a very young calf had managed to get into the playground this morning, and when i arrived i found peter smith hitting it viciously over the nose with a stick. i said nothing. i read the war news as usual. then i addressed the bairns.
"what would you do to the germans who committed atrocities in belgium?" i asked. peter's hand went up with the others.
"well, peter?"
"please sir, shoot them."
"cruelty should be punished, eh?" i said.
"yes, sir."
"then come here, you dirty dog!" i cried, and i whacked peter with a fierce joy.
i have often wondered at the strain of cruelty that is so often found in boys. the evolutionists must be right: the young always tend to resemble their remote ancestors. in a boy there is much of the brute.[pg 34] i have seen a boy cut off the heads of a nest of young sparrows; i wanted to hit him ... but he was bigger than i. this morning i was bigger than peter; hence i do not take any credit to myself for welting him.
i can see that cruelty does not disappear with youth. i confess to a feeling of unholy joy in leathering peter, but i think that it was caused by a real indignation.
what made peter hurt the poor wee thing i cannot tell. i am inclined to think that he acted subconsciously; he was being the elemental hunter, and he did not realise that he was giving pain. i ought to have talked to him, to have made him realise. but i became elemental also; i punished with no definite motive ... and i would do it again.
* * *
we have had a return of wintry weather, and the bairns had a glorious slide made on the road this morning. at dinner-time i found them loafing round the door.
"why aren't you sliding," i asked. they explained that the village policeman had salted the slide. after marking the registers i took up the theme.
"why did he salt the slide?" i asked.
[pg 35]
"because the farmers do not want their horses to fall," said one.
then i took them to laws and their makers. "children have no votes," i said, "farmers have; hence the law is with the farmers. women have no votes and the law gives them half the salary of a man."
"but," said margaret steel, "would you have horses break their legs?" i smiled.
"no," i said, "and i would not object to the policeman's salting the slide if the law was thinking of animals' pain. the law and the farmers are thinking of property.
"property in britain comes before everything. i may steal the life and soul from a woman if i employ her at a penny an hour, and i may get a title for doing so. but if i steal mr. thomson's turnips i merely get ten days' hard."
"you bairns should draw up a declaration of rights," i added, and i think that a few understood my meaning.
* * *
i find that my bairns have a genuine love for poetry. to-day i read them tennyson's lady of shalott; then i read them the may queen. i asked them which was the better,[pg 36] and most of them preferred, the lady of shalott. i asked for reasons, and margaret steel said that the one was strange and mysterious, while the other told of an ordinary death-bed. the whole class seemed to be delighted when i called the may queen a silly mawkish piece of sentimentality.
i have made them learn many pieces from stevenson's a child's garden of verses, and they love the rhythm of such pieces as the shadow march.
another poem that they love is helen of kirkconnell; i asked which stanza was the best, and they all agreed on this beautifully simple one:—
o helen fair, beyond compare,
i'll mak a garland o' thy hair;
shall bind my heart for evermair,
until the day i dee,
i believe in reading out a long poem and then asking them to memorise a few verses. i did this with the ancient mariner. long poems are an abomination to children; to ask them to commit to memory a piece like gray's elegy is unkind.
i have given them the first verse of francis thompson's the hound of heaven. i did not expect them to understand a word of it;[pg 37] my idea was to test their power of appreciating sound. great music might convey something to rustics, but great poetry cannot convey much. still, i try to lead them to the greater poetry. i wrote on the board a verse of little jim and a verse of la belle dame sans merci, and i think i managed to give them an inkling of what is good and what is bad verse.
i begin to think that country children should learn ballads. there is a beauty about the old ballads that even children can catch; it is the beauty of a sweet simplicity. when i think of the orchestration of swinburne, i think of the music of the ballads as of a flute playing. and i know that orchestration would be lost on country folk.
i hate the poems that crowd the average school-book ... little jim, we are seven, lucy gray, the wreck of the hesperus, the boy stood on the burning deck, and all the rest of them. i want to select the best of the cavalier lyrists' works, the songs from the old collections like davison's poetical rhapsody and england's helicon, the lyrics from the elizabethan dramatists. i want to look through moderns like william watson,[pg 38] robert bridges, george meredith, thomas hardy, henley, dowson, abercrombie, william wilfred gibson ... there must be many charming pieces that bairns would enjoy.
i read out the old tale of gamelyn the other day, and the queer rhythm and language seemed to interest the class.
