to-night macmurray invited me down to meet his former head, simpson, a big man in the educational institute, and a likely president next year. mac introduced me as "a chap with theories on education; doesn't care a rap for inspectors and abominates discipline."
simpson looked me over; then he grunted.
"you'll grow out of that, young man," he said sagely.
i laughed.
"that's what i'm afraid of," i said, "i fear that the continual holding of my nose to the grindstone will destroy my perspective."
"you'll find that experience doesn't destroy perspective."
"experience," i cried, "is, or at least, should be one of oscar wilde's seven deadly virtues. the experienced man is the chap who funks doing a thing because he's had his fingers burnt. 'tis experience that makes cowards of us all."
[pg 137]
"of course," said simpson, "you're joking. it stands to reason that i, for instance, with a thirty-four years' experience of teaching know more about education than you do, if you don't mind my saying so."
"man, i was teaching laddies before your father and mother met," he added.
"if you saw a lad and a lass making love would you arrange that he should sit near her?"
"good gracious, no!" he cried. "what has that got to do with the subject."
"but why not give them chances to spoon?" i asked.
"why not? if a teacher encouraged that sort of thing, why, it might lead to anything!"
"exactly," i said, "experience tells you that you have to do all you can to preserve the morals of the bairns?"
"i could give you instances—"
"i don't want them particularly," i interrupted. "my main point is that experience has made you a funk. pass the baccy, mac."
"mean to tell me that's how you teach?" cried simpson. "how in all the world do you do for discipline?"
[pg 138]
"i do without it."
"my goodness! that's the limit! may i ask why you do without it?"
"it is a purely personal matter," i answered. "i don't want anyone to lay down definite rules for me, and i refuse to lay down definite rules of conduct for my bairns."
"but how in all the earth do you get any work done?"
"work," i said, "is an over-rated thing, just as knowledge is overrated."
"nonsense," said simpson.
"all right," i remarked mildly, "if knowledge is so important, why is a university professor usually a talker of platitudes? why is the average medallist at a university a man of tenth-rate ideas?"
"then our scotch education is all in vain?"
"speaking generally, it is."
i think it was at this stage that simpson began to doubt my sanity.
"young man," he said severely, "one day you will realise that work and knowledge and discipline are of supreme importance. look at the germans!"
he waved his hand in the direction of the sideboard, and i looked round hastily.
[pg 139]
"look what germany has done with work and knowledge and discipline!"
"then why all this bother to crush a state that has all the virtues?" i asked diffidently.
"it isn't the discipline we are trying to crush; it is the militarism."
"good!" i cried, "i'm glad to hear it. that's what i want to do in scotland; i want to crush the militarism in our schools, and, as most teachers call their militarism discipline, i curse discipline."
"that's all rubbish, you know," he said shortly.
"no it isn't. if i leather a boy for making a mistake in a sum, i am no better than the prussian officer who shoots a belgian civilian for crossing the street. i am equally stupid and a bully."
"then you allow carelessness to go unpunished?" he sneered.
"i do. you see i am a very careless devil myself. i'll swear that i left your garden gate open when i came in, mac, and your hens will be all over the road."
mac looked out at the window.
"they are!" he chuckled, and i laughed.
[pg 140]
"you seem to think that slovenliness is a virtue," said simpson with a faint smile.
"i don't, really, but i hold that it is a natural human quality."
"are your pupils slovenly?" he asked.
"lots of 'em are. you're born tidy or you aren't."
"when these boys go out to the workshop, what then? will a joiner keep an apprentice who makes a slovenly job?"
"ah!" i said, "you're talking about trade now. you evidently want our schools to turn out practical workmen. i don't. mind you i'm quite willing to admit that a shoemaker who theorises about leather is a public nuisance. neatness and skill are necessary in practical manufacture, but i refuse to reduce education to the level of cobbling or coffin-making. i don't care how slovenly a boy is if he thinks."
"if he is slovenly he won't think," said simpson.
i smiled.
"i think you are wrong. personally, i am a very lazy man; i have my library all over the floor as a rule. yet, though i am lazy physically i am not lazy mentally. i[pg 141] hold that the really lazy teacher is your "ring the bell at nine sharp" man; he hustles so much that he hasn't time to think. if you work hard all day you never have time to think."
simpson laughed.
"man, i'd like to see your school!"
"why not? come up tomorrow morning," i said.
"first rate!" he cried, "i'll be there at nine."
"better not," i said with a smile, "or you'll have to wait for ten minutes."
* * *
he arrived as i blew the "fall in" on my bugle.
"you don't line them up and march them in?" he said.
"i used to, but i've given it up," i confessed. "to tell the truth i'm not enamoured of straight lines."
we entered my classroom. simpson stood looking sternly at my chattering family while i marked the registers.
"i couldn't tolerate this row," he said.
"it isn't so noisy as your golf club on a saturday night, is it?" he smiled slightly.
[pg 142]
jim burnett came out to my desk and lifted the glasgow herald, then he went out to the playground humming on the mississippi.
"what's the idea?" asked simpson.
"he's the only boy who is keen on the war news," i explained.
then margaret steel came out.
"please, sir, i took the four feathers home and my mother began to read them; she thinks she'll finish them by sunday. is anybody reading the invisible man?"
i gave her the book and she went out.
then tom macintosh came out and asked for the manual room key; he wanted to finish a boat he was making.
"do you let them do as they like?" asked simpson.
"in the upper classes," i replied.
soon all the supplementary and qualifying pupils had found a novel and had gone out to the roadside. i turned to give the other classes arithmetic.
mary wilson in the front seat held out a bag of sweets to me. i took one.
