1934-02-23 — Page 6

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1934.

MENTAL HOSPITAL

QUESTION

APH FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1934.

NOTES OF THE DAY

ELEMENTARY LAW.

CA

SCHOOLMASTERS OLD AND NEW

The Very Idea!

MORE MONSTERS

a good degree and an academic re-

Dy Eddie Kelly. cord; who has been prominent on

Sensational reports, published in the staff of his school for ability in teaching and administration, so

a contemporary yesterday after far as it falls to the lot of any "assistant" to administer; and who noon, state that a Loch Ness la likely to be a man of tact, a Manstor has invaded Stonecutter's persone grata to the parent or pros-Island. Soldiers have boon gain- pective parent.

ing much practice for the forth- When he is put into office, this coming Marathon race by chasing brilliant educator will find that

By GUY KENDALL

Once again police court..pro- MARICATURISTS. often do a ceedings have revealed the existence

disservice to progress by the in the Colony of some sort of: organisation for the collection of conventionality of their types. This le novitable, for the old- cigarette ends with the ultimate

fashioned and out-of-dato are most aim of making Gutter Brand easily held up to ridicule. cigarettes. The danger of such re-

Such an illustration has recent manufacture is obvious and the fact

ly appeared in n now Charles that the woman arrested In the case

Lamb anthology. There you see referred to was in possession of a

the dominic of the 18th century of butt- considerable quantity

with bande, wig and gown, birch ends-two sacks, whatever that may maan-suggests that it is carried and Latin grammar in hand, his his position is a sort of combina-the monster all over the island.

tion of private detective, magis- Immediately the nows becnie on extensively. Nevertheless, how. spectacled ferocity evident.

The type still abides in print, trato, and hangman. ("He took generally known, the Telegraph put ever desirable it may be to dis-

and it becomes fixed in the sub- it all down, you know," a small its best reporter at work, to sock courago the practice, there were

case providing consciousness not only of the public school boy recently wrote an interview with the Stonecutter's features of the cause for enquiry as to the justifica-public but, I think quite possibly home, "Just as they do in the de-monster.

He is expected to teach at least tion for a conviction and prison of headmastore themselves. They tective tales.") sentence. The woman was charged cannot shed their pomposity and with possession of dutiable tobacco thoir antagonism to common hu- hie Sixth Form-though I wish more headmasters would teach on which duty had not been paid. manity,

their lowest Forms; they might then understand better the pro- It was surmised from the fact that accused was arrested on the Wing Lok Wharf that she had arrived in

Several people we interviewed, who should have known better, said that the monster was nothing but a wild boar,

This innuendo was proved in-

The headmaster of the future bloma of the Lower School. He correct by a visit to the Clique

the Colony from Macao. At the Į must make himself as different has to interview innumerable par. Pub....sorry, Peak Club, whore a same time, the revenue officer in from this type as it. Is poselble ents, He may be involved in pro-hasty roll-call revealed that none

charge of the prosecution was not sure and admitted that the cigarette ends seized might have been picked up in Hongkong, There was, in fact, no real evidence to the con- trary. No proof was forthcoming concerning the woman's movements. Yet surely the whole case rested on this point. If the cigarette-ends were picked up in Hongkong, they the mass or were no longer, in separately, dutiable tobacco. Duty had already been paid. The truth may be anything, but the woman lins gone to gnol.

THE LIBERAL PARTY

for him to be.

He must be the first among workmon-n manager or foreman of works-In shirtsleeves or over- alis rather than in academic dress; I was going to say armed with a test-tube rather than a birch, but I do not want the scientists to have it all their own way.

longed struggles over salaries

wild.

with whatever authority controls of the bores had escaped, or gone tho financo of the school. Is it

So there was nothing left but for any wonders, in view of this, that the problems of reorganising the us to go to Stonecutter's. We curriculum and methods of edu-arrived there late in the afternoon, cation have tended to fall into the just as the sun was setting, and, with our aix native carriers, set background?

What is the remedy?

aff into the impenetrablo jungle,

Wild animals continuously Some might point to the expert-crossed our tracks, but no monster. ment at Dartmouth, where the res-A tiger bounded towards us, yelp- ponsibility for the teaching and ing furiously, but we breathed on for the discipline are in different him and ho died.

a headmaster and a

Two soldiers, who were walking

I believe that what is needed at the present time. is a streng thening of the "humanities," and the instrument of the humanities must still be the book, unless you prefer the loud-speaker.

I think it is evon worth while hands of to ask whether headmasters are commanding officer respectively hand in hand in the glade, bounded necessary at all. No doubt num-But that is not likely to be adopt-away like deer when they aaw our bers of those pupils who are this ed generally. It places the head strange cavalcade.