* * *
i think that the teaching of history in schools is all wrong. i look through a school-history, and i find that emphasis is laid on incident. of what earthly use is the information given about henry viii.'s matrimonial vagaries? does it matter a rap to anyone whether henry i.—or was it henry ii.?—ever smiled again or not? by all means let us tell the younger children tales of wicked dukes, but older children ought to be led to think out the meaning of history. the usual school-history is a piece of snobbery; it can't keep away from the topic of kings and queens. they don't matter; history should tell the story of the people and their gradual progress from serfdom to ... sweating.
i believe that a boy of eleven can grasp cause and effect. with a little effort he can[pg 39] understand the non-sentimental side of the mary stewart-elizabeth story, the result to scotland of the franco-scottish alliance. he can understand why philip of spain, a roman catholic, preferred that the protestant elizabeth should be queen of england rather than the catholic mary stewart.
the histories never make bairns think. i have not seen one that mentioned that magna charta was signed because all classes in the country happened to be united for the moment. i have not seen one that points out that the main feature in scots history is the lack of a strong central government.
hume brown's school history of scotland is undoubtedly a very good book, but i want to see a history that will leave out all the detail that brown gives. all that stuff about the ruthven raid and the black dinner of the douglases might be left out of the books that the upper classes read. my history would tell the story of how the different parts were united to form the present scotland, without mentioning more than half-a-dozen names of men and dates. then it would go on to tell of the struggles to form a central[pg 40] government. possibly hume brown does this. i don't know; i am met with so much detail about perth articles and murders that i lose the thread of the story.
again, the school-histories almost always give a wrong impression of men and events. every scots schoolboy thinks that edward i. of england was a sort of thief and bully rolled into one, and that the carpet-bagger, robert bruce, was a saint from heaven. edward's greatness as a lawgiver is ignored; at least we ought to give him credit for his statesmanship in making an attempt to unite england, scotland, and wales. and cromwell's drogheda and wexford affair is generally mentioned with due emphasis, while charles i.'s proverbial reputation as "a bad king but a good father" is seldom omitted.
i expect that the school-histories of the future will talk of the "scrap of paper" aspect of the present war, and they will anathematise the kaiser. but the real historians will be searching for deeper causes; they will be analysing the national characteristics, the economical needs, the diplomatic methods, of the nations.
the school-histories will say: "the war[pg 41] came about because the kaiser wanted to be master of europe, and the german people had no say in the matter at all."
the historians will say ... well, i'm afraid i don't know; but i think they will relegate the kaiser to a foot-note.
* * *
the theorist is a lazy man. macmurray down the road at markiton school is a hard worker; he never theorises about education. he grinds away at his history and geography, and i don't suppose he likes geography any more than i do. i expect that he gives a thorough lesson on canada, its exports and so on. i do not; i am too lazy to read up the subject. my theory says to me: "you are able to think fairly well, and a knowledge of the amount of square miles in manitoba would not help you to think as brightly as h. g. wells. so, why learn up stuff that you can get in a dictionary any day?" and i teach on this principle.
at the same time i am aware that facts must precede theories in education. you cannot have a theory on, say, the marriage laws, unless you know what these laws are. however, i do try to distinguish between[pg 42] facts and facts. to a child (as to me), the fact that canada grows wheat is of less importance than the fact that if you walk down the street in winnipeg in mid winter, you may have your ears frost-bitten.
the only information i know about japan consists of a few interesting facts i got from a lecture by arthur diosy. i don't know what things are manufactured in tokio, but i know that a jap almost boils himself when he takes a bath in the morning.
i find that i am much more interested in humanity than in materials, and i know that the bairns are like me in this.
a west african came to the school the other day, and asked me to allow him to tell (for a consideration) the story of his home life. when i discovered that he did not mean his own private home life i gladly gave him permission. he talked for half-an-hour about the habits of his home, the native schools, the dress of the children (i almost blushed at this part, but i was relieved to find that they do dress after all); then he sang the native version of 'mary had a little lamb' (great applause).
the lecture was first-rate; and, in my lazy—i[pg 43] mean my theoretical moments, i squint down the road in hopes that an itinerant chinaman will come along. i would have a coloured band of geographers employed by the department.
* * *
i am chuckling at myself to-night. a day or two ago i lectured about the policeman's action in salting the slide, and i certainly did not think of the farmer's position. to-day i wore a new pair of very light spats ... and lizzie adam has a horrid habit of shaking her pen after dipping.
"look what you've done!" i cried in vexation, "can't you stop that silly habit of chucking ink all over the school?" then i laughed.
"lizzie," i said sadly, "you won't understand, but i am the farmer who wants the slide salted. the farmer does not want to have his horse ruined, and i do object to having my new spats ruined."
the truth is that the interests of the young and of the old are directly antagonistical. i can argue with delightful sophistry that i am better than the farmer. i can say that throwing ink is a silly habit, with no benefit[pg 44] to lizzie, while sliding brings joy to a schoolful of bairns; hence the joy of these bairns is of greater importance than the loss of a horse. but i know what i should think if it were my horse, yes, i know.
i find it the most difficult thing in the world to be a theorist ... and an honest man at the same time.
