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.