SCHOOL REPORTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19933, 31 August 1927, Page 7

SCHOOL REPORTS

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS WOULD PARENTS DO AS WELL? (By Robert Magill). I have no doubt whatever that while Eve was darning the ladders in her figleaves, and Adam was trying to get used to the backache he had developed in the garden, their main theme of argument was the education of Cain and Abel. And it is a problem for which it is hard to find a solution. The trouble, is, that it is not at the more expensive establishments that our sons and daughters get the best training to fit them for their after-lif<* They acquire a polish, an accent, and a scarcely veiled contempt for the uncultured parents who sent them there, but few of them get on in the world unless they can manage to enter one of the professions which is reserved for those who have been to the right school. On the other hand, the secondary and the technical schools, where pupils are taught to spell and to calculate well enough to work out what five to one in half-crowns is, lack tone. In the meantime we parents are more concerned with those aspects of the matter that hit is personally. Why should music be an extra! Why do children have about seven months’ holiday every year, and, anyway, what do they do at school at all, seeing that their teachers give them practically the whole day’s work to bring home at night? To prevent our becoming too restive, of course, they send us these school reports from, time to time. They are not so much a criticism of the child’s work as of the teacher’s, and probably this is why they are always so optimistic. Bunty’s Report. Bunty, aged eight, brought hers home the other day. It seems only a year or so ago that I had to bring home my own, anxious by waiting till the old mm was in a good temper before I broke it to him, because 1 was a scholarship boy, and they told the exact truth on mine. 1 suppose I ought to have assumed a heavy and responsible, paternal air, but I find it difficult. I sympathise too much with the poor child. I believe a wife’s greatest trouble is to make her husband realise that he is really grown up. However, I rememberd that I was paying real money for that child’s education, and then the correct attitude became quite easy. I felt like the outraged father in those old plays who used to turn his erring daughter out into the snow to die. In religious knowledge, so her teacher says, Bunty is only fair. I’m afraid that’s my fault, because once when she asked me something about Noah I taught her what my wife described as a perfectly scurrilous rhyme dealing with the difficulty of separating the animals in the Ark. English language, however, is good. I might have guessed that. It’s wonderful how good she picks up new words, especially good old English words that one uses when one forgets for a moment there are children present. Dictation is good. If this means that she does the dictating, I can quite believe it. She gets that from her

History is also good. She is remarkably like her father. Geography is apparently poor. Well, her poor mother never knows which platform a train goes from. And I don’t blame the child. Who wants to know anything about Nicaragua, for instance, so long as she knows the experts of the sweet shop at the corner. Generally speaking, I suppose it’s all right. I don’t care much. The only thing I’m keen about is that she should be popular with the other children. At lease, with some of them, but unfortunately not with those whose parents I should like to meet. She says they’re stuck up. Such is life. My Own. At the same time, I wonder how I schould come out myself if they wrote a report on me. For example:— English Language: Fluent. Ear too fluent. Has been known to say things to a golf ball in a bunker that made it come out in spots. History: Excellent. Knows who won the English Cup every year since 1925, and who ought to have won it by rights. Geography: Fair. Limited to the whereabouts of certain local hotels he ought to be ashamed to be seen going into. Music: Stormy. Wish he would learn some other sing besides “ Nellie Dean” to sing in his bath. Mathematics: Improving. Remembers on the day before pay day that if five from three won’t go, borrow ten, and does. Needlework: Rotten. •> Can’t sew a button on his waistcoat without bringing his shirt into it. Carrying up Coal: Weak. General Behaviour: Perfectly poisonous. Is inattentive when told things he ought to listen to, shows no interest in the honie, no -matter how people slave, and will inevitably come to a bad end. You will have probably gathered that Ruby, my wife, helped me with the last bit, but up till now she hasn’t seen my report on her: — My Wife’s “Report.” Religious knowledge: Good (Mrs Muir had another costume on thus morning, which looks almost like new, only I happen to know for a fact that she got it from a misfit shop, where I saw her, and that woman from No. 14 camo in. I don’t like her. She looks stuck up. The sermon? Oh, I forget, but the woman over the road only put a penny in the plate, the mean thing, and they say the rector’s wife is—but I’ll tell you when Bunty’s out of the way. . .). English Language: This is too painful a subject for me to deal with. I shall suffer it in silence, as I always do. History: Patchy. Could write a book about Ben Hur, but doesn’t like Douglas Fairbanks in the ‘‘Black Pirate” because it’s so silly. Besides, he can’t make Jove for toffee. Geography: Bad. Doesn’t recognise a hill until the engine coughs enough to break a blood vessel, and, anyhow, why should she change gear? The chauffeur of the Rolls Royce who passed us didn’t. Mathematics: Fair. Can work out 8$ yards at 7s Hid one hand, but is innocent enough to believe her husband when he says he spent four shillings on chocolates and nine pence 4n

cigarettes, and that leaves one and threepence change out of your tenshilling note, dear. Besides, she will not learn that three clubs does not overcall two no trumps. Music: Spiffing. Can play anything providing you show her which are the loud tone needles. Conduct: Angelic. I am looking forward to seeing her in Heaven some day, where she will be more at home, and I’ve heard that there is no marrying, or giving in marriage, up there. That’s why it’* called Heaven.