reports spoke of a ‘suggestion of intimidation’ and another said the children

‘needed sympathetic treatment’.

Considering the difficulties Mr. Findlay, and Mr. Walker, had to contend

with —— the very poor attendance, both wilful and unavoidable caused by

frequent illness and bad weather and road conditions, and with the disruption

caused regularly by the potato lifting period, and by the upheaval of the annual

agricultural term removal —— it is creditable that the reports were as good as

they were. There is no doubt that Mr. Findiay was a conscientious and hard-

working schoolmaster, and although he was a strict disciplinarian he occasion-

ally showed another side, as when he advised a mother whom he thought too

harsh on her young child ‘to try petting rather than severity’.

When he died after a short illness early in 1899, the school was closed for

two days, at the request of the School Board, until after his funeral. Mr.

Findlay had been a schoolmaster in Strathkinness for over forty years.

When Mr. D.K. Mauchline, who had been schoolmaster in Boarhills for

the previous three years, came as schoolmaster to Strathkinness at the start of

the new session in August, he found the amount of absenteeism ‘wretched’,

a ‘state of affairs which should be checked by the school board’. After having

been a little longer than two months in Strathkinness he wrote, in deploring

rim

THE SCHOOL AROUND 1900

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