September 20, 1909

It is very strange and frightening: all the boys seem to me to be grown men and I, a veritable minnow in a sea of Tritons, but I suppose really they are quite bovine and regard me much as cows regard human beings—as their natural master. I wonder! I confess I am in a panic about my ability to keep order. On several nights in the "vac" I had nightmares of classes of unruly boys refusing to obey me, shouting, throwing things about and generally making nuisances of themselves and a fool of me.

My first impressions of Radchester are not very comforting. It is like coming to a desert island to be pitchforked out at a wayside station miles from anywhere, with only the sea to the east, and flat dike-lands to the west, north, and south. There are no houses within sight. Certainly there is nothing to distract one's attention from one's duty: outside the lodge gates all is barren.

The first thing for me to do is to furnish my rooms. Alas, where am I to procure the means to do this?

At present in my sitting-room there is nothing but a frayed carpet, a few rickety chairs, a table, unstable on its legs, and an enormous bookcase and cupboard combined. My bedroom is ugly, bare and damp, with no fireplace. Apparently they encourage us to be Spartan in our mode of living here. How different from the Oxford of three months ago.

I had a long talk with the Head Master to-night. He is an imposing-looking man, a sound disciplinarian I should imagine, one who gives no quarter. It is hard to associate him with the priesthood. He has less of the clergyman in him than any parson I have ever met. He gave me many "tips" about my work and laid stress in every other sentence about the necessity of exercising firmness from the start. He obviously looks upon me as willing, but lacking in experience and scholarship. I appear to have been selected rather on athletic than intellectual grounds. My "Blue" has gained for me this important post and I am evidently expected to play games daily. Well, I shan't mind that; I cannot conceive how men exist without daily exercise. Thank Heaven, I'm not in an office. After all, £150 a year and my "keep" is quite an adequate salary for a man of twenty-four without encumbrances.

There is something monastic about the life here: only one other master except the Chief is married: women are obviously not encouraged.

The staff live for the most part in Common Room: we breakfast and dine there, have lunch in the School Dining Hall with the boys, and have tea in our own rooms.

I got my first impressions of my colleagues at dinner to-night. Most of them were very hilarious and good-humoured, full of talk about the Alps, Scotland, Cornwall, cricket tours, golf, climbs, bathing, fishing and every sort of outdoor pursuit in which they had indulged during the last eight weeks. They were all obviously glad to see each other and be back at work.

Somehow they didn't strike me as being typical "ushers" at all. Quite a dozen of them appear to be men about my own age, healthy, jovial and without a care. One or two of the older men look haggard and wan, but then again others look like prosperous gentlemen-farmers or country squires, hale, hearty, well fed and contented.

After dinner Hallows, who is games master (an old captain of the Oxford "Rugger" team), asked me to his rooms: some half-dozen of us sat there drinking whisky and smoking until chapel-time. They were all genial and friendly and we talked mainly about historic incidents in bygone Inter-University matches.

In chapel I saw the whole school for the first time. I was exceedingly nervous and imagined myself to be the cynosure of all eyes. I thought that they were all taking stock of me and sizing me up. I must remember to be strict from the very beginning. The start is everything.

September 27, 1909

I am gradually getting used to the routine. Certainly the breaking of the ice was very trying. Luckily I had prepared my lessons carefully before I went into form, so I had plenty to say, which prevented my extreme nervousness from being too apparent, and I punished two boys heavily for talking while I was trying to teach. On the whole most of them appear to be tractable. What does amaze me is their abysmal ignorance.

For the first few days I was talking over their heads the whole time. In mathematics I went too fast. In English I took it for granted that they knew something about the subject: I am gradually finding out that they know nothing. What is worse, only a very few of them want to know anything. They exhaust all their energies and keenness on games: they have none left for work. It is looked upon as a gross breach of good form to take anything but the most perfunctory interest in class. I find that I am falling into the most insidious of traps. I am picking out favourites. There are two boys, Benbow and Illingworth, both in my English set, who have shown up essays quite outside the common: they care about things: they read: they express a novel point of view: they are rebels against tradition. I have given them the run of my rooms and implored them to borrow what books they like from my shelves and to come to tea whenever they like.

