I do not speak without experience. In my first year at Chester the population of the district was about 205,000, of whom 34,000 should have been at school. In my last year at Manchester the district comprised about 880,000 people, of whom more than 150,000 were under inspection: for the Higher Grade and Higher Elementary Schools had brought in many more of the lower-middle class than used to patronise us.
Roughly speaking, I may say that for thirty-two years I spent five days a week, holidays and extra work excepted, in the study of my ever-increasing flock; their habits, their physical characteristics in connection with education, their morals and manners (if any), their likes and dislikes, their work and their play. In the course of another thirty-two years I might have got to know a little about them. For the benefit of other searchers, and that they may begin where I leave off, I record here a very small fraction of the result of my experiences in school.
The physical characteristic side is one of absorbing interest. I have long regretted that I did not give special attention to “Ears, their influence on, and indication of, character.” There is room for a valuable monograph on this subject. The kindred topic of hair was my special study. I regret that my theories on hair were received with such general incredulity that I shrink from crushing this simple record of facts by introducing matter so debatable.
Even the rough conclusions which one formed by noting the size and shape of heads were not wholly acceptable. It is not always easy at first sight of a massive brow (“top-heavy for Shakespeare”)[24] to decide whether it contains brains or water on the brain. Similarly I believe in the political world the man with a swollen head is often mistaken in the earlier days of acquaintance for—but I am going beyond my last.
Let us keep to safer ground.
It was once pointed out to me that the main feature of American humour is best described by a Greek phrase meaning “contrary to expectation.” This certainly is the most delightful feature of children, but it is manifest chiefly in their conversation. In most respects they are the slaves of habit, and their games are the strongest instance of this. Of all boys it may be asserted that, if Socrates were to enquire into their ideas of Pleasure, he would reduce them to “motion without exertion, and something to do with a ball.” “A wheel and a ball” is tempting as a concise summary, but “wheel” would exclude horse-riding, boating, skating, and some others. If it is argued that cycling, skating, and boating connote exertion, I reply that to boys of Public Elementary School age the delightful part is the continuous motion which they get by intermittent exertion, and that they will cheerfully drag a bicycle up a steep hill for the sake of the gratuitous descent.
This great theory comprehends all English boys from top to bottom of the social ladder: in details there are points of similarity and of the opposite between the old Public Schools and the 15,000 Public Elementary Schools. The theory of periodicity is common to both, but in the former the principle which allots the summer months to cricket (or the cult of the lesser ball), and the winter to football (or the cult of the greater ball), is climatic. The “little, wee, wee” balls used for fives, racquets, and tennis, are perennial. In our elementary schools, also, there is a law of seasons, but I have never been able to formulate it, and I know of no reason for the alternations. At one time all the boys play tip-cat, which Shakespeare would call “a dreadful trade”: a crusty old bachelor says “it counts fifty if you break a window, and it is game if you put out one eye of a passer-by”: this apocryphal Rule I. is the only one promulgated. At another season hoops are de rigueur: at another marbles: these recreations are little known “in the playing fields of Eton, where the battle of Waterloo was won.” The girls have skipping-ropes, less deadly than tip-cat, but very injurious to the bridge of the nose, or the best hat of the peaceful passenger: and they have Jacks, alias skip-jacks, knuckle bones, astragaloi. I think hop-scotch, which drives the passer-by on to the high-road to be juggernauted by motors, is common to both sexes. The pursuit of a football, or any cheap spheroidal substitute, is perennial for boys.
In this rotation of games, then, there is resemblance of a sort. But there is a lamentable dissimilarity in the spirit of the gamesters. Our elementary boy has hardly the most elementary idea of schoolboy honour. He begins with the loathsome practice of telling tales, not to be named among Christians; A. tells tales of B., not because he hates wrong or loves rules, but to raise his own value in the eyes of the common enemy. This is to put self above the common good. From this beginning he easily arrives at the deadly vice of the working class, the incapacity for playing fair, and for playing without quarrelling. When they are boys, their cricket and football are one long wrangle; when they grow up, they not only buy and sell contests, they even attempt the life of the umpire, who should be sacrosanct as the herald. And from this blunted sense of honour comes another abominable habit, first among boys: they ask a boon—some special indulgence, perhaps—and obtain it on special terms of doing or abstaining from doing something else; but when the boon is granted they have no scruple whatever about breaking the condition precedent. Hence comes one of the ugliest features of trade disputes, the incapacity for keeping a bargain.
Here, as I said, they are the slaves of habit. It is in their speech that the unexpectedness triumphs; and the younger the child the more unexpected are his remarks. Many an inspector, many a teacher, has been reduced to utter confusion by these random shots. It was one of my own staff who came to grief in a country school in this way. He had been examining Standard II. in the multiplication table, and the village idiot was in the class. They dealt with fair success with the simpler problems, and Mr. Rackem was emboldened to soar higher.
“How much is eleven twelves?” he asked, and there was none to answer. He put it in a more searching way: “Who knows how much is eleven twelves?” And the village idiot answered “Gawd,” that being the generally accepted answer to difficult questions couched in that form.