* * *
Why did I substitute "auld" for "dawmed" tattie-chips when I told the bairns the story. Art demands the "dawmed." I think I substituted the "auld" because I like a quiet life. I have no time to persuade indignant parents that "damn" is not a sin. But it was weakness on my part; I compromised, and compromise is always a lie.
This morning I had a note from a farmer in the neighbourhood.
"Dear Sir,—I send my son Andrew to get education at the school not Radical politics.I am,Yours respectfully,Andrew Smith."
"Dear Sir,—I send my son Andrew to get education at the school not Radical politics.
I am,Yours respectfully,Andrew Smith."
I called Andrew out.
"Andrew," I said, with a smile, "when you go home to-night tell your father that I hate Radicalism possibly more than he does."
The father came down to-night to apologise. "Aw thocht ye was ane o' they wheezin' Radicals," he explained. Then he added, "And what micht yer politics be?"
"I am a Utopian," I said modestly.
He scratched his head for a moment, then he gave it up and asked my opinion of the weather. We discussed turnips forhalf-an-hour, at the end of which time I am sure he was wondering how an M.A. could be such an ignoramus. We parted on friendly terms.
* * *
I do not think that I have any definite views on the teaching of religion to bairns; indeed, I have the vaguest notion of what religion means. I am just enough of a Nietzschean to protest against teaching children to be meek and lowly. I once shocked a dear old lady by saying that the part of the Bible that appealed to me most was that in which the Pharisee said: "I thank God that I am not as other men." I was young then, I have not the courage to say it now.
I do, however, hold strongly that teaching religion is not my job. The parish minister and the U.F. minister get good stipends for tending their flocks, and I do not see any reason in the world why I should have to look after the lambs. For one thing I am not capable. All I aim at is teaching bairns how to live ... possibly that is the true religion; my early training prevents my getting rid of the idea that religion is intended to teach people how to die.
To-day I was talking about the probableformation of the earth, how it was a ball of flaming gas like the sun, how it cooled gradually, how life came. A girl looked up and said: "Please, sir, what about the Bible?" I explained that in my opinion the creation story was a story told to children, to a people who were children in understanding. I pointed out a strange feature, discovered to me by the parish minister, that the first chapter of Genesis follows the order of scientific evolution ... the earth is without form, life rises from the sea, then come the birds, then the mammals.
But I am forced to give religious instruction. I confine my efforts to the four gospels; the bairns read them aloud. I seldom make any comment on the passages.
In geography lessons I often take occasion to emphasise the fact that Muhammudans and Buddhists are not necessarily stupid folk who know no better. I cannot lead bairns to a religion, but I can prevent their being stupidly narrow.
No, I fear I have no definite opinions on religion.
I set out to enter the church, but I think that I could not have stayed in it. I fancythat one fine Sunday morning I would have stood up in the pulpit and said: "Friends, I am no follower of Christ. I like fine linen and tobacco, books and comfort. I should be in the slums, but I am not Christlike enough to go there. Goodbye."
I wonder! Why then do I not stand up and say to the School Board: "I do not believe in this system of education at all. I am a hypocrite when I teach subjects that I abominate. Give me my month's screw. Goodbye." I sigh ... yet I like to fancy that I could not have stayed in the kirk. One thing I am sure of: a big stipend would not have tempted me to stay. I have no wish for money; at least, I wouldn't go out of my way to get it. I wouldn't edit a popular newspaper for ten thousand a year. Of that I am sure. Quite sure. Quite.
Yet I once applied for a job on a Tory daily. I was hungry then. What if I were hungry now? The flesh is weak ... but, I could always go out on tramp. I more than half long for the temptation. Then I should discover whether I am an idealist or a talker. Possibly I am a little of both.
I began to write about religion, and I findmyself talking about myself. Can it be that my god is my ego?
* * *
I began these log-notes in order to discover my philosophy of education, and I find that I am discovering myself. This discovery of self must come first. Personality goes far in teaching. May it go too far? Is it possible that I am a danger to these bairns? May I not be influencing them too much? I do not think so. Anything I may say will surely be negatived at home; my word, unfortunately, is not so weighty as father's.
