 From 1909, Findlay attended various grammar schools in Pretoria and the High Veld. He learned Latin and Greek at school, Dutch from his nurses, Afrikaans from his friends and French entirely on his own.  He memorized poems and wrote many himself. Later in life, he joined a theater company and acted in all the major plays of Chekhov. This love of language and theater generated his eloquent prose style, an apt vehicle for later virtuoso exercises in phenomenological description. It also percolated into Findlay’s teaching manner, often highly theatrical. He would, for example, in seminars, put a handkerchief over his face and then snatch it off, as an illustration of the Husserlian distinction between unfulfilled and fulfilled intentions. In 1915, Findlay moved on to the High School for Boys in Pretoria, where he was (as he writes) “monotonously” the top student in his class every year.