I am beginning to find that I prefer the company of boys to that of my colleagues. Most of the staff seem to have reached the limit of their learning when they took their Finals. My Finals only served to show me what an ignorant ass I am. Perhaps it's a good thing to take a low class in "schools." At any rate it leaves you under no false impression as to your own level of intelligence and attainments.

A week of this life has taught me quite a number of useful things:

(1) That it is quite easy to keep order. A number of men here get persistently "ragged," but that seems to me to be due to their lack of humour, their uncertain temper, and their misunderstanding of the boy mind.

(2) I hate having to correct work at night. It is merely a mechanical drudgery and does the boy no good, for he does not strive to understand a mistake unless you correct it while he is with you, and one would be far better employed reading. Correction of exercises must have been instituted to prevent masters from getting into mischief in their idle hours.

(3) I dislike compulsory chapel. I like services when I do not feel bound to go: they become merely a meaningless jingle of words when one is forced to attend when one is not in the mood.

(4) I love playing "footer" with the House every day. I have got to know already quite intimately a number of boys whom I should have regarded as wasters in form. This seems to me to prove that a master should share so far as he can in every activity in order to try to get at the point of view of the boys from every angle. I have therefore joined the Corps, the Debating Society and the Choir.

(5) I object intensely to the mark system. It inculcates selfishness, destroys any chance of getting any co-operative spirit in a form, and is thoroughly immoral. It tends to make boys work from a mercenary motive: they think of nothing but rewards and punishments: they even cheat when they get the chance in order to rise to a high place in the week's order. These orders bother me. Every Saturday night we have to collect all sorts of marks from other masters, scale and readjust them and produce an order, which takes up about two hours of valuable time. I don't mind giving up time to any useful end, but I do resent doing so for a senseless one.

November 1909

The monastic system is getting on my nerves. I find myself longing to hear a baby crying, a girl laughing, or any noises of the street. We are too much aloof from the outside world. I thought reading would be a sufficient antidote. Most of my colleagues don't read at all. They "haven't time." Lately I have taken to going off to Scarborough on Saturday evenings, treating myself to a good dinner at the Regent (we are allowed no drinks in Common Room except water: Hallows alone drinks seltzer), and then going on to a show at the theatre or promenading the Winter Gardens and watching the shop-girls and men dance. These people have an irresistible fascination for me. It is a wonderful relaxation to chatter amiably to these girls and men, and hear their point of view of life, so many poles apart from that of the Radchester Common Room. From one of these in particular, a very pretty girl of about eighteen, with masses of corn-coloured hair and violet eyes, a complexion like a Devon dairymaid and a figure light as a fairy, I have learnt a good deal of another side of life. Her name is Vera Buckley: she works in a large milliner's shop. We meet and dance together now every Saturday night. At first when she learnt that I was a schoolmaster at Radchester she was suspicious and cold, but now we are firm friends and she talks unflaggingly about her hopes and fears, her likes and dislikes. She is a welcome change from the Tapers and Tadpoles of Common Room, who argue interminably upon the day's play and the moral defalcations of boys in their respective houses and forms.

I dined with the Head Master last night and found myself quoting from a new book on education. Just before I left, he took me aside and said, "The less you read about education the better. All this new-fangled talk about new ideas cuts at the very roots of the great tradition on which the Public Schools were built up. I never engage a man who has taken a diploma in the theory of education: he can never keep order, he can't teach, he makes the boys rebel against their lot and is altogether very dangerous. I like your keenness and I think you have made a good beginning, but I warn you now against thinking that there is any reform needed, and suggest that you read no more upon a subject which you are called upon to practise, not to theorise about."