In what is called Spelling Reform we cannot have a revolution; all we can hope for is a reform within Spelling, a reform that will abolish existing anomalies. So in education we cannot have a revolution. All we can hope for is a reform wrought within education by the teacher. If every teacher were a sort of Wellsian-Shavian-Nietzschean-Webbian fellow, the children would be directly under two potent influences—the parents and teachers.
"What is Truth?" millions of Pilates have asked. It is because we have no standard of Truth that our education is afailure. Each of us gets hold of a corner of the page of Truth, but the trouble is that so many grasp the same corner. It is a corner dirty with thumb-marks ... "Humour in Bow Street," "Knighthood for Tooting Philanthropist," "Dastardly Act by Leeds Strikers," "Special Service of Praise in the Parish Kirk" ... marks do not obliterate the page. My corner is free from thumbmarks, and anyone can read the clear type of "Christlessness in Bow Street," "Jobbery in the Sale of Honours," "Murder of Starving Strikers," "Thanksgiving Service for the Blessing of Whitechapel" ... but few will read this corner's story; the majority likes the filthy corner with the beautiful news.
I have discovered my mission. I am the apostle of the clean corner with the dirty news written on it.
* * *
I began to read the second act ofAn Enemy of the Peoplethis morning, but I had to give it up; the bairns had lost interest. I closed the book. "Suppose," I said, "suppose that this village suddenly became famous as a health-resort. People would build houses and hotels, your fathers wouldgrow richer; and suppose that the doctor discovered that the water supply was poisonous, that the pipes lay through a swamp where fever germs were. What would the men who had built hotels and houses say about the doctor? What would they do about the water supply?"
The unanimous opinion was that the water-pipes would be relaid; the people would not want visitors to come and take fever.
This opinion leads me to conclude that bairns are idealists; childhood takes the Christian view. Barrie says that genius is the power of being a boy again at will; I agree, but Barrie and I are possibly thinking of different aspects. Ibsen was a genius because he became as a little child. Dr. Stockmann (Ibsen) is a simple child; he cannot realise that self-interest can make his own brother a criminal to society.
I told my bairns what the men in the play did.
"But," said one in amazement, "they would not do that in real life?"
"They are doing it every day," I said. "This school is old, badly ventilated, overcrowded. It is a danger to your health andmine. Yet, if I asked for a new school, the whole village would rise up against me. 'More money on the rates!' they would cry, and they would treat me very much as the people in the play treated Dr. Stockmann."
* * *
I find it difficult to discuss the causes of the war with the bairns. I refuse to accept the usual tags about going to the assistance of a weak neighbour whom we agreed to protect. We all want to think that we are fighting for Belgium but are we?
I look to Mexico and I find it has been bathed in blood because the American Oil Kings and the British Oil Kings were at war. President Diaz was pro-English, Madero was pro-American, Huerta was pro-English ... and the United States supported the notorious Villa. Villa's rival, Carranzo, was pro-English. It is an accepted belief that the American Oil Kings financed the first risings in order to drive the British oil interests out of the country. Hence, widows and orphans in Mexico are the victims of a dollar massacre.
Can we trace the present war to the financiers? It is said that the Triple Ententeis the result of Russia's receiving loans from France and Britain.
I cannot find a solution. I am inclined to attach little value to what is called national feeling. The workers are the masses, and I cannot imagine a German navvy's having any hatred of a British navvy. A world of workers would not fight, but at present the workers are so badly organised that they fight at the bidding of kings and diplomatists and financiers. War comes from the classes above, and by means of their press the upper classes convert the proletariat to their way of thinking.
A more important subject is that of the ending of wars. The idealistic vapourings of the I.L.P. with its silly talk of internationalism will do nothing to stop war. Norman Angell's cry that war doesn't pay will not stop war. But a true democracy in each country will stop it. I think of Russia with all its darkness and cruelty, and I am appalled; a true democracy there will be centuries in coming. For Germany I do not fear; out of her militarism will surely arise a great democratic nation. And out of our own great trial a true democracy is arising. Capitalismhas failed; the State now sees that it must control the railways and engineering shops in a crisis. The men who struck work on the Clyde are of the same class as the men who are dying in Flanders. Why should one lot be heroes and the other lot be cursed as traitors? The answer is simple. The soldiers are fighting for the nation; the engineers are working primarily for the profiteers, and only secondarily for the nation. Profiteering has not stood the test, and the workers are beginning to realise the significance of its failure.
