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I was grumbling recently about the ridiculousness of the Jewish day school system, which insists on cramming Talmud into kids who blatantly aren't getting anything out of it at all, and realised that Kipling already said it for us.
Who hasn't been in a rabbinics class that sounded like that, eh?
Later, King and Hartopp are defending the relative merits ofJudaic and secular studies Classics and Science:
--Kipling, Stalky & Co, 'Regulus.'
'Credidimus, we--believe---we have believed,' he opened in hesitating slow time, 'tonantem Jovem, thundering Jove--regnare, to reign--caelo, in heaven. Augustus, Augustus--habebitur, will be held or considered--praesens divus, a present God--adjectis Britannis, the Britons being added--imperio, to the Empire--gravibusque Persis, with the heavy--er, stern Persians.'
'What?'
'The grave or stern Persians.' Beetle pulled up with the 'Thank-God-I-have-done-my-duty' air of Nelson in the cockpit.
'What?'
'The grave or stern Persians.' Beetle pulled up with the 'Thank-God-I-have-done-my-duty' air of Nelson in the cockpit.
Who hasn't been in a rabbinics class that sounded like that, eh?
Later, King and Hartopp are defending the relative merits of
'To go back to what we were discussing' said King quickly, 'do you pretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacious by the time the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education--even the low type of it that examiners expect?'
'I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?'
'Dead forsooth!' King fairly danced. 'The only living tongue on earth! Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!'
'And at the end of seven years--how often have I said it?' Hartopp went on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, I'll grant you twenty--one score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could have absorbed in two terms.'
'But--but can't you realise that if our system brings later--at any rate--at a pinch--a simple understanding--grammar and Latinity apart--a mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we'll say, one Ode of Horace, one twenty lines of Virgil, we've got what we poor devils of ushers are striving after?'
'And what might that be?' said Hartopp.
'Balance, proportion, perspective--life.'
'I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?'
'Dead forsooth!' King fairly danced. 'The only living tongue on earth! Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!'
'And at the end of seven years--how often have I said it?' Hartopp went on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, I'll grant you twenty--one score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could have absorbed in two terms.'
'But--but can't you realise that if our system brings later--at any rate--at a pinch--a simple understanding--grammar and Latinity apart--a mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we'll say, one Ode of Horace, one twenty lines of Virgil, we've got what we poor devils of ushers are striving after?'
'And what might that be?' said Hartopp.
'Balance, proportion, perspective--life.'
--Kipling, Stalky & Co, 'Regulus.'
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