July 31, 1910
Now that I have come to the end of my first year as a Public School master, I am trying to take stock of the situation. I have learnt a good deal since last September and I certainly am devoted to my job. I have not yet got over my initial nervousness. I still have nightmares of my boys getting out of hand and yet I have had no great difficulty in keeping order. I certainly don't like taking prep. or looking after "Hall" while three hundred and fifty boys eat, but I can cope with any number of boys up to forty and keep them at work. During the last week I have been invigilating and correcting examination work: my boys have not done particularly well in mathematics. Apparently I still go too fast or else I am unable to explain adequately. Compared with my English work I find mathematics uncommonly dull. In English I have got some really good results. Some boys have written short stories, others plays, others verses, many of which show originality, good sense, and a capacity for expression which I certainly did not get last year. I have interested them, too, in reading: they borrow all my books, new and old. I read extracts from all sorts of authors in form and try to whet their appetites for more. I only wish that instead of a paltry two hours a week I could inveigle the Head to give me an hour a day. All the other English masters here confine themselves to analysis, parsing, précis, and one play of Shakespeare per year. I have run through (lightly) the whole course of English Literature in the last three terms and some boys have specialized on drama, others on ballads, others on fiction and a few on poetry, each following his own bent.
I wonder why this all-important subject has been so neglected. That it has is evident from the silly letters most boys write and the twaddle that gets into the school magazine. Why any one pays sixpence for the monthly Radcastrian passes my comprehension. It consists of a facetious all too brief Editorial, badly strung together, followed by pages of description of games which interest no one except the players, and them only if they receive honourable mention, a sentimental piece of artificial versifying, a list of elevens and fifteens, promotions, colourless reports of debates and lectures, and a few letters of abuse. I'd guarantee to turn out a better journal from the weekly output of my form. The worst of it is that the average boy is interested in nothing at all, there is nothing that he wants to read about. So a tradition springs up that a school magazine shall be solely a chronicle of games.
I am now in the middle of writing reports. I wonder why it is that as soon as we are confronted by one of these queer documents all powers of criticism and expression desert us, and we, one and all, descend to a jargon which is quite meaningless. I find myself filling about a hundred of these slips with such idiotic remarks as "Industry adequate," "Painstaking," "Very fair but could work harder," "Lacks concentration," "Very weak but tries," "Neat and hard-working," and so on. When they are filled up they are about as much good as a guide to parents as when they are untouched. No one could possibly gauge a boy's merit or progress from these things. They remind me of marks, which as a criterion of a boy's terminal success are as bad a test as could be devised. I always feel that I am being paid £150 a year simply to do this sort of hack work, to fill up reports and to make out a weekly order for my form. All the rest of my work I give willingly without payment.
The first part of my summer holiday has been decided for me. To-morrow morning we leave for Salisbury Plain, where we are to camp out for ten days. To that I am looking forward immensely. Sharing a tent with seven boys in this house should bring me closer to them than ever and I ought to be able to learn something valuable about that most elusive and tricky thing, a boy's mind.
They are never quite natural in the presence of a master; perhaps they'll forget that I am one at Tidworth.
Our O.C. here is a strange fellow. I like him very much, but his views on life are diametrically opposed to my own. He is as hard as nails and is a twentieth-century Stoic. He despises all beautiful things; his bookshelves are lined with Kipling and guides to military strategy and tactics. He lives in and for the Corps. He is never happy unless he is in uniform. Like myself he is a mathematician, but he makes all his work as military as possible. Day and night he evolves schemes for field-days, outpost, advanced guard and other exercises; he is an expert scout, signaller, and drill-master. He demands the utmost punctilio in matters of ceremonial on parade: he coaches individually each boy who shoots on the range; he spends most of his holidays in barracks or on Army manœuvres as a lieutenant in the Special Reserve. He is one of the few men I know who is convinced that we are shortly to embark on a colossal European war, and naturally all the rest of Common Room laugh at him. He really is rather absurd, yet I cannot help but love him, he is so splendidly sure of himself. His is one of the rooms to which I feel any inclination to go when I feel lonely. He sits up to all hours of the night drawing maps and working out military problems from old examination papers, but he is always eager and ready for an argument. His principal bone of contention with me is that I don't "ginger up" the boys enough. He is a firm believer in the rod; he canes nearly all the boys in his House weekly, just to keep them up to the mark and himself in training. He detests my theories that boys should be taught in comfortable rooms with good pictures on the walls and æsthetic colours to delight their senses. He is one of those men who is suspicious of all Art as tending towards the immoral. They say he is admirable in camp, and that all the other Public School officers stand in awe of him because he knows his job so much better than they do. He certainly is unlike any other schoolmaster whom I have ever known. There is a sort of Straffordian "thoroughness" about him which makes him an idol in the sight of the boys who, to give them their due, certainly do bestow all their hero-worship on the Nietzschean superman when they find him.