Читать книгу Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words - Max Arthur, Max Arthur - Страница 124

Father decided to put me into teaching. In 1908, I went to St John's College in Battersea in London. We were affiliated to London University. The syllabus was very wide, and in the first year I did English, History, Geography, Science and Maths. The discipline was extremely strict. We had lectures every morning at seven o'clock and you had to be there on the dot. It was a bind – there was a competition to see how late you could stay in bed to get there for seven. Three mornings a week, the lecture was Chaucer, the other two it was Maths. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, then chapel at nine. We had lectures until twelve-fifteen, then lunch. We had splendid food and we were waited on hand and foot. In the afternoon, we had one lecture between two and three, but on Wednesday we were free all afternoon. We had another good meal at six, with beer provided at the table. I didn't drink at that time, but two prefects used to arrange to sit at a table with ten teetotallers each evening until it dawned on people that they were getting tight every night. After dinner, we had chapel at quarter to seven, and supervised private study between half past seven and half past nine.

I passed out of the college in 1910. I specialised in history teaching and I had to sit a paper on the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. I did well on that, but I also had to do the school practice. That meant being assessed as you taught a class. The subject of the class was given by the tutor. I was hoping it would be a History or Geography lesson – in fact he made me give a grammar lesson on the ablative absolute: which was really a Latin thing. I took a class of forty-nine boys in a Chelsea school, in front of the class teacher, the headmaster, the tutor and the Inspector. For thirty-five minutes I taught the ablative absolute. I struggled. At the end, the Inspector came to me and said, ‘My poor boy. You have my sympathy. Who the hell gave you that subject?’ ‘That gentleman over there,’ I said, indicating the tutor. ‘I wonder how he would have managed,’ said the Inspector. The Inspector turned to the tutor. ‘You are responsible for assessing the subjects and you gave this young man a lesson on the ablative absolute. He struggled manfully with it but he couldn't illustrate it. I'll bet a darn you couldn't have done it! What a ridiculous thing to do! And I'm going to give him an “A” mark!’