MANAGERS
“To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to these particulars is more than to answer in a
Catechism.”--_As You Like It._
What is a manager? Generally one that manages; particularly one who
manages a school. Before 1903 every school was supposed to have
at least three of these potentates: over the others towered the
Correspondent; in some cases there was no one behind or below the
Correspondent; and when the three necessary signatures had to be
provided as a warranty for the accuracy of statistical returns, the
Department advised recourse to a minister of religion, a J.P., or
a banker. But Squire Broadlands used to call in his wife and his
gardener. They put their names where they were told, and asked no
questions.
“Managing” included the appointment of teachers, general supervision of
the process of Education, upkeep of the fabric, and paying the bills.
Incidentally this brought with it the raising of the necessary funds.
There was the weight that pulled them down.
The Correspondent was usually the Rector; or, in Roman Catholic
schools, the Priest. He carried on the endless letter-writing with
My Lords; secured teachers; kept them in order; and, above all, kept
H.M.I. in good temper, especially by votive offerings of lunch. In
Board schools the Clerk, as a rule, did all this work, except the
lunch. There H.M.I. was left to the uncovenanted mercies of the
charitable.
At the present day all this is changed. The so-called managers have
the shadow of power without the substance: they appoint teachers, who
at once pass from their control: and they have to raise money for
landlord’s repairs from ratepayers who are already overburdened with
the expenses of their tenancy. But they have got rid of Form
IX.
What was Form IX.? In the dark ages before the Act of 1902 this was
the stumbling-stone of managers and a rock of offence to inspectors.
At the end of the school year Form IX. arrived at the correspondent’s
house, and thenceforth sleep was banished from his pillow. There were
countless questions spread over nine pages of foolscap, and arranged
sometimes in horizontal, sometimes in vertical columns. For the unwary
there were more traps to the square inch than are contained in any
other nine pages in the world. Two pages were devoted chiefly to
signatures and general declarations. (_Dolus latet in generalibus._)
Two more were for the school accounts; five remained for the statistics
of the school; the size of the rooms; the names, ages, salaries,
qualifications, and past histories of all the teachers; the number of
children on the rolls; the number in average attendance; the number at
each age between 3 and 14; and so on.
It required many hours of labour from the head teachers before it
reached the treasurer: a skilful financier was the treasurer who could
complete his share in a day.
At the office in Whitehall there was an army of clerks, whose duty it
was to examine Form IX. and to hunt for errors and omissions. I have
heard them compared with the railway men at important junctions, who
tap the carriage wheels with a hammer in search of flaws or fractures;
and, according to popular rumour, receive as much as half-a-sovereign
if they detect a fault. But it was alleged that in the case of the
clerks the reward was as low as sixpence; this, I feel sure, was a
libel on the liberality of the Department.
Their Lordships encouraged accuracy by a printed warning to the effect
that any mistake might involve a delay of six weeks in the payment
of the grant; and as the sum involved might be £1,000, or more, and
as interest on an overdraft at the bank might be running on (with a
possible Bank Rate of from five to ten per cent.) this was a serious
consideration.
It is often said that the Clergy are bad men of business. If this
means that they have a habit, which they share with widows, and other
narrow-incomed persons, of investing in speculative undertakings
of the wild-cat type, I have nothing to say to the contrary. But
when we get beyond this, let one who has officially been a _malleus
monachorum_ for many years enter a protest. In the ordinary local
affairs, and especially in the control of public meetings, they are as
a rule superior to the average layman, simply because they have more
experience. And for this reason they--and I emphatically include the
clergy of the Church of Rome--were able to fill up Form IX. with an
ease to which the unhallowed lawyer or land agent never attained. It
was a solicitor who in two successive years presented me with a balance
sheet showing a surplus on both sides of the account: it was an estate
agent who--but let sleeping dogs lie.
