artist takes in these! How he delights to revel in the jargon of his
craft! How he prides himself in possessing the knowledge and the
technical skill that are denied the layman!

I am aware that I am somewhat unorthodox in urging this view of your
work upon you. Teachers have been encouraged to believe that details are
not only unimportant but stultifying,--that teaching ability is a
function of personality, and not a product of a technique that must be
acquired through the strenuous discipline of experience. One of the most
skillful teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the grades. I
have watched her work for days at a time, striving to learn its secret.
I can find nothing there that is due to genius,--unless we accept George
Eliot's definition of genius as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. That teacher's success, by her own statement, is due to a
mastery of technique, gained through successive years of growth checked
by a rigid responsibility for results. She has found out by repeated
trial how to do her work in the best way; she has discovered the
attitude toward her pupils that will get the best work from them,--the
clearest methods of presenting subject matter; the most effective ways
in which to drill; how to use text-books and make study periods issue in
something besides mischief; and, more than all else, how to do these
things without losing sight of the true end of education. Very
frequently I have taken visiting school men to see this teacher's work.
Invariably after leaving her room they have turned to me with such
expressions as these: "A born teacher!" "What interest!" "What a
personality!" "What a voice!"--everything, in fact, except this,--which
would have been the truth: "What a tribute to years of effort and
struggle and self-discipline!"

I have a theory which I have never exploited very seriously, but I will