Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 14 April 1933

Schoolmasters – Figures of Fun

We heartily agree with Mr. H. L. Watkinson, headmaster of the Mexborough Secondary School, that a sense of humour is essential to a successful schoolmaster. In the generation of schoolmasters which is pocketing its pension and taking to the woods, humour was not a dominant characteristic.

Those old schoolmasters have passed through stern and squalid drudgery of a kind fatal to the sense of fun. Their humour, such as it was, had an affinity with Wilfred Shadbolt’s “anecdotes of the torture chamber.”

Or else too often it took the form of bitter sarcasm at the expense of half-wits. Even to-day a schoolmaster’s humour, from the circumstances of his environment, struts too much .—he does not

laugh sufficiently on the wrong side of his face.