To-day I have scrapped somebody's Rural Arithmetic. It is full of sums of the How-much-will-it-take-to-paper a-room? type. This cursed utilitarianism in education riles me. Who wants to know what it will take to paper a room? Personally I should call in the painter, and take my meals on the parlour piano for a day or two. Anyway, why this suspicion of the poor painter? Is he worse than other tradesmen? If we must have a utilitarian arithmetic then I want to see a book that will tell me if the watchmaker is a liar when he tells me that the mainspring of my watch is broken. I want to see sums like this:—How long will a plumber take to lay a ten foot pipe if father can do it at the rate of a yard in three minutes? (Ans., three days).
To me Arithmetic is an art not a science. I do not know a single rule; I must always go back to first principles. I love catchquestions, questions that will make a bairn think all the time. Inspectors' Tests give but little scope for the Art of Arithmetic; they are usually poor peddling things that smell strongly of materialism. In other words, they appeal to the mechanical part of a bairn's brain instead of to the imagination. I want to see a test that will include a sum like this:—23.4 × .065 × 54.678 × 0. The cram will start in to multiply out; the imaginative bairn will glance along and see the nought, and will at once spot that the answer is zero.
* * *
I have just discovered an excellent song-book—Curwen'sApproved Songs. It includes all the lovely songs of Cavalier and Puritan times, tunes likePolly OliverandGolden Slumbers. At present my bairns are singing a Christmas Carol by Bridge,Sweeter than Songs of Summer. They sing treble, alto, and tenor, while I supply the bass. The time is long past Christmas, but details like that don't worry me. This carol is the sweetest piece of harmonising I have heard for a long time.
* * *
I have been re-reading Shaw's remarks on Sex in Education. I cannot see that he has anything very illuminating to say on the subject; for that matter no one has. Most of us realise that something is wrong with our views on sex. The present attitude of education is to ignore sex, and the result is that sex remains a conspiracy of silence. The ideal some of us have is to raise sex to its proper position as a wondrous beautiful thing. To-day we try to convey to bairns that birth is a disgrace to humanity.
The problem before me comes to this: How can I bring my bairns to take a rational elemental view of sex instead of a conventional hypocritical one? How can I convey to them the realisation that our virtue is mostly cowardice, that our sex morality is founded on mere respectability? (It is the easiest thing in the world to be virtuous in Padanarum; it is not so easy to be a saint in Oxford Street. Not because Oxford Street has more temptation, but because nobody knows you there.)
In reality I can do nothing. If I mentioned sex in school I should be dismissed at once. But if a philanthropist would comealong and offer me a private school to run as I pleased, then I should introduce sex into my scheme of education. Bairns would be encouraged to believe in the stork theory of birth until they reached the age of nine. At that age they would get the naked truth.
A friend of mine, one of the cleverest men I know, and his wife, a wise woman, resolved to tell their children anything they asked. The eldest, a girl of four, asked one day where she came from. They told her, and she showed no surprise. But I would begin at nine chiefly because the stork story is so delightful that it would be cruel to deprive a bairn of it altogether. Yet, after all, the stork story is all the more charming when you know the bald truth.
Well, at the age of nine my bairns would be taken in hand by a doctor. They would learn that modesty is mainly an accidental result of the invention of clothes. They would gradually come to look upon sex as a normal fact of life; in short, they would recognise it as a healthy thing.
Shaw is right in saying that children must get the truth from a teacher, because parents find a natural shyness in mentioning sex totheir children. But I think that the next generation of parents will have a better perspective; shyness will almost disappear. The bairns must be told; of that there is no doubt. The present evasion and deceit lead to the dirtiness which constitutes the sex education of boys and girls.
The great drawback to a frank education on sex matters is the disgusting fact that most grown-up people persist in associating sex with sin. The phrase "born in sin" is still applied to an illegitimate child. When I think of the damnable cruelty of virtuous married women to a girl who has had a child I want to change the phrase into "born into sin."
