"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."
"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?"
"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."