The Tribulations of a Teacher.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 2, 14 July 1909, Page 50

The Tribulations of a Teacher.

SOME HOME TRUTHS ABOUT THE PROFESSION. WRITTEN SPECIALLY for the “WEEKLY GRAPHIC” By PETER SIMPLE 111.

LIFE at the hotel caused me to look upon the world through rosy spectacles, especially as the Education Board sent down a jovial old boozer as the head teacher.

School-work became a pleasure, for “play-hours” were long and “workhours” short. When the Head chose to be facetious, laughter and smiles were the order of the day; when rheumatism played havoc with the temper of our chief, we usually closed school and went home! But one day an inspector strolled in. Shall I ever forget the muddle! Rolls and registers were wrong, and badly kept; lessons that should have been attended to had lapsed for want of interest, and a lot of “rubbish,” that had no place on the syllabus, had. been crammed into the children’s brains.

“The inspectorial reports were bad, of course, but Headmaster Shera sympathised with me over a bottle of whisky, and I sympathised with him over another! Meanwhile, the committee complained and the children chuckled, for the former were indirectly responsible for the welfare of the school, and the latter cared only for the good times they were having, and intended to have in the future.

“Thus, being a careless youth, I managed to find a certain amount of enjoyment in everything. My two great friends were O’Reilly, the publican, and Shera. the head teacher. I had plenty of boating, plenty of riding (on borrowed horses), and a comfortable home. Of course, I failed to pass my ‘ Pupil Teachers’ ’ Examination, and returned from the examining centre at Auckland disappointed in ambition (for a second-year P.T. received £4O a year) and an empty purse. “And, alas for friendship, not many •weeks after my return to work, host O’Rielly bought the goodw-ill of a Wellington boardinghouse, and he, with his good wife, passed out of my life, leaving at least one grateful heart behind them. Grateful heart, but sorrowing stomach, for I had to revert to my bachelorising quarters, as the new licensee was, of course, a stranger! “I had learnt two things during my short stay with the O’Rielly’s. One was that ‘to play off your own bat’ is the best policy when in doubt or in trouble, and the other thing I learnt was to love the taste and the effects of whisky! The former maxim has stood me in good stead many a time since, and the latter sentiment has—well, did you say that you think it is going to rain? “Parents very naturally become Suspicious that matters are not as they ought to be when they find that their children have to hang round the school door until long after opening time, and also when the young hopefuls come bounding home before they are due! To cut the story short, many families of youngsters were sent to a neighbouring school, though at considerable inconvenience to the children themselves, for the longer journey entailed both earlier and later hours. Gradually the attendance at our school dwindled away, until the average no longer justified the retention of a pupil-teacher, and I was ‘recalled’ to town!

“And now began a new phase of life. The school to which I was attached, as second-year pupil teacher, was out in the suburbs, and its head teacher was a woman. No more easy times, no more curtailed work-hours and lengthened intervals for play! “Being the only male teacher in the school, I became a handy thrashingmachine, for on more than one occasion I was called in by the lady assistants or the head mistress to flog an unruly and defiant boy, with whom I had, perhaps, a few minutes before been playing cricket! Naturally, this sort of thing was much against my tastes and inclina-

tions. Generally, and especially when the ‘ease’ was the outcome of disobedience shown to the Head, all my sympathies were with the boy! What vouth of fourteen or fifteen years will readily knuckle down to the petty and often intolerably irksome rule of a female teacher? Not any healthy-minded boy, unless he knows and feels that he has been ung-allant or wittingly rude. Discipline in that school was an unknown quantity, and I fear that by direct disobedience I myself fostered the silent antagonism to the weak and insecure petticoat government. I will tell you how it began. The boys and I had enjoyed a wild game of football. The cold weather and the freedom from restraint (for the Head had been particularly crabby that day) seemed to combine in making us forget all save our mad rushes and desperate ‘scrums.’ I had started off for the opponent’s goal, and had been duly tackled by their full-back. This youth and I were particularly good friends —he was a stupid sort of chap whose parents were dead, and who lived an unhappy sort of life with an uncle, hence I suppose I felt sympathetic. Anyway, on this occasion he was sent sprawling on the muddy ground, and I scored a ‘try,’ but did not have a chance to conert it owing to the unwelcome tinkle of the call-in bell. That was alright, but imagine my disgust, when some ten minutes afterwards I was called to assist in punishing my friend as he had refused to ‘hold out his hand’ to receive strokes with the cane for having besmirched his copy-bobk with mud! ‘I shall leave you to flog him, Mr. Simple,’ said the Head, as she left us in her study and went to attend to her class. ‘See that you teach him a severe lesson!’