* * *
I have just discovered a section of the Code that deals with the subject of Temperance. I smile sadly when I think that my bairns will never have more than a pound a week to be intemperate on. I suspect that if I had to slave for a week for a pound I should trek for the nearest pub on pay night; I should seek oblivion in some way.
Temperance! Why waste time telling poorbairns to be temperate? When they are fourteen they will learn that to be intemperate means the sack. If we must teach temperance let us begin at Oxford and Cambridge; at Westminster (I really forget how much wine and beer was consumed there last year; the amount raised a thirst in me at any rate).
Temperance! The profiteers see to it that the poor cannot afford to be intemperate. Coals are up now, the men who draw a royalty on each ton as it leaves the pit do not know the meaning of temperance.
I want to cry to my bairns: "Be intemperate! Demand more of the fine things of life. Don't waste time in the beershops, spend your leisure hours persuading your neighbour to help you to impose temperance on your masters."
The Code talks about food. But it does not do so honestly. I would insert the following in the Code:—
"Teachers in slum districts should point out to the children that most of their food is adulterated. Most of their boots are made of paper. Most of their clothes are made of shoddy."
* * *
The best thing I have found in the Code is the section on the teaching of English. I fancy it is the work of J. C. Smith, the Editor of the OxfordSpenser. I used to have him round at my classes; he was a first-rate examiner. If a class had any originality in it he drew it out. But I never forgave J. C. Smith for editingMuch Ado About Nothing. He made no effort to remark on the absurdity of the plot and motives. To me the play is as silly asDiplomacyorOur Boys.
"No grammar," says the Code, "should be taught until written composition begins." I like that, but I should re-write it thus: "No grammar should be taught this side the Styx."
Grammar is always changing, and the grammar of yesterday is scrapped to-day. A child requires to know how to speak and how to write correctly. I can write passably well, and when I write I do not need to know whether a word is an adjective or an adverb, whether a clause is a noun clause or an adverbial clause of time modifying a certain verb ... or is it a noun? Society ladies speak grammatically (I am told), and I'mquite sure that not three people in the Row could tell me whether a word is a verb or an adverb (I shouldn't care to ask). The fact that I really could tell what each word is makes absolutely no difference to me. A middle-class boy of five will know that the sentence "I and nurse is going to the Pictures" is wrong.
But I must confess that grammar has influenced me in one way. I know I should say "Whom did you see?" but I always say "Who did you see?" And I used to try not to split my infinitives until I found out that you can't split an infinitive; "to" has nothing to do with the infinitive anyway.
I want to abolish the terms Subject, Predicate, Object, Extension, Noun, Verb, &c. I fancy we could get along very well without them. Difficulties might arise in learning a foreign tongue. I don't know anything about foreign tongues; all I know is the Greek alphabet and a line of Homer, and the fact that all Gaul is divided into three parts. Yet I imagine that one could learn French or German as a child learns a language.
Good speaking and writing mean the correct use of idiom, and idiom is the best phrasing of the best people—best according to our standards at the present time.
I have heard Parsing and Analysis defended on the ground of their being an exercise in reasoning. I admit that they do require reasoning, but I hold that the time would be better spent in Mathematics. I hope to take my senior pupils through the first and third books of Euclid this summer. Personally, I can find much pleasure in a stiff deduction, but I find nothing but intense weariness in an analysis of sentences. My theories on education are purely personal; ifIdon't like a thing I presume that my bairns dislike it. And the strange thing is that my presumptions are nearly always right.
* * *
Folklore fascinates me. I find that the children of Forfarshire and Dumfriesshire have the same ring song,The Wind and the Wind and the Wind Blows High. I once discovered in the British Museum a book on English Folksongs, and in it I found the same song obtaining in Staffordshire. Naturally,variations occur. Did these songs all spring from a common stock? Or did incomers bring them to a district?
When I am sacked ... and I half expect to be some day soon ... I shall wander round the schools of Scotland collecting the folk-songs. I shall take a Punch and Judy show with me, for I know that this is a long felt want in the country. That reminds me:—a broken-down fellow came to me to-day and told pathetically how he had lost his school ... "wrongous dismissal" he called it. I wept and gave him sixpence. To-night I visited the minister. "I had a sad case in to-day," he began, "a poor fellow who had a kirk in Ross-shire. Poor chap, his wife took to drink, and he lost his kirk."
