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Wednesday 30 August 2017

If it was not for the inspector

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Well, I simply hate school.  I don’t care for children — they are unpleasant, troublesome little things, whom nothing would delight so much as to hear that you had fallen down dead.  Yet I would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector.  For three months before his visit I didn’t sleep soundly.  And the Committee of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don’t know what to teach, and what to leave untaught.

Thomas Hardy – A Mere Interlude (1885)


Is nothing new? The frustrations of modern life seem to have remarkably deep roots. 

5 comments:

Sam Vega said...

Ah, proto-Ofsted.

Scrobs. said...

Clearly a case for corporal punishment...

Beat the little feckers into the ground, they'll become politicians when they grow up!

Sackerson said...

Oh dear. Don't rub it in.

Demetrius said...

When in London Hardy once lived next door to the Chaplain of Wormwood Scrubs Prison. No wonder he went to Dorset far from the madding crowd.

A K Haart said...

Sam - and just as fearsome apparently.

Scrobs - but surely we want well-adjusted politicians, improbable though the idea seems.

Sackers - it isn't only teaching though.

Demetrius - I don't blame him.