When Form IX. was approximately finished, it was tentatively offered
to the Inspector, and nearly all classes of managers were grateful for
suggestions of improvement. The benevolent Inspector would run his eye
down the pages, and would say, “Just put in ‘NO’ twelve times in these
columns, and ‘YES’ thirty-six times down there;” and the thing was
done. It mattered little what was thereby affirmed or denied, if the
Inspector vouched it.
But this editing was often a serious addition to our labours; for it
might involve a considerable amount of research and some delicate
enquiries.
“Date of birth of the assistant mistress?” What a question to ask a
lady! I used to soothe the patient by jestingly proposing impossible
pre-historic dates, and so coming gently down to the irreducible
minimum of the approximate truth. And the managers always liked to hear
the old Bar story:
Counsel: Pray, how old are you, madam?
Witness: Well, if you _must_ know, I was born in the year ’64.
Counsel (blandly): A.D. or B.C.?
Once a manager came to me during the inspection and asked to have Form
IX. back for a minute. I produced it, and he explained: “Old Miss
Grey, when she brings me the Form, always asks to have it back again,
before you come, so that she may run her eye over it. Then I look
at it, and I always find that she has left a blank for her ‘date of
birth.’ She gets it back from me, fills in the date, and gives you the
Form: then I get it back again to see how she is getting on, and very
slow progress she makes.”
“‘Character of the late master?’ How very awkward: after the last
report, you know, we really were obliged to make a change, and people
do say he was not quite--he seemed at times a little--what can I put
there?”
“‘Present address of the late mistress’--and she died last November.
Eh?”
It was not always possible to go into these details: there might be a
train to catch: and then, if anything went wrong, the manager would lay
the blame on the broad back of the Inspector. “I had Form IX. returned
to me last year,” said a south-country incumbent to me: “I think
Pluckham, our Inspector--do you know Pluckham?--might have corrected it
for me: I gave the fellow lunch, don’t you know.” I assured him that
there was no reciprocal obligation in the matter of lunch.
These were comparatively simple questions. But the accounts were
appalling; and they had to be audited. Till recent years this was not
much of an ordeal, for an amateur auditor was easily satisfied. I
myself was witness of an audit when a treasurer presented his accounts
to a friendly banker for his certificate. The skilled accountant added
up the figures, and pronounced the result very good. “Now,” he asked,
“what have I to certify: ‘That I have compared this balance sheet with
the _accounts_, and with the _registers_’? Where are the registers?”
and he seized the vouchers, and ran through them: then he signed the
certificate. The school was not in my district, and I was not bound
to remark that a register of school attendance is not the same as a
receipted account.
In the late ’nineties a professional auditor was required, and after
some experience I concluded that compound addition and subtraction are
no part of an auditor’s education. But the process inspired confidence
in the public mind.
When ladies and other simple souls undertook the office of treasurer,
there was a chance of trouble. Two instances occur to me.
The first was in the depths of Bœotia. My sub-inspector and I had
to inspect a school supported by the Earl of X., and managed by the
Dowager Countess. I had been warned that her Ladyship was a little
trying, and I was prepared for the worst. On the appointed day we drove
a few miles from the railway station, and caught a glimpse of the Hall
as we passed the lodge gates. “That’s built in the Grotto style,” said
my driver, and after much meditation on this order of architecture, I
decided that he meant “Gothic.” You could hardly put an Earl into a
grotto.
At the school door--the school also was Gothic, but I prefer the
Vandals--I was invited into a sort of lobby, which should have been
the girls’ cloakroom; and there was the Countess. She was stately, but
gracious. The accounts were a little perplexing; what should I advise?
I suggested some trivial alterations, and then noticed that on the
Income side there was no record of “School-pence” paid by the children:
if any had been received they must be entered. The Dowager scorned
the idea: there were school-pence, but they had been received by the
Mistress and had been kept by the mistress: I think she considered
them _Korban_. In that case, I said, they must appear on both sides of
the account; on the Expenditure side they must be added to “Mistress’s
Salary.”