"Chap with a reddish moustache?" I asked.
"Yes, did you see him?"
I ignored the question.
"Charity," I said, "is foolish. I don't believe in charity of that kind. You gave him something?"
"Er—a shilling."
"You have too much heart," I said, and I took my departure.
If I have to go on tramp I shall try to live by selling sermons after school-hours.
To-day I discussed the Women's Movement with my class. They were all agreed that women should not have votes. I asked for reasons.
"They can't fight like men," said a boy.
I pointed out that they risk their lives more than men do. A woman risks her life so that life may come into the world; a soldier risks his life so that death may come into the world.
"Women speak too much," said Margaret Steel.
"Read the Parliamentary debates," said I.
"Women have not the brains," said a boy.
I made no reply, I lifted his last exam. paper, and showed the class his 21 per cent, then I showed him Violet Brown's 93 per cent. But I was careful to add that the illustration was not conclusive.
I went on to tell them that the vote wasof little use to men, and that I did not consider it worth striving for. But I tried to show them that the Women's Movement was a much bigger thing than a fight for political power. It was a protest against the system that made sons doctors and ministers, and daughters typists and shopgirls, that made girls black their idle brothers' boots, that offered £60 to a lady teacher who was doing as good work as the man in the next room with his £130. I did not take them to the deeper topics of Marriage, Inheritance, the economic dependence of women on men that makes so many marry for a home. But I tried to show that owing to woman's being voteless the laws are on the man's side, and I instanced the Corporation Baths in the neighbouring city. There only one day a week is set aside for women. Then it struck me that perhaps the women of the city have municipal votes, and I suggested that if this were the case, women are less interested in cold water than men, a circumstance that goes to show that women have a greater need of freedom than I thought they had.
On the whole it was a disappointing discussion.
* * *
I went up to see Lawson of Rinsley School to-night. I talked away gaily about having scrapped my Readers and Rural Arithmetic. He was amused; I know that he considers me a cheerful idiot. But he grew serious when I talked about my Socialism.
"You blooming Socialists," he said, with a dry laugh, "are the most cocky people I have yet struck. You think you are the salt of the earth and that all the others are fatheads."
"Quite right, Lawson," I said with a laugh. And I added seriously: "You see, my boy, that if you have a theory, you've simplygotto think the other fellow an idiot. I believe in Socialism—the Guild Socialism ofThe New Age, and naturally I think that Lloyd George and Bonar Law and the Cecils, and all that lot are hopelessly wrong."
"Do you mean to tell me that you are a greater thinker than Arthur James Balfour?" Lawson sat back in his chair and watched the effect of this shot.
I considered for a minute.
"It's like this," I said slowly, "you really cannot compare a duck with a rabbit. You can't say that Shakespeare is greater than Napoleon or Burns than Titian. Balfour is a good man in his own line, and—"
"And you?"
"I sometimes think of great things," I replied modestly. "Balfour has an ideal; he believes, as Lord Roberts believed, in the Public Schools, in Oxford and Cambridge, in the type of Englishman who becomes an Imperialist Cromer. He believes in the aristocracy, in land, in heredity of succession. His ideal, so far as I can make out, is to have an aristocracy that behaves kindly and charitably to a deserving working-class—which, after all, is Nietzsche's ideal.
I believe in few of these things. I detest charity of that kind; I hate the type of youth that our Public Schools and Oxfords turn out. I want to see the land belong to the people, I want to see every unit of the State working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring. The aristocracy has merits that I appreciate. Along with the poor they cheerfully die for their country ... it is the profiteering class withits "Business as Usual" cant that I want to slay. I want to see all the excellent material that exists in our aristocracy turned to nobler uses than bossing niggers in India so that millionaires at home may be multi-millionaires, than wasting time and wealth in the social rounds of London."
"Are you a greater thinker than Balfour?"
I sighed.
"I think I have a greater ideal," I said. "And," I added, "I am sure that if Balfour were asked about it he would reply: 'I wish I could have got out of my aristocratic environment at your age.'"
