LETHE

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25549, 17 July 1948, Page 6

LETHE

[By WHIM WHAM] The old training in arithmetic certainly seemed to produce accuracy, but many of the exercises were junk. He remembered learning to work out bankruptcy dividends. brokerage, square roots, and other problems which he had never had to use. . . . —Mr S. J. Irwin, former senior inspector to the Canterbury Education Board. I remember, I remember So Little that I learnt. Some Things that were a Waste of Time, And other Things that weren't. My Lists of Rivers and my Dates Have done me little Good. I can’t take out a Square Root now— I don’t see why I should. I remember, I remember The Sums I did in Class. The Long, Long Tots I totted up— They came to Nought, alas. A Thing called Practice, I recall, Once drove me to Distraction. How much Arithmetic remains? A negligible Fraction. I remember, I remember Pythagoras’ Theorem After a Fashion, for the Proof Has quite escaped my Memory—quite gone, although I thought That I could never lose My boyhood Friendship with the Square On the Hypotenuse. I remember. I remember So Little I was taught. I wander Sometimes if my Brain Is an inferior Sort: But shall I curse my Teachers, then. And call their System rotten? Perhaps my best-learnt Lessons were The Ones I have forgotten.