"Experience," I cried, "is, or at least, should be one of Oscar Wilde's Seven Deadly Virtues. The experienced man is the chap who funks doing a thing because he's had his fingers burnt. 'Tis experience that makes cowards of us all." "Of course," said Simpson, "you're joking. It stands to reason that I, for instance, with a thirty-four years' experience of teaching know more about education than you do, if you don't mind my saying so." "Man, I was teaching laddies before your father and mother met," he added. "If you saw a lad and a lass making love would you arrange that he should sit near her?" "Good gracious, no!" he cried. "What has that got to do with the subject." "But why not give them chances to spoon?" I asked. "Why not? If a teacher encouraged that sort of thing, why, it might lead to anything!" "Exactly," I said, "experience tells you that you have to do all you can to preserve the morals of the bairns?" "I could give you instances--" "I don't want them particularly," I interrupted. "My main point is that experience has made you a funk. Pass the baccy, Mac." "Mean to tell me that's how you teach?" cried Simpson. "How in all the world do you do for discipline?" "I do without it." "My goodness! that's the limit! May I ask why you do without it?" "It is a purely personal matter," I answered. "I don't want anyone to lay down definite rules for me, and I refuse to lay down definite rules of conduct for my bairns." "But how in all the earth do you get any work done?" "Work," I said, "is an over-rated thing, just as knowledge is overrated." "Nonsense," said Simpson. "All right," I remarked mildly, "if knowledge is so important, why is a university professor usually a talker of platitudes? Why is the average medallist at a university a man of tenth-rate ideas?" "Then our Scotch education is all in vain?" "Speaking generally, it is." I think it was at this stage that Simpson began to doubt my sanity. "Young man," he said severely, "one day you will realise that work and knowledge and discipline are of supreme importance. Look at the Germans!" He waved his hand in the direction of the sideboard, and I looked round hastily. "Look what Germany has done with work and knowledge and discipline!" "Then why all this bother to crush a State that has all the virtues?" I asked diffidently. "It isn't the discipline we are trying to crush; it is the militarism." "Good!" I cried, "I'm glad to hear it. That's what I want to do in Scotland; I want to crush the militarism in our schools, and, as most teachers call their militarism discipline, I curse discipline." "That's all rubbish, you know," he said shortly. "No it isn't. If I leather a boy for making a mistake in a sum, I am no better than the Prussian officer who shoots a Belgian civilian for crossing the street. I am equally stupid and a bully." "Then you allow carelessness to go unpunished?" he sneered.