BEDTIME STORY

Taupo Times, Volume III, Issue 139, 24 September 1954, Page 2

BEDTIME STORY

A CON STITUTIONAL CHANGE Once upon a time, for a period of about ten years at the fag end of the last century and the beginning of the present, I was a school teacher. There were no frills in the education system in thosei days. In the back-blocks school of which I was for four years sole teacher in charge, my tools of trade were a table, a blackboard, a box of chalk, a register, log-book, and a supply of supplejacks. These last constituted powerful and inescapable instruments for exacting good behaviour and stimulating scholastic industry. Teachers had to work hard. Constantly in their minds eye was the terrifying vision of the annual visit of the inspectors — scalp-hunters out for the blood of the lazy an*l incompetent. Between Christmas and Christmas there were| only two breaks, Easter and two weeks bang in the middle of winter, plus the odd ones for celebrating the birthday anniversaries of the reigning sovereign and the heir-apparen. There was neither time nor inclination for studying the "psychological reflexes of the child mind,,, "inhibitions," or "self-expression." The statistics of juvenile delinquency, of whichi we hear so much nowadays, were kept under control through the corrective agencies of the parental belt at home, and the rugged discipline of the school. In short, there was no nonsense about the way the young should be brought up. It was in those years that I made the acquaintance of the late Mti F. H. Bakewell, one of the inspectors in the Wellington Education District. Later, we became very good friends. As an inspector he was efhcient, understanding, and nobody's fool. He himself had left the old Armed Constabulary to take up a teaching career as a solecharge teacher inl the back-blocks, studied at home for his M.A. degree and rose to the inspectorate by sheer hard work. ! What I liked about him was his sense of humour. I remember once, when sitting for a pupil-teacher's examination, the candidates had him for a dictation test. From a list of jaw-breakers he called out: "Sycophant" — "a crawler," he added, by way of helping us out. The best joke in my own experience under his inspection was when he was examining my class in history. I was then senior assistant in a city school, in charge of the old Standard VI— the pupils being in the difficult stage of adolescence. He said to me: "On what lines have you been doing history this year?" "Constitutional changes," I answered. "Oh!" he said. Then he turned to the class. "Can anyone tell me who was James the First's mother?" They were a good class, very loyal, and we were on excellent terms. Bakewell's question was a puzzler. I'd have wanted a textbook to refresh my own memory. But they were game. Two or three hands shot up. Bakewell selected one, a girl. "Well?" he asked. "Queen Elizabeth, sir!" she said. It was an appalling moment. Bakewell turned to me with a twinkle in his eye. "There you are," he said, "that's constitutional change enough to

satisfy anybody!"

— "D."