The Dowager was wroth: she clutched me by the arm, and went nigh to
shake me, as Queen Elizabeth “shook the dying countess.” “My good sir,”
she said with biting sarcasm, “Lord X. is willing to pay the ordinary
expenses of the school, but he cannot be expected to meet these
additional charges. Is he to put down in the accounts every trifling
present that he has given the mistress during the year?”
I pointed out that if the children had paid the pence, and the mistress
had received the pence, the Earl was safe: all that remained was to
record the payment and receipt. Otherwise, I said very emphatically,
the accounts would be returned by the Department, and payment of the
grant would be delayed for weeks.
Her grasp relaxed. “I think I see,” she said slowly: and I escaped into
the school and joined my colleague in the examination of the children.
The Dowager finished her accounts by the light of my suggestions, and
followed. My sub. was hearing the first class read, and at the same
time was keeping an eye on the second class, to which the teacher was
giving Dictation. I saw her Ladyship make her way between the wall and
back row of desks, glancing over the girls’ shoulders, as they wrote:
I saw her pause behind one girl, and with a suggestive finger indicate
that a word was wrongly spelt: I saw my ever watchful colleague shoot
out a long arm, clutch the girl’s paper, crumple it up in his pocket:
I heard him continue in his cheerful tones, “Very nicely read, Mary
Smith; go on, Jane Brown.”
The Countess withdrew: the Grotto Hall did not provide lunch: I would
have given a good deal to hear her Ladyship’s account of the morning’s
work.
“And other simple souls,” I said: for I had in my mind the strangely
parallel conduct of my friend Mr. Shippon. _Citoyen fermier_ Shippon
was elected treasurer of the village school, and he found Form IX. a
hard thing to tackle. So far his experience of public education had
only taught him that it interfered with the supply of cheap labour on
farms; notably in the scaring of crows, and the dropping of ’taters.
When it came before him as an offshoot of the Civil Service in
connexion with a code and a balance sheet, he was--in the expressive
language of north-west England--“fairly moithered,”[20] and he came
to me for help. I got a slate and collected the items: income from
school-pence, subscriptions, and proceeds of a bazaar--£98 11_s._ 4_d._
Expenditure on salaries, books, coal, &c.--£36 8_s._ 8_d._ Balance in
treasurer’s hand--£62 2_s._ 8_d._ If he would copy down those figures,
he would be safe.
“Na, na, it conna be,” said Shippon with much emotion: “yo’ve rackoned
in t’ skule pence, and t’ governess ’as took ’em all.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I have included them in her salary: it’s as broad
as it is long.”
“It conna be,” he repeated very emphatically; “yo knaw nowt about it.”
When a man holds all the cards, he can keep his temper, and I laughed,
and left him. But I added a warning that if he didn’t bring out a
balance of £62 2_s._ 8_d._ he would get no grant; and after some weeks’
meditation he yielded.
Managers generally were far more agreeable than these two: we got to
tolerate one another, and established an armed neutrality; then we made
advances on either side, and in most cases we became friends. They
became part of our little solar system in our annual revolution round
the district, and as the years rolled on we got strangely to associate
them with the season of the year in which their school inspection fell
due. “I hope, Mr. Kynnersley, you don’t regard me as November,” said a
rector’s wife to whom I had made this confession. I prevaricated, but
the association of ideas was unavoidable. We never met in any other
month.
There were places which I never saw except in winter: there were others
which I connected with climbing roses in the village, and great bunches
of wild flowers in white jugs inside the school. If I lunched with
A., I had ducks and green peas: B. came in rhubarb-tart time (I hate
rhubarb): C. fed me on game: D. gave me the first mince-pies of Advent.
I knew the exact spot in E.’s garden where he would draw himself up to
his full height and say, “November’s sky is chill and drear”: and I was
prepared for F.’s annual defence of the rainy weather by his cheerful
cry of “February fill-dyke, don’t you know?”
