AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941
page thirty-seven
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix
The morning’s work went on from nine to half-past twelve with a twenty minutes’ recess in the middle. The afternoon’s work occupied the time between three and five, or half-past three to half-past five, as games demanded. An hour’s preparation filled up the evening before bed at eight o'clock. The work periods extended to an hour or three-quarters of an hour each. Masters and mistresses taught boys and girls alike but the sexes were segregated on either side of an aisle between the desks, and in certain lessons no mixing occurred; the girls sewed alone; the boys did agriculture and physiology alone.
School books belonged to the School and were allocated till from age and misuse they fell apart, so most wore a grimy-thumbed, wet-finger-licked appearance; age had bent their bindings, misuse had cracked their backs. All the Davis’s Arithmetic seemed to be perpetually shabby; they looked poor when new, bound in a rough black with their pages crammed with closely-printed exercises, line upon line, column after column of small figures. These exercises reached the extremity of dullness.’ Tables’ provided another sound stand-by. The Ackworth Table Book tabulated everything conceivable, all to be learnt by heart and repeated many times. Nor did the mathematicians forget Euclid and algebra. Euclid’s Elements vied with Todhunter’s Algebra for sheer incomprehensibility. Particular enunciation led general enunciation through hypothesis and construction and proof to the final triumph of Q.E.D., or Q.E.F., but knowledge of what it all meant was confined to the few. The many did what they could and allowed their resentment to spill when a master on the figure of a proposition replaced the familiar and appropriate letters by confusing numbers which led to catastrophe and downfall. Algebra became a matter of manipulation. In subtraction you changed the signs and proceeded as in addition; equations juggled with quantities, moving them impartially to one side of the ‘equals’ or the other, and x might turn out to be anything from shillings to cows. Multiplication of two minus quantities produced by mysterious ordinance, a plus quantity, and away in the distance lay the dim land of quadratics and surds. This kind of thing unexplained or badly explained puzzled the brains of twelve to fourteen year olds.
Dr. William Smith’s English Grammar had a black outside as well, but the book was thicker, had better proportions, was more clearly printed with bigger print on better paper. It surveyed the whole realm of English grammar from the alphabet to passages for analysis and abounded in delectable quotations. So Dr. Smith’s Grammar gradually became a hoard of minor treasures. English literature, too, jejune though the teaching tended to become, introduced the reluctant scholar at any rate to the names of the greater figures. The page or two of notes on Charles Lamb contained a brief dictated account of his life, a list of his major works and a few lines of appreciation. This, and a reading from Roast Pig or Christ’s Hospital with memories of banyan days and the best of sapors, left Lamb more than a name and led some to search and wander farther afield.
Frequent, regular, sustained reading aloud helped and buttressed literary taste. A reading period came every day and in the top class the book used was that best of readers, the Ackworth Reader. Constant re-reading of the selections in this noble book in no way staled them. The choice was wide and wise; the prose excelled the poetry; both provided nourishment and refreshment. All had to be careful to sound the aspirate, keep the voice up at commas, drop it at full stops, and modulate it as required, for Committee Friends at their regular examinations stressed the importance of good reading aloud.
In history, the grim textbooks compiled by Collier effectively killed any interest except the keenest. But when in the course of years the repellent Collier was replaced by Meiklejohn, interest revived. It was stimulated by the odd notes about odd facts attached appendix-like to the end of each chapter and by a faint realisation that history did not really resemble a string of sausages whose links were unconnected save by the twist of time. Real history did not entirely die, for one boy kept under his mattress, between it and the wooden slats, the whole eight volumes of Macaulay’s History which he had brought from home and which provided a vast store of rhetoric, learning and prejudice to be enjoyed before lights were put out.
The textbooks, parts one and two, of Henri Bué, represented the maximum achievement in French. In due time the student reached the little readings packed away at the end where one anecdote closed with a hail of arrows and javelins. Monsieur Janau provided, too, a slim brown book with passages for translation but these had not the homely familiarity of the Bué stories whose names at any rate were known by surreptitious sampling during the duller periods of grammar.
The boys’ side recognised science, for
Ralph Dixon took a bi-weekly class in agriculture, whose members duly
received, after examination, certificates of agricultural success from
the South Kensington Department of Science and Art. Ralph Dixon used
to come from Chestnut House through the glass-fronted storeroom into
the big schoolroom. He sat down at the teacher’s desk, opened
his book and began to read. His reading continued till the period ended.
Questions sometimes changed proceedings, and on the rarest occasions
a visit across the road to the school farm cleared up some practical
point. A chance always existed, too, that successful examinees might
in September be allowed to visit Stokesley Show. This entailed a walk
there and back through the fields by the Leven, a pleasure made keener
by anticipation of delights to come.
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