I attempted a defence but he refused to listen. Patting me gently on the back he said, quite kindly, "When you are my age you'll see the truth of what I've been telling you: youth is always in a great hurry to bring about the millennium. It never realizes that no millennium can be brought about by merely destructive criticism. Remember that all these writers are outside the profession and are writing in total ignorance of the conditions under which we labour."

He succeeded in making me feel very arrogant, very youthful, and very much of a fool.

After all he has some right on his side. Boys do understand the system of marks and of punishment and I suppose the way of least resistance is the best. Anyway it is far easier to make a boy work through fear than it is through love of the work: to rouse enthusiasm in the work itself is an exceedingly arduous business. The difficulty is that I hate the idea of caning a boy almost as much as some of the staff relish it. They satisfy a sort of bestial lust by lashing a small boy and hearing him yell. They would be horrified at the suggestion, but I am certain that this is true. One has only to watch a man's eyes when he gives an account of some of his more successful efforts in this direction. On the other hand, I firmly believe that there is a type of boy who can understand no other form of treatment. I only wish such types would not come under my jurisdiction.

I find that I am becoming unpopular with Hallows. One very wet afternoon I organized a paper-chase which was an overwhelming success: about two hundred boys turned out and we caught the hares about four o'clock, after a very tricky run over a well-laid course. Unfortunately every one was late for "roll." By getting up this entertainment on a "half" when there was nothing else to do I found myself launched into about six rows.

Apparently every boy has to pass the doctor before he is allowed to run on a paper-chase; whips had not been arranged for to see that the "laggers" did not drop out en route and find solace in a cottage or public-house; I had no list of starters to compare with those who finished to see whether any runners had died by the wayside, and, most flagrant of all, I had upset "roll." I am afraid I shall never hear the last of this. Hallows refuses to speak to me, but most loudly and pointedly speaks of me in no uncertain tone of voice whenever I enter Common Room: the direct upshot is that paper-chases are to be made compulsory on days when there are no games, and a printed list of rules to this end has been put up on the school board.

I suspect that Hallows framed them, for they are calculated to remove any innocent pleasure that any boy might have derived from cross-country running and implant in his heart an undying detestation of this particular branch of exercise. I am afraid the truth is that Hallows is jealous: I had overstepped my province in getting up this run. He is the manager of all the school athletics and I had committed an unforgivable offence in not asking his leave.

I am beginning to see signs of mutual jealousy everywhere. Each tutor criticizes every other master's method of teaching, comparing it (adversely, of course) with his own.

House-masters resent any humane intercourse between members of their houses and junior assistant masters, though by the laws of common sense it would seem obvious that the senior boys would prefer the society of men only a little older than themselves as likely to be more in sympathy with their ideas, more helpful in their troubles than the elder members of the staff whom they, quite rightly, place on an unapproachable pedestal.

December 1909

Now that examinations are upon us I have been attempting to revise my mathematical and English work, with appalling results. My math. sets appear to have learnt nothing: just a glimpse here and there of an idea, all mixed up with the most amazing nonsense. I must have gone too fast. Some of them have certainly tried to work. Perhaps it is that mathematics is not the Queen of Sciences, after all, at any rate for the unformed mind. I know that in my own school days I was successful at it owing to a natural aptitude without understanding in the least its practical usefulness.

There are boys who go again and again over the same ground, term after term, working out quadratic equations, formidable and unwieldy algebraic fractions, solving problems about triangles, parallelograms and circles quite mechanically and perfectly without the ghost of an idea as to what they all mean or what bearing they have on practical life. They are, if questioned, content to talk about "mental discipline" and "the more odious a task is the better it is for one's education" in a manner unbearably priggish and foolish.

If a boy can work out a hundred examples correct to type, most of us seem to think that we are teaching him something. On the contrary, I believe that the only point in mathematical teaching is the training of the mind to think logically and exactly, and to detect all vague and shallow fallacies in argument or writing.

According to this theory the better a boy was at mathematics the better he would be at English, whereas the truth is that the able mathematician is rarely able to express himself in writing at all, and certainly is not remarkable for simplicity or direct reasoning power in his essays. It never strikes us that if a boy is capable of working out an intricate equation he ought to be able to build up a paragraph of carefully connected sentences, all sequent and working to some definite solution or proof.