It was on the way to G. that I expected to see the first lamb of March,
irresponsible as a daddy-long-legs: and the big meadows beyond H.
seldom failed to show the first infant colt. In May the cuckoo--but
that reminds me of a story told me by one of my most hospitable
managers, good old Mr. S., now gone to his rest. He was exceedingly
deaf, and one talked to him through tubes and trumpets, but he bore his
affliction most cheerily. One May night at dinner--he himself told me
the story--his neighbour, being a little embarrassed with the trumpet,
lost her head, and shouted into the apparatus:
“Have you heard the cuckoo, Mr. S.?”
“Not for thirty years,” he replied with keen enjoyment, and with his
most fatherly smile.
The rest was silence.
To the Inspector, possibly to the manager’s wife, lunch was a more
serious question than Form IX. Soon after my appointment I consulted
an eminent London doctor about some ailment, and was given a string of
dietary rules, among which one remains in my memory: “For lunch you’ll
have a piece of bread and butter and a glass of cold water.” That, I
said firmly, was impossible; I was an inspector of schools, and part of
my official duty was to lunch with the parson of the parish. If I were
to confine myself to this convict fare, I should give grave offence;
and, moreover, should weaken public confidence in my judgment. Who
would accept the report of a man who lunched on bread and butter, when
he could get fatted calf? He admitted the plea.
My superior officer of that time never lunched with the managers: he
said he liked to lunch with his own family. I was only a lodger, and a
hungry one; and when the clergy found that I would gladly accept their
hospitable offers, I rose in their estimation. But as work increased,
this mid-day meal became a burden; and as years increased, what Homer
calls “the love of meat and drink” abated; then came the end of formal
inspections,[21] and for the remaining time I lunched chiefly at
railway stations. Yet while the luncheon season lasted, I had many
pleasant hours, and made many valued friendships.
Many managers invited us out of pure brotherly kindness: some possibly
because it was usual to “lunch” the inspector: a few perhaps with a
faint hope that a good lunch might soothe the savage beast. “Ask him
to lunch,” wrote one of them to a brother manager on a piece of paper,
which was by chance laid on the table in front of my unexpectant eyes,
and read before I knew what I was reading: “_a little civility is never
thrown away;_” and I was feasted royally, while my sub., who was going
to mark the examination papers, was sent empty away. I enjoyed that
lunch.
There were some managers who craftily tried to charge the inspectors’
lunch to the school expenses. When this was detected, we ceased to
lunch there. But it was not always easy to trace. I have heard of its
being included under the head of “Repairs.” “You can’t tell what’s in a
bill,” said a Liverpool man to me in this connexion; “did you ever hear
about the Captain’s horse?” I never had.
A Liverpool Captain, returning from Calcutta, presented to the owners
his account for out-of-pocket expenses. Times were bad, and the owners
criticised it with unusual care. There was a charge of ten shillings
for horse hire: what was this? Horses from the river to the office? How
far? Why didn’t he walk? The Captain pleaded the climate, the custom of
the country, saving of time. All in vain: the charge was disallowed.
After the next voyage the Captain reappeared with his usual account.
The owners examined it minutely, and the senior partner congratulated
the Captain on the improvement: that horse didn’t appear again.
“He’s there all right,” said the Captain frankly; “you don’t see him,
but he’s there.”
A colleague told me he disliked lunching with managers because it was
so unpleasant to give them a bad report after having eaten their salt.
I had no such scruple, because I admitted no connection between the two
things. It would be an affront to my hosts to suppose that they wished
to corrupt me.
There were, of course, managers with whom one did not lunch. The hand
of Douglas is his own and so is his mouth. But I never was reduced
to such strong words as were attributed by tradition to one of my
predecessors, whom a squire had rather commanded than invited to lunch
at the Manor. “Tell him I would rather eat my lunch in a ditch under
a hedge,” said H.M.I. Taken by itself without knowledge of antecedent
justification this almost seems rude.
