In the Best of Humour

Otago Witness, Issue 4031, 16 June 1931, Page 68

In the Best of Humour

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.) BACK AT SCHOOL.

By

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

Here we are, back at school again, plunging into the third declension of Latin and busy with recurring decimals. I don’t mean the little boys and girls themselves who put in the actual attendance. I mean the parents at home who sit up at night and puzzle over the “ home work.” Speaking for myself, I am getting on nicely, but I find the work this year distinctly harder. We have been promoted and have moved up from plain vulgar fractions into decimals. It is likely that in this school year we shall do three whole chapters of the arithmetic. It’s terrific the way we mow it down. It is expected that in the brief space of ten months..we shall “finish” recurring decimals, square root, and the measurement of solid bodies.

Compared with this, last year’s arithmetic was a cinch. I, and the other parents similarly employed, w r ere busy last winter with measuring paper for rooms (a snap) and reducing square miles to square furlongs (a mere nothing). Looking back, the whole thing seems ridiculously easy. But this year we parents are right up against it. We bumped all of a sudden into these recurring decimals and square root and we’re stuck. For us, of course, there is no help, no one to go to; we get a certain number of hints from the children themselves, but beyond that nothing. I’ve tried looking into arithmetic text book; but it’s no good; you can’t understand it. The other evening I happened for a moment into the house of my friend M'Donyall. As I went into his study he swept some papers off the table in a rather shamefaced way and muttered something about some work that he had brought home from the office. But 1 knew better. He was working at his recurring decimals and he couldn’t get them straight. I also caught a glimpse of a ruled sheet of paper on which he had written in beautiful clear script “ by, with, frurn, or in the table.” So I that he was working at Latin,home work as well. So far I have beaten M'Donyall in Latin, but Willie Castle’s grandmother beats Us both. There is, in fact, only one brighter parent in the class, old Mr Edward Galloway, bachelor brother of the grandfather of Edward Galloway, jun., who has been head of the class in Latin home work for two continuous weeks.

The four of us, M'Donyall and I, and Willie Castle’s grandmother and old Mr Galloway, have been running neck and neck in general home work for all the year so far. I know M'Donyall, but r don’t know the other two, but I have to admire the dogged way in which they go at their home work.

In one subject, French, Miss Gillespie (aunt of little Walter Gillespie) in the same class has been beating us all out. But then she took an unfair advantage of us by going over to France for the

summer so as to be able to do Walter's exercises. It seems there is no rule of the school about parents studying abroad —they apparently are allowed to do so if they wish. This condition of things, which happens not only at my little boy’s school, but at all the schools like it, has led me to think that it would be well for us parents to try to “ get together ” in the matter. This is why I am taking this opportunity to put the matter before the other parents through the press. As things are, we are working too much in the dark. Our competition is too keen. We are-cutting one another’s throats. Going on as we are, the onlv result is that we shall all get promoted again and strike a’ whole lot of new work. The pace is getting too swift.

For example, this third declension in Latin is fierce, and there seems no end to it. I realise, of course, that there must have been a time when I ,was a little boy at school, 40 or 50 years ago, when I must have known it. But lam not so sure even of that; my mother was very good at Latin, and I had an uncle who was simply splendid. The first thing that I think we need is some way of pooling our information so as to get light on how to do the work, particularly the mathematics. In the books there is no light. The pages in the arithmetic that explain how to do things are always skipped over, because nobody understands them, and the schoolteacher explains to the children how to do the sums. -The children have no time to explain it all to us, the parents, and eo we are pitchforked into the thing without a proper chance. For example, the arithmetic book that we use in our school says, “Arithmetic is the art of calculation by symbolic integers to which is attached a place value in ascending multiples of a given magnitude.” I don’t get it; and I doubt whether Willie Castle’s grandmother has any real grip on it either. In the same way it says, “ A recurring or repeating decimal is the name given to an indeterminate fractional magnitude increasing to infinity by an increment which constantly diminishes in a given inverse ratio.” Oh, is it? Well, I wish old Mr Galloway would get on to that and let me have his .views on it. If he is so darned clever as to rank head of us all in his home work for two weeks, perhaps he will tell the rest of us what that means.

. The trouble of it is that there is nothing in our grown-up lives that corresponds at all to the problems in our home work. In 40 years of honest, selfsupport I have never yet met a recurring decimal. At my club on the price list of things for lunch I look in vain for them. If the club will serve a filet mignon at a price of I.o3dol—let me write it, one dollar decimal nought three repeater—l’ll order four portions and watch the waiter try to add them up. If the railway companies will sell tickets

at 3.14159 (the nine is a repeater) cents per mile, I’ll travel five decimal four repeater miles just to get on to the system. But as it is, we’re lost. Of course, we all admit, as parents, that it wouldn’t be fair to try to make the children do the home work themselves,. \ They are too busy, too happy, for it. When my little son and John and lan and Lawrence and the rest of the crowd of our form come up the street with their school books after school and deliver the home work, door by door, who could have the heart to stop them and call them in from their play? No, no—let M'Donyall and old Mr Galloway get busy—but spare the little boys. But let them, the parents, take warning. I doubt if their health can stand the strain. M'Donyall has had to give up golf since he got into square root, and old Mr Galloway’s light has been burning in his study till one and two in the morning after they put him into the third declension. It’s too tense. There are some bright parents in our school, but at this pace they’ll break down. Surely, if we took thought about it, we could make it a little easier for ourselves. Can’t we slacken the pace? In all departments of business it is found that competition is useful only as a stimulus; as a final principle, as a goal, it fails. It is everywhere replaced by some kind of concerted action.

We parents must follow this general rule. What if we do get proficient this winter in square root? The teachers will merely rush us forward into the cube root' in the spring. Already algebra is looming up dead ahead of us; they talk of starting us in it next month. How will Willie Castle’s grandmother like that ? The truth is, I fear, that we are hindered by our own petty conceit in our achievements. We like to come out at the head of the class, and have the teacher write “ excellent ” on our exercise. And, of course, each of us has something that he fancies he can do better than the others. Willie Castle’s people are brokers, and so, of course, in straight arithmetic we can’t hold the pace with them. And if Miss Gillespie beats it over to France so as to be able to do all the exercises in Walter’s book and knows which nouns are feminine, we can’t stop her. I don’t mind pleading a little bit guilty myself, too. I’ve had a certain training as a writer, and I admit that the essay I did last term on “ Spring ” had a snap to it that M'Donyall can’t touch. This week we are all doing essays on “An Afternoon at the Zoo,” and I feel that I’ve got the crowd cold before they even begin. But I’m willing to agree, if they are. Slacken off the pace, ease it up. Never mind about promotion after New Year. 111 stay back in the same old class if Willie Castle’s grandmother and the rest of the gang will stay with me. Come, let us be reasonable about it. Let us get this home work cut down to where we can still dine in comfort and spend our evenings in seemly leisure. I will, if the rest will. What about it?