No careful observer of the politi-week returning to their desks cal position in Great Britain can be after the Christmas holidays will unaware that the very existence of rise eagerly at the question. the Liberal Party is in danger. It was ominous that no excitement followed Sir Herbert Samuel's an- nouncement that he, with his little bloc of thirty-one Liberal members, proposed to cross the floor of the House of Commons and offer for mal opposition to the Government. If Sir Henry Pollock really a decision which a few years ago thought that work on the pro- would have been regarded as a fate posed new Mental Hospital had ful event in the political life of the been begun, he was quickly dis-nation caused a few months ago no more than a ripple of gossip and illusioned at Wednesday's meet some sad comment on the declino ing of the Finance Committee of of Liberalism. the Legislative Council. Un- happily, although the need is a pressing one, the project has

Yet it has left its ineffaceable not yet been put in hand. All mark on England and the whole that has been done is to ear-world. Born the spirit of mark for the purpose of the new resistance to tyranny and privilege. building the site which had been it assumed its essential character when it took its stand on the rights originally prepared for the Cen- of all men to freedom and cauality tral British School. The net of opportunity. In England it result is that this site is now drew the Nonconformists into Ita ranks by championing the cause of lying absolutely idle, as it is freedom of conscience and the likely to remain for a very long.equal civic status of all religious time, and commencement on the sects. Both its foreign policy domestic social policy school building has been quite were nominated by the idea that needlessly delayed. Official ex-there is such a thing as conscience planations of the sequestration in public life.

PUBLIC CONSCIENCE ·

and its

in

the Liberals have emancipated the masecs, Is it not natural that the latter should now desire to govern for themselves? The Labour Party could never have existed without the Liberal Party, but now that it exists it is ready to supplant it.

of the school site have been wholly unconvincing. Had there SPIRIT OF HUMANISM been any hope of making an immediate start on the Mental thing more than a policy. It was Liberalism was always some- Hospital, there might have been the spirit of humanism in political some excuse for the change affairs through which, by stages, from original intentions; but to and without violence, society was alienate the site for future pur- to build up conditions for the poses and thereby hold up the living of the best life by the largest work on Kowloon's much-needed number of citizens. It has been Bchool cannot possibly be de-auggested that Liberalism has suc- ceeded so well that its tasks, fended. To revert to the ques-within the limits of the existing tion of the Mental Hospital, no-order of society, are now finished; one who has had occasion that it has won for Englishmen all to visit the present institution the civic privileges; that it has I will question the desirability of converted nearly all Englishmen, to ita new quarters being provided at including Conservatives, the earliest possible moment. Liberal point of view; and that A drearier or more uninspiring there is no further reason for its Government, place it is almost impossible to separate existence. Imagine. So far from the in-during the last century, was nee- essarily rather government for the mates being likely to receive any people than by the people. Since curative effects from a stay in this antiquated institution, we can imagine few experiences be ing more likely to aggravate their mental condition. For tunately, the majority of the in- mates only make a temporary stay there, but there are cases which are more or less perman- ent, and the lot of these poor people la sad to contemplate. That is what is happening. For the greater part of the time, The Liberal Party is being squeez- they are literally barred in anded out, at this moment of history, between the upper and nether herded together in a manner

Liberalised Con- which is bound to militate millstones of a

sorvatiam and the Labour Party. against any hopes of recovery. And there scams real danger that Moreover, the only place they under this pressure the organisa- have in which to exercise is a tion of the Liberal Party, a bare, ill-appointed, walled-in party, may be smashed, "But it is compound. In short, the asy-jumbolievable that Liberalism will For just as there lum is everything that it should perish with it.. not be. With the circumstances is likely to be always a conserva- thus, it will readily be imagined tive element in society standing for privilege, with which the more how urgent is the need for a

generous spirits cannot identify better and more modern institu- themselves, so on the Labour side tion. How long it will be before there seems to be a bitterness of a start is made on this work, class feeling which is equally alion no-one seems to know. So far, to the higher patriotient. The not only has the project not been Liberal spirit has woven itself ep started, but no financial pro closely into the vory texture of the English character that, whatever, vision has been made for it

BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES

may be the fate of the offlelal party' On humanitarian grounds, we organisation, it is inconceivable trust that some attempt will be that what is most characteristic of made to expedite work on this it will cease to play its part in much-needed undertaking. public life.

.

The air was full of the strange mastor in a position of accentuated inferiority, for the man who has charge of the discipline will in-noises of the jungle, Crickete evitably bo "top_dog."

cricked, llons lled, crocodiles cronk What I thinic is mainly needed ed, emus mewed and leopards leapt. now is the appointment to every

And then we heard a sound that of trained medical staff

ย

Someone was sobbing. We crept up silently, and watch-

the eerie scene.

