I was present at some amusing incidents in examinations at our village school.  A small boy was commanded by an inspector to read aloud, and began in the usual child’s high-keyed, expressionless, and unpunctuated monotone:  “I-have-six-little-pigs-two-of-them-ar
e-white-two-of-them-are-black-an d-two-of-them-are-spotted.”  “That’s not the way to read,” interposed the inspector.  “Give me the book.”  He stood up, striking an attitude, head thrown well back, and reading with great deliberation and emphasis:  “I have six LITTLE PIGS; two of them are white!  Two of them are black! and (confidentially) two of them are spot_tered_!”

I once picked up an elementary reading book in the school, and read as follows:  “Tom said to Jack, ’There is a hayrick down in the meadow; shall we go and set it on fire?’” And so on, with an account of the conflagration, highly coloured.  So much for town ideas of the education of country children; the suggestion was enough to bring about the catastrophe, given the opportunity and a box of matches.

Some of the inspectors were very agreeable men; they occasionally came to luncheon at my house, and I once asked where the best-managed schools were to be found.  The reply was, “In parishes where the voluntary schools still exist, and the feudal system is mildly administered.”

Our villagers, reading of the large sums that we were obliged to expend in response to the requirements of the Education Department, and finding the consequent rates a burden, began to think of economy and nothing but economy, so that though I had expected them to be only too anxious to provide the very best possible education for their own children, it came as a surprise that this was quite a subordinate aim to that of keeping down the cost.  And this was the more unexpected, as the main cost fell upon the large ratepayers, like myself and the railway company and the owners of land and cottages rented rate-free.  At the next election several of these economists became candidates, with the result that many of the original members including myself were not returned, in spite of the fact that our well-planned and well-built schools were erected at a lower cost per child than any in the neighbourhood.  I was not sorry to escape from the monotony of listening to interminable debates as to whether a necessary broom or such-like trifle should be bought at one shilling or one and threepence.  For this was the kind of subject that the Board could understand and liked to enlarge upon, while really important proposals were carried with little consideration.  As a matter of fact, members of a School Board are no more than dummies in the hands of an inflexible Department, and are appointed to carry out orders and regulations without the power of modification, even when quite unsuitable for a country village school.

There was some little excitement at the election; one of the members of the old Board had been called “an ignoramus,” in the stress of battle, and being much concerned and mystified asked a neighbour what the term signified, adding, no doubt thinking of a hippopotamus, that he believed it was some kind of animal!  His knowledge of zoology was probably as limited as that disclosed by the following story: