The last school of the morning is spent to-day in history. Geography is also supposed to be taught but is gently allowed to slide except for the drawing of a few maps. The history master is a dear good man, a thorough "slacker," well beloved of the whole school and staff.
The preparation is as usual "to read a chapter of Oman." Some notes are read out from the master's "undergraduate" notebook very slowly and listlessly and as slowly and listlessly taken down by most of the form unless they have anything else to do such as drawing "Old Clothes-horse" (the nickname of the master), a proceeding sometimes fraught with danger for "Old Clothes-horse" has an uncomfortable habit of suddenly remembering his vocation, of saying to himself, "I must be stern." On such days he will demand of such a one the drawing, and bawl out at the top of his voice: "You disgraceful scoundrel, you son of a plough-boy—you—you—disgusting hound—you will write out the whole of the last hundred pages of the history"—a punishment naturally enough afterwards remitted to one-half, one-third, one-tenth, but even then fairly severe. His method of imparting history runs too much on the lines of doing the minimum of correcting work (which though he does not know it, is a step in the right direction, but done in his case from the wrong motive) and of placing implicit confidence in the reading of the work of one man.
Dates and comparisons of characters, knowledge of laws and deft little paragraphs about things like Habeas Corpus, Barebones, and so on, with neat compartments at the end of each period containing the great names in literature of that period (as if it ever did a boy any good just to know the name of Dryden, Pope, Burke, and Johnson without having read a word of their works), these combine to form his stock in trade. His boys turn out fairly well in stereotyped examinations, but they leave school knowing no real history at all, worse still with a positive distaste for a subject with which they have really not even a nodding acquaintance.
Morning school is now over and an hour is to pass before the midday dinner. You think perhaps these boys now are going to have complete rest, a chance of being by themselves, time for reading—not a bit of it. There will now be compulsory net practice or shooting on the range, recruit drill, a racquets or a fives tie to play off, an imposition, probably several, in arrears to be polished off, book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting or music classes to attend, or, worst of all, private tuition. Dinner comes as a temporary relief in which discussion runs rife on the latest scandal, scores at cricket, the news in the Sportsman, the newest catch-word, how So-and-So was ragged, the latest form of torture devised for the most prominent idiot, and all the customs, fashions and frivolities of their little world. After dinner a stampede is made to change from the appalling funereal garments of the morning which are given an all too brief respite, into the flannels necessary for the House match or nets of the afternoon. Some luckless ones who have perchance dropped a pen in the deadly stillness of a strict master's form or refused to do any preparation for over a week in a slack one's set, are hounded round the quadrangle for half an hour in an ignominious punishment drill, which drill sometimes contains over a hundred boys, which speaks well for the discipline of the school.
Suppose it is a House-match day, and nearly every day in the summer term sees one of these in progress, those in the Houses concerned, not actually playing, will all be compelled to watch: nay, in fact so imbued with the evils of over-athleticism are they that they would all rather miss anything than one ball bowled, one run scored; their eyes are riveted on to the cricket pitch; the whole staff is there equally occupied; the life of the little nation is at stake; nothing at all matters except the winning or losing of this single match. It is the one big world event about which quarrels will be raised, criticism will be rife for days to come, in dormitory, in the Common Room, in the privacy of the masters' own sitting-rooms or in the studies of the boys. Other Houses not actually playing will be practising assiduously at nets until another bell rings to show that time is up; a rush is made to change back into the monastic garb preparatory to getting up more work (or pretending to) for afternoon school. The first period of the afternoon to-day is given up to what is called science for our forms; that is to say, a few nerveless experiments which never come off are tried by a man whom it is hard to differentiate from the bottle-washer of the laboratory, a man with an accent (not that that matters intrinsically), but a man with the vulgar attributes that accompany accent when promoted to spheres unused to such things; living in an air of snobbishness and hypocrisy, this "bounder" bounds more than ever he need and causes howls of derision as, in his nervousness he mispronounces words of which even Modern Shell have somehow acquired the correct tonation. A smattering of physics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism, heat and light, is now doled out in such minute quantities that no one ever derives any real idea of what is going on, what they all mean; just enough to temporize, to fill the parents' minds with the idea that their sons are being liberally educated in every department of life.
From this waste of time the boys proceed to their last hour of real school "teaching" for the day—French or German, taught again in sets by a man who took high honours in history and then spent six months in a German pension. His foreign accent is deplorable but he is a conscientious man and makes a valiant effort at least to keep a day ahead of his set (not a very hard task) in knowledge. He, however, has ideas on the subject of teaching modern languages and does not believe too much in the mental gymnastic of grammar, but buys periodicals in French and German, and also modern novels for his set to read: being an entirely honest man his ignorance is being continually shown up, particularly as he is unfortunate enough to have in his set one boy who spends all his holidays in Belgium or Switzerland, but his popularity carries him through, and his very lack of knowledge makes the boys work to see if they can beat him on his own ground: this, it is easy to see, is the Modern Shell's intellectual treat of the day. In examinations they do nothing, but most of them get some sort of a smattering of, and begin really to take an interest in, languages whose periodicals sometimes even publish football and cricket results and occasionally have pictures which remind them of certain London penny weeklies that they avidly read in dormitory.
A bell signalizes tea and the end of school. A hurried repast, for physical training follows hard on the top of it, a compulsory form of exercise that most boys frankly detest. After twenty minutes of this the preparation bell goes, and excitement is rife to see whether it is "The Cadger" or "Hopeless George" on duty. If the former, work and the right work has to be attempted: if the latter, novels appear as if by magic and work is given, for an ecstatic hour, the go-by. Another bell (the bell is so constantly in use that a special man has to be kept who does nothing else but attend to this department) summons the school to evening chapel, a repetition of the morning roll-call, except that a lusty roar in a well-known hymn will testify to the Almighty that there are 300 boys who are well pleased that "another ruddy day is o'er." As a matter of fact it is not "o'er," for a further hour of preparation in the privacy, however, of their studies this time awaits them. Pathetic indeed is the sight of the tired-out wan faces of the Modern Shell boy, whose head can be seen nodding over the page of a dull grammar, trying in vain to keep awake and remember the consequences that will accompany his ignorance on the morrow if he forgets what a quasipassive or oxymoron is.
At last, at ten o'clock the bell rings once more and with a burst of energy he flings his book aside and rushes upstairs only, in all probability, to find that it is his duty to keep "nixes-watch," that is, to stand near the end of the dormitory until nearly midnight to listen for the step of the House-master, who might otherwise pry into practices that would fill his complacent mind with disquiet. About midnight, worn out, yet not a whit improved in body, soul, or mind the luckless wight will be allowed to get into bed, to sleep, perchance to dream of a new regime, of a better order of things, where life will not be one dull, eternal round of uselessness, useless knowledge, useless punishments, useless games, useless virtues, useless vices, useless restraint, useless discipline, but free, progressive, happy, where no such things take place as have taken place in this absolutely truthful picture I have drawn of a day in the life of a boy in the Modern Shell.