11

I remember how once in my days ne an assistant I had to take the teaching work of the Head during psychologist to assist the head-stopped us dead in our tracks. his illness. "How have you been, master.

He would investigate the psy. getting on?" he asked on his re- turn. "Admirably," I replied, chology of the idlers, the "duds," with the intention of reassuring the misfits, the failures generally.ed

The monster, his face buried in him. "Ah," he replied wistfully. Further, he would discover from "that only goes to prove what his experience why in general

adaptation to environment. When China Mall, was crying piteously. have always suspected that head- there are so many cases of ill-hle hands, which clutched mastera are superfluous."

What had happened, of course, the fault lies in the home,, alther We stepped out and he raised was that the senior assistant had he or the headmaster, or prefer one of his startled heads. nominally functioned as deputy ably, both, would tell the parents:

what is the matter.

"The Monster, wo believe," we head, but "first among equals, and, in reality, things had been In this way the perplexities and said. settled in common room. Cannot nightmares of the headmaster' He bowed with quiet dignity, schools always, be managed by a would be largely reduced, if not and dried his eyes.

The head of the school committee of the senior masters? abolished.

"Who are you?" he asked. The obvious reply is that school would thus have time and vitality

"We're from the Telegraph," discipline to be effective, must to spare for the problems of the necesarily be in the hands of one curriculum and its administration.

Is this all that headmasters will we replied. man; otherwise neither the staff nor the boys will be properly con- do in the future, assuming that

His face became bitter. they will continue to exist? A

Can't you newspaper people trolled.

I do not think that this is quite distinguished headmaster was once conclusive. At present, in board-informed by the newly appointed leave me alone?" he cried. "What Ing schools, the housemasters Head of another school!" "You have I done to deserve all this exercise a great deal of disciplin- know, I don't attempt to teach. publicity?" ary authority. Only the most I devote my time to organising." serious cases, destined for "swish- "Oh, what then." was the reply. ing" or expulsion, go to the Head. "do you do on the second day of

But the control of the staff by term?" -a-committee-would not be so easy without one man who could put his foot down if things came to a deadlock.

The tears walled up if his oyes again.

"And the crowning indignity is that they mistook me for a wild boar," he wept

Wo

We soothed him as boat could, and taking a sip ourself, asked him to tell us the story.

I Was It not ever thus?

He had been a respectable mou- good, sturdy Scotch

The headmaster of the future will teach forms all up and down the school, if forms still continue which I doubt. I think he will The chief objection to such an be given two rooms; one more arrangement would probably be like an office, where he deals with that especially in small schools-his correspondence and reports, the staff might contain no out and meets his governors; another ater, of standing personality. They might much smaller, a cosy place with parents. Childhood at Loch Ness be a collection of efficient and un- no vast forbidding desk behind had been a happy one, And then the Hermes of ed him. His name appeared in the inspired mediocritics; and that which he sits with the Apollo the London yellow Press discover- Praxiteles on guard in marble on front pages, vulgar music hall would make for educatonal stagna-Belvedere. and tlon.

But do we not tend to stagnate either side of him, but with, plea-comedians made jokes about him, overmuch oven under the regime sant, rather modern pictures on the Even the otherwise highly respect of the headmaster? The fact is walls (perhaps some sketches done able Shell organisation ridiculed that, when a vacancy occurs, the by the boys themselvca), some real-him with caricature and poster. (Continued on Next Columns.j

He decided to leave, and came to governors choose a man who has

Hongkong.

"I wouldn't place Mr. and Mrs, Barnes so close together.

would only start a fightả

He managed to speak ashore at Stonecutter's Island, the sentry on duty mistaking him for a Sergeant- Major.

For a week, he remained un- molested, until a zealous reporter, hot on his trail, discovered him again.

We promised to do all we could to stop all this slanderous news- paper publiefty, and came back to the city.

We feel sorry for that monster. But we have our duty to our public.

ly easy chairs, and an Informal, rather inviting atmosphere.

There he will receive paranta as if he were one of them himself (and after all he probably int). Boys will not say to other masters, as they have been known to any of the deterrent, bogy. kind of Head: "Do anything you wish, air, except Hond me into that room."...

It will be a place where they can really unbenom themselves of their troubles and difculties, and realise that even a headmaster can be ag human as themselves.

The headmaster of the future will have to be the liaison man, the guide, philosopher, and friend of all; the motive power of the machine; and in the last resort the dictator,

But that headmaster will be most successful who most carefully con cants his ultimate despotism: