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 catch[pg 76] questions, 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's approved songs. it includes all the lovely songs of cavalier and puritan times, tunes like polly oliver and golden 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.

* * *

[pg 77]

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 come[pg 78] along 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 to[pg 79] their 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 poor[pg 80] bairns 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."

* * *

[pg 81]

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 oxford spenser. 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 editing much ado about nothing. he made no effort to remark on the absurdity of the plot and motives. to me the play is as silly as diplomacy or our 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'm[pg 82] quite 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.

[pg 83]

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; if i don'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,[pg 84] 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.

[pg 85]

if i have to go on tramp i shall try to live by selling sermons after school-hours.