I smile as I re-read the words I wrote yesterday, for to-day I feel that hope has not left me. But I am not any more hopeful about the three R's and the others. I am hopeful because I have found a solution. I shall henceforth try to make my bairns realise. Yes, realise is the word. Realise what? To tell the truth, I have some difficulty in saying. I think I want to make them realise what life means. Yes, I want to give them, or rather help them to find an attitude. Most of the stuff I teach them will be forgotten in a year or two, but an attitude remains with one throughout life. I want these boys and girls to acquire the habit of looking honestly at life. Ah! I wonder if I look honestly at life myself! Am I not a very one-sided man? Am I not a Socialist, a doubter, a heretic? Am I not biassed when I judge men like the Cecils and the Harmsworths? I admit it. I am a partisan, and yet I try to look at life honestly. I try ... and that is the main point. I do not think that I have any of the current superstitions about morality and religion and art. I try to forget names; I try to get at essentials, at truth. The fathers of my bairns are, I think, interested in names. I wonder how many of them have sat down saying: "I must examine myself, so that I may find out what manner of man I am." I hold that self-knowledge must come before all things. When one has stripped off all the conventions, and superstitions, and hypocrisies, then one is educated. * * * These bairns of mine will never know how to find truth; they will merely read the newspapers when they grow up. They will wave their hats to the King, but kingship will be but a word to them; they will shout when a lawyer from the south wins the local seat, but they will not understand the meaning of economics; they will dust their old silk hats and march to the sacrament, but they will not realise what religion means. I find that I am becoming pessimistic again, and I did feel hopeful when I began to write. I _should_ feel hopeful, for I am resolved to find another meaning in education. What was it?... Ah, yes, I am to help them to find an attitude. * * * I have been thinking about discipline overnight. I have seen a headmaster who insisted on what he called perfect discipline. His bairns sat still all day. A movement foreshadowed the strap. Every child jumped up at the word of command. He had a very quiet life. I must confess that I am an atrociously bad disciplinarian. To-day Violet Brown began to sing _Tipperary_ to herself when I was marking the registers. I looked up and said: "Why the happiness this morning, Violet?" and she blushed and grinned. I am a poor disciplinarian. I find that normally I am very, very slack; I don't mind if they talk or not. Indeed, if the hum of conversation stops, I feel that something has happened and I invariably look towards the door to see whether an Inspector has arrived.