"Lawson," I continued, "I gathered tatties behind the digger once. That is the chief difference between me and Balfour. When first I went through Eton on a motor-bus and saw the boys on the playing grounds, I said to myself, 'Thank God I wasn't sent to Eton!'"
"Class prejudice and jealousy," said Lawson. "Will the Rangers get into the Final?"
* * *
I met Wilkie the mason, on the road to-night. He cannot write his name, and he is the richest man in the village.
"What's this Aw hear aboot you bein' are o' they Socialists?" he demanded. "Aw didna ken that when Aw voted for ye."
"If you had?"
"Not a vote wud ye hae gotten frae me. Ye'll be layin' yer bombs a' ower the place," he said half jocularly.
"Ye manna put ony o' they ideas in the bairns' heids," he continued anxiously. "Politics have no place in a schule."
I did not pursue the subject; I sidetracked him on to turnips, and by using what I had picked up from Andrew Smith I made a fairly good effort. When we parted Wilkie grasped my hand.
"Ye're no dozzent," he said kindly, "but, tak ma advice, and leave they politics alone. It's a dangerous game for a schulemester to play."
* * *
I find that I am becoming obsessed by my creed. I see that I place politics before everything else in education. But I feel that I am doing the best I can for true education. After all it isn't Socialism I amteaching, it is heresy. I am trying to form minds that will question and destroy and rebuild.
Morris'sNews from Nowhereappeals to me most as a Utopia. Like him I want to see an artistic world.
I travelled to Newcastle on Saturday, and the brick squalor that stretches for miles out Elswick and Blaydon way sickened me. Dirty bairns were playing on muddy patches, dirty women were gossiping at doors, miners were wandering off in twos and threes with whippets at their heels. And smoke was over all. Britain is the workshop of the world. Good old Merrie England!
These are strange entries for a Dominie's Log. I must bring my mind back to Vulgar Fractions and Composition.
* * *
There was a Cinema Show in the village hall to-night. My bairns turned out in force. Most of the pictures were drivel ... the typist wrongly accused, the seducing employer; the weeping parents at home. The average cinema plot is of the same brand as the plots in a washerwoman's weekly. Then we had the inevitable Indian chase on horseback, andthe hero pardoned after the rope was round his neck.
I enjoyed the comic films. To see the comic go down in diver's dress to wreck a German submarine was delightfully ludicrous. He took off his helmet under water and wiped the sweat from his brow. Excellent fun!
I have often thought about the cinema as an aid to education. At the present time it is a drag on education, for its chief attraction is its piffling melodrama. Yet I have seen good plays and playlets filmed ... that is good melodramatic and incident plays.
I have seenHamletfilmed, and then I understood what Tolstoi (or was it Shaw?) meant when he said that Shakespeare without his word music is nowhere. Yet I must be just; philosophy had to go along with music when the cinema took upHamlet.
The cinema may have a future as an educational force, but it will deal with what I consider the subsidiary part of education—the facts of life. Pictures of foreign countries are undoubtedly of great use. The cinema can never give us theories and philosophy. So with its lighter side.Charley's Auntmight make a good film;The Importance of Being Earnestcould not. The cinema can give us humour but not wit. What will happen when the cinema and the phonograph are made to work together perfectly I do not know. I may yet be able to take my bairns to a performance ofNanorThe Wild DuckorThe Doctor's Dilemma.
* * *
"Please, sir, Willie Smith was swearing." Thus little Maggie Shepherd to me to-day.
I always fear this complaint, for what can I do? I can't very well ask Maggie what he said, and if he says he wasn't swearing ... well, his word is as good as Maggie's. I can summon witnesses, but bairns have but the haziest notion of what swearing is. (For that matter so do I.) If a boy shoves his fingers to his nose.... "Please, sir, he swore!"
I try to be a just man, and ... well, I was bunkered at the ninth hole on Saturday, and I dismissed Willie Smith—without an admonition. But I am worried to-night, for I can't recollect whether Willie has ever caddied for me; I have a shrewd suspicion that he has.