"please, sir, would the gentleman like one, too?"
simpson took one with the air of a man on[pg 143] holiday who doesn't care what sins he commits.
"i say," he whispered, "do you let them eat in school? there's a boy in the back seat eating nuts."
i fixed ralph ritchie with my eye.
"ralph! if you throw any nutshells on that floor mrs. findlay will eat you."
"i'm putting them in my pooch," he said.
"good! write down this sum."
"what are the others doing?" asked simpson after a time.
"margaret steel and violet brown are reading," i said promptly. "annie dixon is playing fivies on the sand, jack white and bob tosh are most likely arguing about horses, but the other boys are reading, we'll go and see." and together we walked down the road.
annie was playing fivies all right, but jack and bob weren't discussing horses; they were reading chips.
"and the scamps haven't the decency to hide it when you appear!" cried simpson.
"haven't the fear," i corrected.
on the way back to the school he said: "it's all very pleasant and picnicy, but eating nuts and sweets in class!"
[pg 144]
"makes your right arm itch?" i suggested pleasantly.
"it does," he said with a short laugh, "man, do you never get irritated?"
"sometimes."
"ah!" he looked relieved. "so the system isn't perfect?"
"good heavens!" i cried, "what do you think i am? a saint from heaven? you surely don't imagine that a man with nerves and a temperament is always able to enter into the moods of bairns! i get ratty occasionally, but i generally blame myself." i sent a girl for my bugle and sounded the "dismiss."
"what do you do now?"
i pulled out my pipe and baccy.
"have a fill," i said, "it's john cotton."
* * *
to-night i have been thinking about simpson. he is really a kindly man; in the golf-house he is voted a good fellow. yet macmurray tells me that he is a very strict disciplinarian; he saw him give a boy six scuds with the tawse one day for drawing a man's face on the inside cover of his drawing[pg 145] book. i suppose that simpson considers that he is an eminently just man.
i think that the foundation of true justice is self-analysis. it is mental laziness that is at the root of the militarism in our schools. simpson is as lazy mentally as the proverbial mother who cried: "see what willie's doing and tell him he musn't." i wonder what he would have replied if the boy had said: "why is it wrong to draw a man's face in a drawing book?" very likely he would have given him another six for impertinence.
it is strange that our boasted democracy uses its power to set up bullies. the law bullies the poor and gives them the cat if they trespass; the police bully everyone who hasn't a clean collar; the dominie bullies the young; and the school board bullies the dominie. yet, in theory, the judge, the constable, the dominie, and the school board are the servants of democracy. heaven protect us from the bureaucratic socialism of people like the webbs! it is significant that germany, the country of the super-official is the country of the super-bully.
paradoxically, i, as a socialist, believe that[pg 146] the one thing that will save the people is individualism. no democracy can control a stupid teacher or a stupid judge. if our universities produce teachers who leather a boy for drawing a face, and judges who give boys the cat for stealing tuppence ha'penny, then our universities are all wrong. or human nature is all wrong. if i admit the latter i must fall back on pessimism. but i don't admit it. our cruel teachers and magistrates are good fellows in their clubs and homes; they are bad fellows in their schools and courts because they have never come to think, to examine themselves. in my utopia self-examination will be the only examination that will matter.
h. g. wells in the new machiavelli talks of "love and fine thinking" as the salvation of the world. i like the phrase, but i prefer the word realisation. i want men like simpson to realise that their arbitrary rules are unjust and cowardly and inhuman.
* * *
i saw a good fight to-night. at four o'clock i noticed a general move towards murray's corner, and i knew that blood was about to be shed. moreover i knew that jim steel[pg 147] was to tackle the new boy welsh, for i had seen jim put his fist to his nose significantly in the afternoon.
i followed the crowd.
"i want to see fair play," i said.
welsh kept shouting that he could "fecht the hale schule wi' wan hand tied ahent 'is back."
in this district school fights have an etiquette of their own. one boy touches the other on the arm saying: "there's the dunt!" the other returns the touch with the same remark. if he fails to return it he receives a harder dunt on the arm with the words, "and there's the coordly!" if he fails to return that also he is accounted the loser, and the small boys throw divots at him.
steel began in the usual way with his: "there's the dunt!" welsh promptly hit him in the teeth and knocked him down. the boys appealed to me.
"no," i said, "welsh didn't know the rules. after this you should shake hands as you do in boxing."
welsh never had a chance. he had no science; he came on with his arms swinging[pg 148] in windmill fashion. jim stepped aside and drove a straight left to the jaw, and before welsh knew what was happening jim landed him on the nose with his right. welsh began to weep, and i stopped the fight. i told him that steel had the advantage because i had taught my boys the value of a straight left, but that i would give him a few lessons with the gloves later on. then i asked how the quarrel had arisen. as i had conjectured steel and welsh had no real quarrel. welsh had cuffed little geordie burnett's ears, and geordie had cried, "ye wudna hit jim steel!" welsh had no alternative but to reply: "wud aw no!" straightway geordie had run off to steel saying: "hi! jim! peter welsh says he'll fecht ye!"
so far as i can remember all my own battles at school were arranged by disobliging little boys in this manner. if jock tamson said to me: "bob young cud aisy fecht ye and ca' yer nose up among yer hair!" i, as a man of honour, had to reply: "aw'll try bob young ony day he likes!" and even if bob were my bosom friend, i would have to face him at the brig at four o'clock.
i noticed that the girls were all on steel's[pg 149] side before the fight began, and obviously on welsh's side when he was beaten, the bissoms!
