13 February: Boreham on School

Going Back to School
All things come to an end. Even the children's midsummer holidays, interminable as they sometimes seem, furnish no exception to that general rule. In the last few days [this is the southern hemisphere!] we have witnessed the usual frantic search for the odds and ends that make up the paraphernalia of school life and have beheld once more "the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school." We again hear the excited shouts and boisterous burst of laughter as we pass the vicinity of the playgrounds, and at other times catch the drone of lessons issuing from the open windows of the classrooms. It is not, however, with the young people themselves that we are immediately concerned. For them the return to the desk is not so terrible a business as the superficial onlooker might suppose. The transition from the splendid adventure of the holidays to the humdrum and drudgery of the school is, happily, relieved by a whole series of thrills and sensations.

There is a certain wild delight in recounting—openly in the playground or surreptitiously in lesson time—the picturesque and romantic experiences of the vacation. Curiosity is teased by haunting possibilities of promotion into higher classes, initiation into more alluring mysteries, and introduction to new—and therefore more attractive teachers. Then, too, there are fresh scholars to be eyed critically, tested characteristically, and welcomed cautiously. And so, taking one thing with another, the average child finds it possible to anticipate the return to school with stoical resignation, if not with positive delight.

Pathos Behind The Scenes
But what of the parents and the teachers? The minds of children cannot be expected to realise the wealth of emotion awakened in the heart of a parent at seeing the young people set out on the scholastic adventures of the year, particularly in the cases of those who go to school for the first time. Mothers can seldom confront that crisis with dry eyes. In her "By Bog and Sea in Donegal," Elizabeth Shane paints the picture:—

He's gone to school, Wee Hughie,
An' him not four,
Sure I saw the fright
was in him
When he left the door.
But he took a hand o' Denny
An' a
hand o' Dan
Wi' Foe's old coat upon him—
Och, the poor wee man.

And lovers of Alice Duer Miller's "White Cliffs of Dover" will recall the poignant moment that nearly broke the heart of Susan Dunne. Little John, her dead husband's boy, must go to school!

Off to school to be free of women's teaching,
Into a world of men—at seven
years old;
Into a world where a mother's hands vainly reaching
Will never
again caress and comfort and hold.

After once going' to school, mothers say, a child is never quite the same again. Coming under a new authority, he learns independence and self-reliance. This is good, and mothers know it; yet they secretly lament that going to school is saying goodbye to babyhood.

With the teachers the position is only one degree less tense. It is scarcely conceivable that any one of them will face the tasks of this new year save under a sense of the very gravest responsibility. The British schoolmaster is one of the most honoured and most cherished of our Imperial traditions. The men who have necessarily presided over the destinies of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, and the other great public schools, have been architects of Empire and makers of history. They have woven the richest stuff of their commanding personalities into the warp and woof of the ages. It may seem a far cry from such classical and world famed seminaries to the average Tasmanian country school, but the difference is a difference, not of kind, but merely of degree.

The Grandeur That Is Yet To Be
In each case the teacher is made tremblingly aware of the stately splendour of his opportunity and the onerous burdens of his responsibility; in each case he is faced by problems of really first-class magnitude and importance; and in each case he is made to feel that those problems were never so acute, so baffling, and insistent as at this hour. For the teachers of today are equipping the children to play their part in a world that is being swept by a hurricane of change. Nothing is taken for granted. The most antique standards and traditions, however firmly entrenched, are fearlessly challenged and tested. If they survive that crucial ordeal, they are permitted to remain; if not, no sentimental veneration can save them from the scrapheap. Every day bristles with innovations, novelties are no longer novel; we should be startled if they failed to appear. Yet, sensational as have been the developments of recent years, we are only on the fringe of things. The day of science is only just dawning; inventive ingenuity is in its infancy; we are beginning to tap the hidden resources of a universe that is slowly waking from aeons of slumber.

The most startling reforms have yet to be effected; the most bewildering discoveries have yet to be made; the cunningly concealed secrets of earth and air and sky—secrets that have eluded the patience, the courage and the skill of all the centuries—remain to be read by the heroes of tomorrow. The schoolmaster, therefore, has the ball at his feet. He enjoys advantages of which his predecessors knew nothing. He has healthier material on which to work, and he has himself been furnished with infinitely higher technical training. His supreme task is not so much to turn out a handful of smart children who can romp through the most formidable examinations. But he will earn the benediction of posterity if, at a time like this, he can evolve, from ordinary and average children, men and women of lofty principle, robust character, and alert intellect. If, with or without academic brilliance, the resourcefulness, independence, and ingenuity of such young people can be brought, by careful and considerate handling, to its maximum capacity, each may be trusted to play a full, an adequate, and a worthy part in the stirring drama of the brave new age.

F W Boreham