5. Should parents insist on their children doing equally well in all the subjects or should they
encourage their sons and daughters to specialise in one or two subjects essential for their future
career?
XV. a) Read and translate the text:
My Memories and Miseries As a Schoolmaster
The parents of the boys at school naturally fill a broad page in a schoolmaster's life and are
responsible for many of his sorrows. There are all kinds and classes of them. Most acceptable to the
schoolmaster is the old-fashioned type of British father who enters' his boy at the school and says:
"Now I want this boy well thrashed if he doesn't behave himself. If you have any trouble with
him let me know and I'll come and thrash him myself. He's to have a shilling a week pocket money
and if he spends more than that let me know and I'll stop his money altogether."
Brutal though his speech sounds, the real effect of it is to create a strong prejudice in the little
boy's favour, and when his father curtly says, "Good-bye, Jack" and he answers, "Good-bye, father,"
in a trembling voice, the schoolmaster would be a hound, indeed, who could be unkind to him.
But very different is the case of the up-to-date parent. "Now I've just given Jimmy five
pounds," he says to the schoolmaster, in the same tone as he would use to an inferior clerk in his
office, "and I've explained to him that when he wants any more he's to tell you to go to the bank and
draw for him what he needs." After which he goes on. to explain that Jimmy is a boy of very peculiar
disposition, requiring the greatest nicety of treatment; that they find if he gets in tempers the best
way is to humour him and presently he'll come round. Jimmy, it appears, can be led, if led gently, but
never driven.
During all of which time the schoolmaster, insulted by being treated as an underling, has
already fixed his eye on the undisciplined young pup called Jimmy with a view of trying out the
problem of seeing whether he can't be driven after all.
(From "College
Days" by S. Leacock)
b) Answer the questions below:
1. How does the author characterize two opposite types of "British father"? 2. Why, in
Leacock's view, the "old-fashioned" type is more acceptable for a schoolmaster? Would you prefer to
have Jack or Jimmy for a pupil? 3. How did the acquaintance with the fathers influence the
schoolmaster's attitude to the boys? Do you find it natural? 4. Do you think the problems raised in
the text are outdated? Justify your answer. 5. In what way should teachers and parents cooperate in