The word "republican" came up to-day in a lesson, and I asked what it meant. Four girls told me that their fathers were republicans, but they had no idea of the meaning of the word. One lassie thought that it meant "a man who is always quarrelling with the Tories" ... a fairly penetrating definition.
I explained the meaning of the word, and said that a republican in this country was wasting his time and energy. I pointed to America with its Oil Kings, Steel Kings, Meat Kings, and called it a country worse than Russia. I told of the corruption of politics in France.
Then I rambled on to Kings and Kingship. It is a difficult subject to tackle even with children, but I tried to walk warily. I said that the notion of a king was for people in an elementary stage of development. Intellectual folk have no use for all the pompand pageantry of kingship. Royalty as it exists to-day is bad for us and for the royal family. The poor princes and princesses are reared in an atmosphere of make-believe. Their individuality and their loves are crushed by a system. And it is really a system of lies. "In the King's name!" Why make all this pretence when everyone knows that it is "In the Cabinet's name"? It is not fair to the king.
I am no republican; I do not want to see monarchy abolished in this land. I recognise that monarchy is necessary to the masses. But I want to bring my bairns to see monarchy stripped of its robes, its pageantry, its remoteness, its circumstance. Loyalty is a name to most of us. People sing the National Anthem in very much the same way as they say Grace before Meat. The Grace-sayer is thinking of his dinner; the singer is wondering if he'll manage to get out in time to collar a taxi.
I do not blame the kings; I blame their advisers. We are kept in the dark by them. We hear of a monarch's good deeds, but we never hear the truth about him. The unwritten law demands that the truth shall bekept secret until a few generations have passed. I know nothing about the king. I don't know what he thinks of Republicanism (in his shoes I should be a red-hot Republican), Socialism, Religion, Morals; and I want to know whether he likes Locke's novels or Galsworthy's drama. In short, I want to know the man that must of necessity be greater than the king. I am tired of processions and functions.
I became a loyalist when first I went to Windsor Castle. Three massed bands were playing in the quadrangle; thousands of visitors wandered around. The King came to the window and bowed. I wanted to go up and take him by the arm and say: "Poor King, you are not allowed to enjoy the sensation of being in a crowd, you are an abstraction, you are behind a barrier of nobility through which no commoner can pass. Come down and have a smoke with me amongst all these typists and clerks." And I expect that every man and woman in that crowd was thinking: "How nice it must be to be a king!"
Yet if a king were to come down from the pedestal on which the courtiers have placedhim, I fear that the people would scorn him. They would cry: "He is only a man!" I am forced to the conclusion that pomp and circumstance are necessary after all. The people are to blame. The King is all right; he looks a decent, kindly soul with a good heart. But the people are not interested in good hearts; the fools want gilt coaches and crimson carpets and all the rubbish of show.
* * *
A lady asked me to-day whether I taught my children manners. I told her that I did not. She asked why. I replied that manners were sham, and my chief duty was to get rid of sham. Then she asked me why I lifted my hat to her ... and naturally I collapsed incontinently. Once again I write the words, "It is a difficult thing to be a theorist ... and an honest man at the same time."
On reflection I think that it is a case of personalityversusthe whole community. No man can be consistent. Were I to carry my convictions to their natural conclusion I should be an outcast ... and an outcast is of no value to the community. I lift my hat to a lady not because I respect her(I occasionally do. I always doff my hat to the school charwoman, but I am rather afraid of her), but because it is not worth while to protest against the little things of life. Incidentally, the whole case against hat-lifting is this:—In the lower and lower middle classes the son does not lift his hat to his mother though he does to the minister's wife.
No, I do not teach manners. If a boy "Sirs" me, he does it of his own free will. I believe that you cannot teach manners; taught manners are always forced, always overdone. My model of a true gentleman is a man with an innate good taste and artistry. My idea of a lady ... well, one of the truest ladies I have yet known kept a dairy in the Canongate of Edinburgh.
I try to get my bairns to do to others as they would like others to do to them. Shaw says "No: their tastes may not be the same as yours." Good old G. B. S.!
I once was in a school where manners were taught religiously. I whacked a boy one day. He said, "Thank you, sir."
