"Are your pupils slovenly?" he asked.
"Lots of 'em are. You're born tidy or you aren't."
"When these boys go out to the workshop, what then? Will a joiner keep an apprentice who makes a slovenly job?"
"Ah!" I said, "you're talking about trade now. You evidently want our schools to turn out practical workmen. I don't. Mind you I'm quite willing to admit that a shoemaker who theorises about leather is a public nuisance. Neatness and skill are necessary in practical manufacture, but I refuse to reduce education to the level of cobbling or coffin-making. I don't care how slovenly a boy is if he thinks."
"If he is slovenly he won't think," said Simpson.
I smiled.
"I think you are wrong. Personally, I am a very lazy man; I have my library all over the floor as a rule. Yet, though I am lazy physically I am not lazy mentally. I hold that the really lazy teacher is your "ring the bell at nine sharp" man; he hustles so much that he hasn't time to think. If you work hard all day you never have time to think."
Simpson laughed.
"Man, I'd like to see your school!"
"Why not? Come up tomorrow morning," I said.