* * *
To-day I received from the Clerk the Report on my school.
"Discipline," it says, "which is kindly, might be firmer, especially in
the Senior Division, so as to prevent a tendency to talk on the part of
the pupils whenever opportunity occurs."
An earlier part runs thus: "The pupils in the Senior Division are
intelligent and bright under oral examination, and make an exceedingly
good appearance in the class subjects."
I scratch my head thoughtfully. If the inspector finds the bairns
intelligent and bright, why does he want them to be silent in school? I
cannot tell; I suspect that talking children annoy him. I fancy that
stern disciplinarians are men who hate to be irritated.
"More attention, however, should be paid to neatness of method and
penmanship in copybooks and jotters."
I wonder. I freely admit to myself that the jotters are not neat, but I
want to know why they should be. I can beat most men at marring a page
with hasty figures; on the other hand I can make a page look like
copperplate if I want to. I find that my bairns do neat work on an
examination paper.
The truth is that I am incapable of teaching neatness. My desk is a
jumble; my sitting-room is generally littered with books and papers.
Some men are born tidy: some have tidiness thrust upon them. I am of the
latter crowd. Between the school charwoman and my landlady I live
strenuously.
I object to my report. I hate to be the victim of a man I can't reply
to, even when he says nice things. But the main objection I have to the
report is this: the School Board gets not a single word of criticism. If
I were not almost proud of my lack of neatness, I might argue that no
man could be neat in an ugly school. It is always filthy because the
ashed playground is undrained. Broken windows stand for months; the
plaster of the ceiling came down months ago, and the lathes are still
showing. The School Board does not worry; its avowed object is to keep
down the rates at any price in meanness (some members are big
ratepayers). The sanitary arrangements are a disgrace to a
long-suffering nation. Nothing is done.
* * *
It would be a good plan to make teachers forward reports of inspectors'
visits to the Scotch Education Department. I should love to write one.
"Mr. Silas K. Beans, H.M.I.S., paid a visit to this school to-day, and
he made quite a passable appearance before the pupils.
"It was perhaps unfortunate that Mr. Beans laboured under the delusion
that Mrs. Hemans wrote _Come into the Garden, Maud_, but on the whole
the subject was adequately treated.
"The geography lesson showed Mr. Beans at his best, but it might be
advisable for him to consider whether the precise whereabouts of Seville
possesses the importance in the scheme of things that he attributes to
it. And it might be suggested that children of twelve find some
difficulty in spelling Prsym--Prysem--Pryems----anyway, the name of the
town that has kept the alleged comic weeklies alive during a trying
period.
"The school staff would have liked Mr. Beans to have stayed long enough
to discover that a few of the scholars possessed imagination, and it
hoped that he will be able to make his visit longer than four hours next
time.
"Mr. Beans's knowledge of dates is wonderful, and his parsing has all
the glory of Early Victorian furniture."