Lunch, I maintained, was extra-official: and much of our work was
extra-official. After a few years in a district we became informal
advisers to very many managers. We advised on sites; recommended
architects; advised on the plans with the architects; recommended
head teachers and assistants. Where did we stop? Was I not constantly
appealed to at lunch to recommend a really nice cook, and a curate who
wanted a title? I think I earned my lunches.
A remarkable instance occurs to me. In a country parish the Rector was
lamenting the collapse of his school at that morning’s inspection. He
attributed it to the stupidity of his parishioners: his last lot in the
south had been full of genius. I assured him that this was a delusion:
if you cut off the heads of 50 boys in Arcadia, and 50 in Bœotia, and
weighed their brains--Arcadia v. Bœotia--you would not find an ounce of
difference. What he wanted was not a new horse but a new driver.
“Could I find one?”
Certainly: there was a first rate man just leaving a school a few miles
away; and I gave particulars. The man was appointed at once; the school
passed out of my district, and I thought no more of it. But four years
later I got a letter from the Rector, full of gratitude: my nominee had
effected a reformation: he had raised the Government Grant from £77 to
£132, rendering unnecessary the collection of a voluntary rate. He was
“good all round, in fact invaluable.” In the thirtieth year after my
recommendation, when the Rector had retired, and the master had, alas!
broken down, I got from the former a complete history. Not only had the
grant risen to £170, “it had never looked back”: the master’s influence
out of school had been equally priceless: the parish was changed.
I think I earned that lunch.
The humorous feature of this branch of our work was that most of
it was bitterly resented by the Department. They instructed us to
assist managers with advice, but the selection of good teachers and
the weeding out of bad ones sadly interfered with the policy of the
National Teachers’ Union, and Whitehall trembles when it sees the
weakest of the N. U. T.’s.
A word of farewell is due to the lady manager. There was a time when
she was a prominent personage: she assisted at the inspection, and
waited for hours that she might see the Inspector blundering over the
“garments.” She called his attention to specially meritorious stitches,
and deplored the blindness of My Lords in their selection of sewing
tests: she deprecated mathematics, and urged the superior claims of
housewifery. She gave private information on the characters of the
pupil-teachers and the children, generally hinting that the pretty ones
were undesirable. And she had the strongest views about their dress,
views that the male inspector regarded with lack-lustre eye. It was not
only at the inspection that she appeared: in many schools she was to
be found without fail two or three days a week; possibly assisting in
the needlework; possibly taking a general interest in the girls: always
full of good works.
Alas! her class is extinct. I think the cold disapproval shown by the
professional teacher has frozen her out. Or is it that the haughty
children resent intrusion? Or that the comprehensive, critical glance,
which even Standard I. would cast at her dress when she entered the
room, made it impossible for her to continue her visits without “making
a toilette” for every visit? These are mysteries hidden from the male
eye.
With the passing of the Act of 1902 came the Passing of the manager,
male and female. Now there is a committee; there is a correspondent;
there is a caretaker; but the greatest of these is the caretaker.
And with the other change came the passing of Form IX. as an amateur
work. Part of it is done by the teachers, part by the local authority;
the managers are free from it, and the inspector sees it no more.
If I thought any manager of the many who befriended me would read what
I write, I would bid him farewell; and for his consolation I would
refer him to the opening sentences of Dr. Johnson’s Preface to his
Dictionary:
“It is the fate of those who toil ... to be rather driven by the fear
of evil than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to
censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or
punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause,
and diligence without reward.”
FOOTNOTES:
[20] ‘Moithered’ equivalent to ‘harassed’ or ‘embarrassed,’ but much
easier to spell. In Norfolk it is ‘mĩthered’.
[21] In the ’nineties annual inspections in a given month, with
formal notice to the managers sent at least ten days in advance, were
discontinued, and ‘visits without notice,’ paid at any time of the
year, were substituted. The result was, that the managers did not know
of our presence in their schools, and, unless we sent for them, we saw
no one.