Many of the entries in the records of Victorian country schools show that children have always been easily distracted by something more exciting going on somewhere else.
If there was a circus or a fair in the district then very few children turned up at school - and if there were sights to see just outside the school then the children didn't want to miss them !
Not very surprising, really !
This comes from the school Log Book of Abbey Cwmhir National School in March 1883 ...

1st March - "The fox hounds left today - Exercised patience instead of using the cane, on Tuesday last (the 27th ult.) when the hounds came by the school in full cry, and the horses in full galop. (N.B. The windows are very handy for such sights)."

The teacher had given up on trying to carry on with the lesson until the exciting sight of the horses and hounds from the local hunt, going past the school at full gallop, had gone by.

The teacher got the spelling of "gallop" wrong here, but teachers are only human. Well, some of them are, anyway.

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