To-night MacMurray invited me down to meet his former head, Simpson, a big man in the Educational Institute, and a likely President next year. Mac introduced me as "a chap with theories on education; doesn\'t care a rap for inspectors and abominates discipline."

Simpson looked me over; then he grunted.

"You\'ll grow out of that, young man," he said sagely.

I laughed.

"That\'s what I\'m afraid of," I said, "I fear that the continual holding of my nose to the grindstone will destroy my perspective."

"You\'ll find that experience doesn\'t destroy perspective."

"Experience," I cried, "is, or at least, should be one of Oscar Wilde\'s Seven Deadly Virtues. The experienced man is the chap who funks doing a thing because he\'s had his fingers burnt. \'Tis experience that makes cowards of us all."

[Pg 137]

"Of course," said Simpson, "you\'re joking. It stands to reason that I, for instance, with a thirty-four years\' experience of teaching know more about education than you do, if you don\'t mind my saying so."

"Man, I was teaching laddies before your father and mother met," he added.

"If you saw a lad and a lass making love would you arrange that he should sit near her?"

"Good gracious, no!" he cried. "What has that got to do with the subject."

"But why not give them chances to spoon?" I asked.

"Why not? If a teacher encouraged that sort of thing, why, it might lead to anything!"

"Exactly," I said, "experience tells you that you have to do all you can to preserve the morals of the bairns?"

"I could give you instances—"

"I don\'t want them particularly," I interrupted. "My main point is that experience has made you a funk. Pass the baccy, Mac."

"Mean to tell me that\'s how you teach?" cried Simpson. "How in all the world do you do for discipline?"

[Pg 138]

"I do without it."

"My goodness! that\'s the limit! May I ask why you do without it?"

"It is a purely personal matter," I answered. "I don\'t want anyone to lay down definite rules for me, and I refuse to lay down definite rules of conduct for my bairns."

"But how in all the earth do you get any work done?"

"Work," I said, "is an over-rated thing, just as knowledge is overrated."

"Nonsense," said Simpson.

"All right," I remarked mildly, "if knowledge is so important, why is a university professor usually a talker of platitudes? Why is the average medallist at a university a man of tenth-rate ideas?"

"Then our Scotch education is all in vain?"

"Speaking generally, it is."

I think it was at this stage that Simpson began to doubt my sanity.

"Young man," he said severely, "one day you will realise that work and knowledge and discipline are of supreme importance. Look at the Germans!"

He waved his hand in the direction of the sideboard, and I looked round hastily.

[Pg 139]

"Look what Germany has done with work and knowledge and discipline!"

"Then why all this bother to crush a State that has all the virtues?" I asked diffidently.

"It isn\'t the discipline we are trying to crush; it is the militarism."

"Good!" I cried, "I\'m glad to hear it. That\'s what I want to do in Scotland; I want to crush the militarism in our schools, and, as most teachers call their militarism discipline, I curse discipline."

"That\'s all rubbish, you know," he said shortly.

"No it isn\'t. If I leather a boy for making a mistake in a sum, I am no better than the Prussian officer who shoots a Belgian civilian for crossing the street. I am equally stupid and a bully."

"Then you allow carelessness to go unpunished?" he sneered.

"I do. You see I am a very careless devil myself. I\'ll swear that I left your garden gate open when I came in, Mac, and your hens will be all over the road."

Mac looked out at the window.

"They are!" he chuckled, and I laughed.

[Pg 140]

"You seem to think that slovenliness is a virtue," said Simpson with a faint smile.

"I don\'t, really, but I hold that it is a natural human quality."

"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[Pg 141] 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.

"First rate!" he cried, "I\'ll be there at nine."

"Better not," I said with a smile, "or you\'ll have to wait for ten minutes."

*         *         *

He arrived as I blew the "Fall in" on my bugle.

"You don\'t line them up and march them in?" he said.

"I used to, but I\'ve given it up," I confessed. "To tell the truth I\'m not enamoured of straight lines."

We entered my classroom. Simpson stood looking sternly at my chattering family while I marked the registers.

"I couldn\'t tolerate this row," he said.

"It isn\'t so noisy as your golf club on a Saturday night, is it?" He smiled slightly.

[Pg 142]

Jim Burnett came out to my desk and lifted The Glasgow Herald, then he went out to the playground humming On the Mississippi.

"What\'s the idea?" asked Simpson.

"He\'s the only boy who is keen on the war news," I explained.

Then Margaret Steel came out.

"Please, sir, I took The Four Feathers home and my mother began to read them; she thinks she\'ll finish them by Sunday. Is anybody reading The Invisible Man?"

I gave her the book and she went out.

Then Tom Macintosh came out and asked for the Manual Room key; he wanted to finish a boa............