6 English

School    Lelo,  with a lot of difficulty, goes to school everyday, even though he only thinks about playing.  The teacher puts him in the front row, in the front desks, with those who are already learning how to read with fluidity.  In the first hour, Lelo is half awake, since he washes himself like a cat; that is to say, he doesn't wash up very well.  He doesn't do anything except look at maps, take out notebooks from his bag, pass out pages, draw a doll with his pen, and when he feels like it, he goes over the day's lesson.  He takes advantage of the  fact that the teacher is correcting the homework at this time.

He wants to be a doctor, but math doesn't come easy to him, even though he already knows how to add, subtract,   and multiply.  On the other hand, he doesn't do division problems well, because he is only on two figures.  Anyway, for his age he is very advanced.

Some of his companions don't work, and when they write the dictation, they don't do anything except break the pen, pick up chalk from the blackboard to dry blotches of ink, or look at the Saints in the dictionaries.  The teacher they had used to punish them many times because they played hooky, but not even for all those times could he correct them.

At eleven o'clock Lelo is awake. Then he used to study geography, history, natural science or catechism which was on Saturday and the Abbot used to teach it to them.  Lelo, who wasn't a know-it-all, but he used to make good use of the time.

At eleven o'clock, the boys left for recess and almost always played soccer. The girls preferred hide and seek or playing house. Once in a while there was a fight, and the tattle-tale of always used to go tattle to the teacher in order to be the pet.

In the last hour everybody does problems.  The biggest ones, on the rule of three, on interest or on square roots. As soon as they get the answer, they go home.  For homework they have some composition exercise or the mistakes which they have to write twenty times.  This last assignment angers Lelo and makes him grind his teeth, even though he doesn't say it.