaps Mr. Brown voted for another man when the appointment was made. It is difficult for a man who is ruled by a few low-idealed semi-illiterate farmers and pig-dealers to emphasise his social position.

Larger areas have been spoken of by politicians. Personally, I don't want larger areas; I want to see the profession run by the members, just as Law and Medicine are. It is significant that the medical profession has dropped considerably in the social scale since it allowed itself to work under the Insurance Act.

My ideal is an Education Guild which will replace the Scotch Education Department. It will draw up its own scheme of instruction, fix the salaries of its members, appoint its own inspectors, build its own schools. It will be directly responsible to the State which will remain the supreme authority.

I blame the teachers for their low social status. To-day they have no idea of corporate action. They pay their subscriptions to their Institute, and for the most part talk of stopping them on the ground that it is money wasted. The authorities of the Institute try to work for a better union, but they try clumsily and stodgily. They never write or talk forcibly; they resemble the Labour Members of Parliament in their having an eager desire to be respectable at any price. I don't know why it is, but when a professional man tries to put his thoughts on paper he almost always succeeds in saving nothing in many fine phrases.

What is really wrong with the Educational Institute of Scotland is hoary-headedness. It is run by old men and old wives. A big man in the Institute is usually a teacher with thirty years' experience as a headmaster. Well ... if a man can teach under the present system for thirty years and retain any originality or imagination at the end of that time he must be a genius.

I object to age and experience; I am all for youth and empiricism. After all, what is the use of experience in teaching? I could bet my boots that ninety-nine out of a hundred teachers use the methods they learned as pupil-teachers. Experience! I have heard dominies expatiate on innovations like Kindergarten and Blackboard Drawing. I still have to meet a dominie of experience who has any name but "fad" for anything in education later than 1880.