* * *
I wonder how much influence onobservation the so-called Nature Study has. At one time I attended a Saturday class. We went botanising. I learned nothing about Botany, but that was because Margaret was there. I observed much ... her eyes were grey and her eyelashes long. We generally managed to lose the class in less than no time. Yet we did pretend. She was pretending to show me the something or other marks on a horse-chestnut twig when I first kissed her. She is married now. I don't believe in Saturday excursions.
I got up my scanty Nature Study from Grant Allen's little shilling book on plants. It was a delightful book full of an almost Yankee imagination. It theorised all the way ... grass developed a long narrow blade so that it might edge its way to the sun; wild tobacco has a broad blade because it doesn't need to care tuppence for the competition of other plants, it can grow on wet clay of railway bankings. I think now that Grant Allen was a romancer not a scientist.
I do not see the point in asking bairns to count the stamens of a buttercup (Dr. Johnson hated the poets who "count the streaks of the tulip"). But I do want tomake them Grant Allens; I want them to make a theory. Nature Study has but little result unless bairns get a lead. No boy will guess that the lines on a petal are intended to lead bees to the honey; at least, I know I would never have guessed it. I should never have guessed that flowers are beautiful or perfumed in order to attract insects. But I am really no criterion. I could not tell at this moment the colour of my bedroom wallpaper; I can't tell whether my father wears a moustache or side-whiskers. Until I began to teach Woodwork I never observed a mortise, or if I did, I never wondered how it was made. I never noticed that the tops of houses sloped downward until I took up Perspective.
Anyway, observation is a poor attainment unless it is combined with genius as in Darwin's case. Sherlock Holmes is a nobody. Observation should follow fancy. The average youth has successive hobbies. He takes up photography, and is led (sometimes) to enquire into the action of silver salts; he takes up wood-carving, and begins to find untold discoveries in the easy-chair.
I would advocate the keeping of animalsat school. I would have a rabbit run, a pigeon loft, one or two dogs, and a few cats for the girls. Let a boy keep homers and fly them, and he will observe much. Apart from the observation side of the question I would advocate a live stock school-farm on humanitarian grounds; every child would acquire a sense of duty to animals. I am sure all my bairns would turn out on a Sunday to feed their pets. And what a delightful reward for kindness ... make a boy or girl "Feeder-in-Chief" for the week! Incidentally, the study of pigeons and rabbits would conduce to a frank realisation of sex.
* * *
I have just bought the new shilling edition of H. G. Wells'sNew Worlds for Old, and I have come upon this passage ... " ... Socialists turn to the most creative profession of all, to that great calling which, with each generation, renews the world's 'circle of ideas,' the Teachers!"
But why he puts the mark of exclamation at the end I do not know.
On the same page he says: "The constructive Socialist logically declares the teacher master of the situation."
If the Teachers are masters of the situation I wish every teacher in Scotland would getThe New Ageeach week. Orage'sNotes of the Weekare easily the best commentary on the war I have seen.The New Ageis so very amusing, too; its band of "warm young men" are the kind who "can't stand Nietzsche because of his damnable philanthropy" as a journalist friend of mine once phrased it. They despise Shaw and Wells and Webb ... the old back-numbers. The magazine is pulsating with life and youth. Every contributor is so cock-sure of himself. It is the only fearless journal I know; it has no advertisements, and with advertisements a journal is muzzled.
* * *
One or two bairns are going to try the bursary competition of the neighbouring Secondary School, and I have just got hold of the last year's papers.
"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 onany 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.
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 toThe 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 (inKipps, andMr. Polly), Locke (inSeptimus), Bennett (inThe 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 hisor 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 thebook:—"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'sThe Invisible ManandWhen the Sleeper Wakesto 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 concernedabout 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 toThe Scotsmansaying 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 ascrap 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, Andersonwas 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 occasionalWoodbine. 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.
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 tryto 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 justbought 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 seeChips; 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 withDeadwood Dickin 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 harmin 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'sScotsmanthat 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 withComic Cuts, two oranges, and a considerable bit of chewing gum. Anyhow, my method would have brought outany 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 Zendaand 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 readThe Scarlet Pimperneland asked for the sequel. Most of them stuck half way withZenda. 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 overKing 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 "regimentalcall," 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 presumedwhen 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 seewhy 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.