“The boy looked at me, and I knew that he sympathised with my position. ‘You’d better lay it in, Mr. Simple,’ he said manfully. ‘Or she’ll report you, won’t she?’ (By ‘laying it in’ the goodnatured fellow- meant that he would suffer the indignity of unjust punishment without a murmur just for mv sake!).

“I have, and always have had, an «n--fortunate knack of placing myself, as it were, in another’s position. On this occasion my heart went out to this boy. ‘She can report and be to her,’ I fear I said, for I hate injustice, and love muddy boys! To my surprise, my friend immediately set up a howl, and repeated it right lustily, as if suffering from an unmerciful birehing. I at once saw his idea, and laughed heartily at his opportune deception. In the midst of my mirth, and the good fellow’s rearings, in walked the headmistress, her face all smiles at the contemplation of seeing her disobedient pupil suffering the consequences of his misdoings. “You can imagine her rage when she discovered the trickery being played upon her! Off went the boy with a ringing box on the ears, the joy in his heart most probably tempered by sorrow at the predicament in which he had been instrumental in placing me. Of course, I was reported for gross insubordination, and received a written reprimand from headquarters, but it was significant that shortly afterwards I received promotion which carried a ten-pound rise in salary, and, at my subsequent request for a removal, I was transferred to another suburban school! One of my most cherished keepsakes is a well-known ‘Shakespeare,’ with a boyish scrawl on the fly-leaf, ‘From the boys of the school, in fond remembrance of the good times and good hidings while we had for punilteacher our friend, Mr. Peter Simple!’" “As far as ‘good times’ were concerned, I certainly enjoyed many a game of cricket and ‘footy’ at that woman-infested school, but the petty-fogging system of Tunning the institution still has its distasteful memory lingering with startling

clearness in my mind. Not only at school was I miserable, but the ‘friends’ with whom I boarded (at ten shillings per week) were as cold as the proverbial charity. I had no place in the firesids circle, my entry into a room was too often the signal for a sudden cessation in the conversation, my clothes were left unmended, and life generally was rendered as unhomelike as it possibly could be. How I used to look back upon the cheery smile of Host O’Reilly, and long for the uncut candles and full box of matches by my bedside, instead of my friends’’ two inches of tallow and three lucifers! A small matter—that of the candles, say you? Don’t you believe it, my friend. It shows clearly that you have not been subject to such charity—for therein lies more than meets the eye—the counted matches form the key to the whole system of life in such a house, as those that know can tell!

“I need hardly say that whisky and cigarettes were entirely out of the question. I had to buy books, and edge up to the sitting-room table to study them. I had to buy clothes, and sneak needles and thread wherewith to mend them. My mending, it is, perhaps, unnecessary to add, was of about the same quality as my cooking and my washing of btchelorizing days! “However, on receiving an increased salary (now amounting to £5O per annum), I sought pastures new, and boarded with a dear old Scotch lady, giving her 13/ per week. She was a widow, and looked after me as if I were her own son. In return, I found pleasure in chopping wood for her and in doing odd jobs about the house. She sympathised with me and my boy-floggingsl and rejoiced with me right heartily when the mail brought the welcome news of the removal I have referred to. My new appointment was, as good luck would have it, to the staff of a school quite near at hand. My luck ‘was in,’ as I thought, when I found a burly, gruff-voiced man to be the ‘head.’ But just how my luck ‘was out’ remains to be told. Truly, the life of an ambitios pedagogue is pregnant with disappointments and sorrows which not only deter him in his advancement, but, like F. T. Bullen’s ‘ Sailor-boys’ Troubles,’have to be borne in silence, while any good work he may be responsible for serves merely to swell the credit of ‘ th* boss’! (To be Continued.)