TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 2

TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA.

THE HUMAN SIDE OF SCHOOL. Written for the Otago Daily Times. By James Sunshine. I.—AN EDUCATIONAL POPE. “ Because he took to haunting Inns, They called him an Inn-spectrc.”— —Lewis Carroll. The first inspector I remember came riding on a bay horse. Since then metaphorically speaking, the annual apocalypse has often enough come in the form of three or four horsemen. My first inspector was a gentleman of overflowing and discursive energy. Nothing could wither or stale him. There was also an inexhaustible variety in his whims, fads, and crotchets. He had some elements of greatness. Should I ever (which God forbid!) return to his district, I would expect to find traces of his influence channelled deep in the pedagogic unconscious of-a generation which knew him not. For there is a scholastic version of the laying on q£ hands, and the spirit of a half-forgotten dynasty casts a quite perceptible spell over successors who know not the name of that Amurath to whom their own Amuratli succeeds. In those days, I could give uo definition of an inspector. I did not know even the little I have since learned of regulations. But the visit was presaged in a manner that profoundly impressed the childish mind and heart. The household of education was swept and garnished. Flowers filled each fireplace. We were made infallible in the countries and “capitals of Europe—not, fortunately, including- Latvia, Jugosalvia, and Estbouia, which a recent harrowing experience has added to school geography. Portions of the reader hazily known, were read and re-read in chorus, five words at a time and three times over, and during the dire three weeks that preceded his advent, it was heaven help you if you lost your place. We got to feel, though not to formulate the feeling (for childhood’s deepest seated reactions are always inarticulate) that we were an infant tribute to the inspectorial moloch. That edifying upheaval en masse when three weeks hence he should open our classroom door, was rehearsed till there was a soul-satis-fying volume and heartiness in our “ Good morning, Sir.” There was also a good deal of hurried and irritable endeavour to (I should now say) “ ready up ” our drawing books. Special and invidious attention was in this connection paid to duffers, for unlike the children I of a more gifted generation, not all of us could draw.

The crotchet of one devastating year wa 3 the non-dotting of “ i-s’. This had become a criminal offence. We have little of this sort of thing nowadays- unless “have got” and “all of a sudden” have replaced it in a more enlightened penal code. The fads as a rule were connected with history, for the great man had a passion for history and had prepetrated a text book. I suspect, but I know little of human nature, that some of niy preceptors angled for this weakness, assuming that even such an Olympian would be gratified by the precise statement of his own very fixed opinions emerging from the months of babes and sucklings. If my readers are incredulous that such things could be, I ask them to remember that my recollections date back half a century. My inspector did not distribute himself evenly and impartially over the whole superficies of the subjects of instruction. He passed on the flaming inspirations of his momentary zeals and other things had a tendency to fade into the background, A new generation of teachers and a revolutionised inspection system will find his Liases hard to condone or understand. Such an inspection (I speak now as Child into Teacher") must have left our instructors guessing, and they were not altogether to blame if they endeavoured to guess right. Their best clue to the ordeal to come was that, though many sided, the inspector would, during one particular visit, be one sided. They did their best to “ turn up trumps ” —I mean to play the right suit to the inspector’s load for that year.

In spite of much Sunday school, I had a very feeble preposterous notion of Jehovah. Tlie inspector got confused with him in my dreams. His lightest words were so obviously laws to my own formidable classroom dictators. I remember awc-strickenly touching his padlocked bag. _ I bandied his blue arithmetic cards as gingerly as an amateur reluctantly inspecting a connoisseur’s Sevres China, foi' a blot on one of those cards could blacken the sides for a whole day. . When was be coining to us? His rapid passage in bis innumerable long tailed coats through our classroom found us suddenly rigid, and left its palpable impress on the atmosphere for quite half an hour afterwards. When ho did arrive, though agog to distinguish one’s self, one was usually disappointed. He did not ask the right questions. Primed to tliq muzzle with the latest—“Ronmania, Bucharest or. the Danube’’—one had to listen to a fervent dissertation on the benefits of an early morning glass of cold water as a bowel regulator. This might have been his vagary. But it could not bo. Frozen immobile, wo listened in, taking our cue from our teacher. It was so obvious that whatever he said “ wont.” Yet hazardous as the whole proceeclino-was. it couid not, we felt, he haphazard. When wa wore Tacked with interrogatories on some topic emitted from the year’s instruction, something was plainly wrong. But it could not be tins unusual, this infallible man. U e wore there to measure up to him. not he down to us.

Peace he to his zealous spirit. If he cn-ed in aught, lie erred with the didactic ol all times. His simple, honest, and, cihaps, a little stupid thought-, was to recast us, all 4000 of us, in his own image, and not to assist us in making the most oi ourselves. Schools, teachers, inspectors, and directors which have not vet ccasdd to work to a didactic pattern, which tail to regard each immortal soul as a separate job, should bo careful how thev cavil at this man. He did his tremendous best yearly. I grow more awed and appalled to think how stupendous that best was.