study."




THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER


"Your paper has been intensely interesting to me. I have always held
that a true teacher was really a mother, though of a very large flock,
just as a true mother is really a teacher, though of a very small
school. The two points of view complete each other and I doubt if
either mother or teacher can see truly without the other. They tell
us, you know, that our two eyes, with their slight divergence of
position, are necessary to make us, see things as having more than one
side; and the mother and the teacher, one seeing the individual child,
the other the child as the member of the race, need each other to see
the child as the complex, many-sided individual he really is.

"In your school, do you manage to get the mothers to co-operate? Here,
I am trying to get near my children's teachers. They try, too; but
it is not altogether easy for any of us. We need some common meeting
ground--some neutral activity which we could share. If you have any
suggestions, I shall be glad to have them. Of course, I visit school
and the teachers visit me, and we are friendly in an arm's length
sort of fashion. That is largely because they believe in corporal
punishment and practice it freely and it is hard for us to look
straight at each other over this disagreement."