I am coming to the conclusion that all true education is a striving after Beauty, and what does not actively pursue this end is a waste of effort.

No sooner do I reach this idea than I begin to wonder what can have induced our forefathers to erect such a hideous structure as Radchester, in the middle of so barren, ugly, and terrifying a country.

Surely there can be no more depressing district in England than the country round the school. On Sundays I occasionally go for walks, but I never return without being obsessed by the gloom and drabness of it all. If I walk down the seashore I see nothing but a bare waste of grey waters, relieved by an interminable stretch of sand. There are no gorgeous colourings on sea or land, such as we expect from the sea and get in Devon and Cornwall. If I go inland I have no alternative but to tramp over muddy fields the grass of which is as colourless as the sea, and the only variety to the monotony of the level stretch is a wind-swept naked tree, wan and haggard as an old tramp who has been buffeted by Nature too long to care about his personal appearance: if I take to the roads I am immediately led to contrast the solitary deadness of these straight lanes, where you know for miles exactly what is coming, with the rich lanes of the south, with their high hedges, a riot of colour and song, deviating romantically every few yards, up and down, round and round, ever calling you on to explore some gem which an all-provident Nature has built for you just round the corner. There are no mysteries to be explored in the vicinity of Radchester unless you dive down a drain.

It is not strange that the cult of Beauty is neglected in such a place, for where is Beauty to be found? The answer I find within my rooms: only in my books and my few chosen friends among the boys can I rid myself of the discontent which is so persistently seething within me.

Perhaps I should make an exception in the matter of games; I love strenuous exercise but I object to making football my God, as so many of my friends do. The boys, at any rate in the presence of masters, talk of little else. Their only other topic of conversation is the characters of their other masters, which is insidious and delightful, but savouring too much of disloyalty and scandal-mongering.

One of the things I have enjoyed most this term has been the O.T.C. All members of Common Room, by an excellent rule here, have first to serve in the ranks. I have got to know the boys in this House infinitely better by mixing with them on parades and field days as a private than I ever should have by any other means: they seem to forget all sense of difference and talk glibly and unconsciously about all sorts of topics that normally would not crop up between master and pupil. They no longer restrain their language quite in the same way they do before a master. I imagine that pretty vigorous swearing is prevalent in all schools: it seems to add a picturesqueness to their vocabulary which would be entirely lacking otherwise, for a boy's paucity of orthodox adjectives is astonishing. He is exactly on a par with the farm labourer in this respect. He swears simply because he has no other language to fall back upon. It is not his fault so much as the master's. So far as I can gather no subject seems to be so badly mishandled as the mother tongue. The average boy is expected to write Latin prose and is caned for a false quantity in verses. He tries his hand at original verse composition in both Latin and Greek: no one thinks of asking him to write poetry in English, and when he does he is looked upon as a freak. It seems a most topsy-turvy system: he spends at least one hour every day at Latin: to English (of which he knows nothing) he devotes two hours a week and during those two hours his masters don't know what to teach him.

Some spend the time in parsing and analysing, though what utilitarian benefits are to accrue hereafter from these it would be hard to see. Others "read a play of Shakespeare," which is a euphemism for note-taking and note-learning, a philological discourse or an exercise in repetition; others again read out notes on the Mendelian theory, which they call a skeleton, and require the form to clothe this skeleton and reproduce it in the form of an essay.

I find that all my English lessons this term have been of the nature of tentative experiments. First I read a play of Shakespeare very rapidly, allotting parts to every member of the form. My first shock was to discover that not one of them could read aloud. They were afraid of their own voices: they gabbled through their parts at top speed without paying any attention to the punctuation or attempting to express emotion. Then I decided to make them come out and try to act the play with the books in their hands. This was looked upon as a grave departure from precedent and an opportunity for "ragging." When I pointed out that there was plenty of chance for a display of horse-play in the crowd scenes in Julius CÆsar and Coriolanus, they possessed themselves in patience until the time to read these plays. Heavens! How they loved the mob scenes. Here was something after their own hearts. At last I had roused their interests. Most of the comic scenes fell very flat and so did all the more long-winded speeches, but once there was a call for an uproar or a pageant they were as pleased as Punch.

