Some children’s remarks are funny and some are sad, most people realise that, but what interests me most is their instructive value in showing us how to improve our teaching.

I remember once telling a class that I thought they ought to have learned one item in arithmetic before. Tom E., a bright little fellow, promptly replied—“Oh yes Sir, we did it before with Mr. H. last year, but as we didn’t understand it, we forgot it.” I asked him if he really meant what he had said! He looked at me puzzled, so I pointed out that he had said that if he didn’t understand anything, then he forgot it. The whole class laughed and agreed that generally speaking this was true.