OLD-TIME TEACHER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

OLD-TIME TEACHER.

" YOU BOYS HATE ME." Mr. Ernest Raymond, the novelist, m a recent address in London, commented on the " gloriously unsuccessful " method by which English literature was taught in English schools twenty years ago. He said he had been a victim of that method, which was the method of the set book. " Fortunately for me, however," Mr. Raymond went on. " just for one term of my schooldays I chanced to enter the classroom of another teacher, whose real business was not to teach us English at all, but Latin. It was the touch of this man which changed the whole course of my life." . This teacher, Mr. Raymond said, was an embittered little parson, who ignored every rule and convention of the school, but he was a burning enthusiast "for literature and art. "At times,this master would look up and say: ' Yon boys hate me, and you are perfectly right. lam a brute to you. You hate me, and our hate is mutual.' He would sleep with his feet on his desk and a red handkerchief over his eyes to shut out the horrible sight of his class."