MASTERS AND BOYS

Evening Star, Issue 18333, 21 July 1923, Page 13

MASTERS AND BOYS

IN FICTION AMD LIFE.

SOME BEMUnSOEJTOES.

(Written by Cyrano for the 'Evening Star.’]

Some of us looking back at onr school days through tho mists of years (and tobacco smoke) have regrets for lost opportunities. If we had our time again, so wo think, wo would work harder. Tho wastage of opportunity, however, was not entirely on our side. I, for example, have a grievance about the way we were taught French. Our goal was tire examination room rather than familiarity with the written and' spoken language. In my time there was no such thing as conversational French, and I wonder how many of my contemporaries could to-day read a column of a French newspaper or a page of a French novel with reasonable speed and understanding. We learnt tho rule about the plural of “ bal,” “ regal,” “ chacal,” " banal,” etc., fow or none of which words, as Mr W. J. Locke remarks caustically in some comment on English educational methods, we were ever likely to use. Wo learnt that a certain word had two plurals, one of which meant a brake for shoeing vicious horses. Possibly some members of tho Expeditionary Force found ibis useful, but I doubt it. Of all the French books that wore given us to read in class 1 remember finishing but one. That I have never boon keen to read Balzac, I attribute to having had to ” do ” a portion of one of his novels at school, and the mention of Balzac calls up memories of cold days and a colder story, through whose flat uninteresting landscape wo moved (so it seemed to me) like a tired and dispirited army. Yet how interest-ng and jolly French could have been made!

Fortunately there are pleasanter memories—tor mo, at least. In fairness to those who taught tho .French, I must admit that 1 preferred other subjects. We had men who taught us how to appreciate the beauties of good Latin and English, and tried a fine best to make us write those languages well; their influence still lives, even with pupils who were undistinguished in class and examination lists. I never read Latin with any ease or wrote it with any credit, but my appreciation of the language—its intrinsic beauties and the bearing it has on tho writing of good English—grows with tho years. I have quoted Mr A. C. Benson’s opinion of Dir Kipling’s master, King, but a later story, ‘ Rogulus,’ shows that tho same King could teach Latin, make the classics tho living thing they really are. Many of ns have similar memories—of lessons in which wo were introduced to something vital In literature and life which we shall never forget. Even tho old Abbott’s ‘ How to Write Clearly,’ source of many a jest, whispers across tho years. ” Avoid circumlocution and fine "writing.” I suppose that when a public man tells a deputation that “ lie will give the matter his earnest consideration ■ and acquaint them with his decision in due course ” (in other words, think it over and let them know), it means that he did not learn from that useful book. I remember, too, how one of our English masters used to drive into us tho virtues of brevity and directness. “ Strike in medias res ’* he used to say when wo sparred for openings at the beginning of our essays. Tho capacity to make the most of a golden opportunity is one of tho qualities of a great teacher. Tho others are power of discipline, sense of justice, sense of humor, understanding of tho boy mind, and good health. Justice is what tho boy values most. "Ho wa? beast, but a just beast,” was tho famous; verdict on Archbishop Temple as a schoolmaster. A sense of humur will carry a man through many a difficulty and bridge tho way to tho affections of his pupils. Good health moans steady nerves, and unsteady nerves mean irritability and consequent injustice. Doctors could throw a good deal of light on the methods of some teachers and tho grievances of some patents. “ Lucky people,” says tho average man of teachers. 11 Look at their holidays.” If the average nign had to teach ho would bo glad of those rests from what, taken seriously, is a nerveexhausling business, Tho crown of all those qualities is (lie power to arouse enthusaism for fine things, to plant here and there thoughts that will become weapons and havens in after life. Tho teacher’s enthusiasm, kindled by something iu the lesson, glows and warms his pupils. A point in (ho subject appeals to him, and perhaps ho lets everything else go for a time and drives its interest homo in a burst of eloquent exposition. Some men have this gift to an extraordinary degree; it is the product of their own unabated zest for life and all that it means and promises. You will meet their old boys in many places, and they will all say in effect the same thing: “By jove, that man could mako tilings interesting.” Even King, sneak and bully, bad his moments. “ EeguJiis was not thinking of ids own life. He was telling,Romo .the truth. Ho was playing for his side. Those lines from (ho eighteenth to the fortieth ought to bo written in blood.” .Some masters develop a very remarkable capacity for remembering tho faces and peculiarities of* old boys. A man is head of a school for twenty or thirty years, during which time hundreds, perhaps thousands, of boys pass through his hands. Yet ho may be abh to recognise them whenever lie” sees thorn in after years, remembering their names, their little wax’s at school, and what they are doing in lifo. Nothing binds old boys to a school more than (In's. A retired primary school head master was' accosted in another part of New Zealand by a burly bearded man, who said: “You don’t remember me, do yon? ” Tho oilier looked at him for a moment, and replied : “ Oh, yes, you’re Brown. Yon wrote a jolly bad hand, and never could learn to spell.” Brown, who had been at school thirty years before .that, roared with surprise and delight. The same teacher was much touched when an old pupil who had taken paid in tho glorious raid on Zeebrugge came to see him on his return from tho war, and brought for him a piece of the rnoio as a souvenir. This is one of tho types of visible reward that como to tho teacher.

*. Like other professions, (caching marks its man. Tho. teacher runs the risk of becoming narrow and dogmatic—the result of years of despotic ruling among intellectual Inferiors. Mr Woodrow Wilson is perhaps history’s moat conspicuous example of tbs defects of die schoolmaster mind. It is, however, one of tho noblest professions, and it has its inwards. Tho teacher knows that bis soed sometimes grows into fins grain or spreading trees, or in private talks with old pupils, or at Hioir gatherings, he listens to their words of gratitude and affection. The roar of applause that goes up when he rises to speak at an old boys’ dinner may surprise liiin. “Do they really feel that way?” Years after they had left school, two pupils of the unconventional “ Croaturedid you-venhmi-f o-speaa ? ” master mentioned last week were discussing him and wondering whnt bad happened to him. One of thenq a man who had taken a lonely path m life, and whose opinions on most important subjects must have been diametrically opposed to (hose of bis old master, said from the bottom of his heart i “I should like to see him again a-nd tell him bow much I owe to him.” And I may appropriately close with a reference to that fine tribute that Mr lan Hay pays to the good Imuremnster in ‘ The Lighter ffide of School Life.’ It applies in some measure to all good masters, in schools bumble and great. "He knows that wherever two or throe of his old boys are gathered together, be it in Bangalore *.r Bulawayo, the talk will drift round in time to the old school and the old house.” “‘The heart, of a boy In the body of a man,” bo aays—‘ that is the combination which can never go wrong. If I have succeeded in effecting that combination in a single instance, then I have not run in vain, neither labond in vain.’”