I have now discovered that the only way to read plays is to go straight ahead and disregard all difficult passages and notes and get them amused and keen to perform. Incidentally, it makes them far keener if they are permitted to "dress" the part. In She Stoops to Conquer and The Knight of the Burning Pestle I had them all in shrieks of laughter. But now, as I said, examinations are at hand and woe is me. I'm afraid they won't be able to answer anything. Perhaps their ideas of the characters may be more sound than if they learnt them second-hand from Mr. Verity, but they'll get badly "pipped" on historical inaccuracies and difficult contexts.

Then again, how am I to expect them suddenly to produce an essay on "Town and Country," or "Conscription," or "Capital Punishment" when I've always given them carte blanche to write short stories, or imaginary dialogues, or one-act plays or original verses on any subject under heaven?

I think I'm going to hate examinations. I wish we could dispense with them altogether. Most of the staff appear to revise all the work of the first two months in the third month, and so get their pupils thoroughly tired and stale of the tiny scrap of ground they have covered and re-covered until they have worn it threadbare.

December 31, 1909

When it came to the end of term I was amazingly loath to leave Radchester. In spite of the ghastly ugliness of the country, the bitter winds from which there is no refuge, unsympathetic colleagues (somehow I seem to have alienated most of the elder members of Common Room) and the shattering of several of my ideals, I cannot deny that I have enjoyed my first term as a Public School master immensely. I have not rid myself of my nervous fear lest my forms should rise against me and "rag" me as they "rag" poor old Pennyfeather and Dearden; I certainly did not gain much kudos from the results of the examinations, either in mathematics or in English; many of the boys dislike my methods and do the minimum of work necessary to evade punishment, yet I have made a few firm friends; I have led a healthy life, I have read a good many books, and I am as keen as mustard to prove my ability to teach.

Benbow and Illingworth have each written to me and I find that I treasure letters from boys above all others. Where other men of my age fall in love with girls I suppose I give my affections to those boys who show promise in English and take advantage of the seclusion of my rooms to come and pour out their petty worries and ask for advice.

I have been reading somewhere of late that it is a dreadful thing for a man with any brains to live always in the society of others less mature than himself: he becomes didactic and in every way obnoxious: I know that Charles Lamb was not alone in flying from the presence of all schoolmasters: there is a distinctly noticeable trait in us, as a profession, which makes us want to teach and advise, to lay down the law: it is a habit against which I must most carefully guard.

On the other hand, always being with crowds of healthy youngsters certainly tends to keep a man young: there are very few responsibilities, I am catered for, I pay no rates or taxes, I have £150 a year to spend on books, clothes, travel, and any other incidental expenses I like: I have longer holidays than any other professional man: for four months in the year I am free to do whatever I like.

Of course I shall never be able to marry, never have sons and daughters of my own. But then, as I never see a girl of my own class at Radchester, I am never likely to want to settle down to domestic life. After all, instead of one wife and a few children, I have three or four hundred children of the most fascinating ages: I stand in loco parentis to countless numbers.

I don't feel that I want to become rich: I am willing to forgo all the ordinary ambitions if I may have a more or less free hand in education, and at last realize my many ideals about the training of youth.

It seemed unduly lonely at home during Christmas week compared with the noisy cheeriness of school. For the first time in my life I am beginning to feel quite bored with life at Darley. I long for the games, the chatter, my form, my books, yes, even for Common Room, with an aching heart. I hope the rest of the holidays will pass more quickly than these last ten days. I take no pleasure in bridge-parties or tea-fights: my only solace is to write reams of nonsense to Illingworth and Benbow, and to read all that I can lay my hands on which bears on the million or so theories of education.

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