"Is that you, Rotterson?" says the Head. "I have just despatched a brace of parents to you. Impress them! There are prospects of more to-morrow, so with any luck we ought to be able to pull up your numbers to a decent level after all."
"Thank you very much," says a meek voice at the other end.
Then there is the bluff, hearty parent--the man who knows exactly what he wants, and does not hesitate to say so.
"I don't want my son taught any of your new-fangled nonsense," he explains breezily. "Just a good sound education, without frills! The boy will have to earn his own living afterwards, and I want you to teach him something which will enable him to do so. Don't go filling him up with Latin and Greek: give him something which will be useful in an office. I know you pedagogues stick obstinately to what you call a good general grounding; but, if I may say so, you ought to _specialise_ a bit more. You're too shy of specialisation, you know. But I say: Find out what each boy in your School requires for his future career, and teach him _that_!"
A Headmaster once replied to a parent of this description:
"Unfortunately, sir, the fees of this school and the numbers of its Staff are calculated upon a _table d'hôte_ basis. If you want to have your son educated _à la carte_, you must get a private tutor for him."
Then there is the Utterly Impossible parent. He is utterly impossible for one of two reasons--either because he is a born faddist, or because he has relieved Providence of a grave responsibility by labelling himself "A Self-Made Man, and Proud of It!"
The faddist is the sort of person who absorbs Blue Books without digesting them, and sits upon every available Board without growing any wiser, and cherishes theories of his own about non-competitive examinations, and cellular underclothing, and the use of graphs, and, generally speaking, about every subject on which there is no particular reason why the layman should hold any opinions at all. Such a creature harries the scholastic profession into premature senility. Him the Head always handles in the same fashion. He delivers him over at the first opportunity to a Housemaster, and the Housemaster promptly takes him out on to the cricket-field and, having introduced him to the greatest bore upon the Staff, leaves the pair together to suffer the fate of the Kilkenny cats.