EDITOR'S OUTLOOK
A
NEW academlc year IS beginning. As some of our lay friends put it, in . . ' . ' commserating w ~ t hus upon the monotony of our lot, we are resuming the old grind. But is it so? Even though the annual catalog may list the same courses above our names, are we going to teach the same old thing we taught last year and the year before? If so we Fever deserve, not sympathy, but the axe. There are many parallels between the work of the gardener and that of the teacher. What true gardener greets the spring with the thought that he is about to take up the same old grind? In suggesting such an analogy we have in mind no sentimental twaddle about teaching the young idea to shoot, bending the twig in the way the tree should incline, or nurturing the tender plants entrusted to our care. To the good teacher, students are not flowers to be coaxedinto the light and air, nor lumps oi clay to be molded, nor blank parchments upon whicb to inscribe copy-book maxims in a fair, large hand. They are persons and personalities, immature it is true, but human, or nearly so. No, to our mind, the likeness of the good teacher to the good gardener lies in the fact that he begins each new year with some residue of capital remaining from the honest and intelligent labors of former years and that he faces a renewed opportunity to rectify past errors and surpass previous successes. The materials which last year disappointed us may be replaced with different species or with new and improved varieties. The sequence which last year left a dull and uninteresting interlude of several weeks may this year be rearranged. The technic and procedure which last year were adequate but not brilliantly successfnI may this year be modified and improved in some significant details. The pests which last year were upon us before we were aware, may this year be forestalled and put to rout. The ideas and scraps of information we have gleaned from others may now be utilized. Some of the romantic fiction of the catalogs and the salesmen may be put to cautious test. Once in a coon's age some iridescent fairy tale does come partly true. And when, a t the end of the new year which promises so much, we find that we have not yet attained the unattainable perfection, we shall have a new store of wisdom and experience to point us a little closer to it and the prospect of another new year in which to labor and aspire. It is this strange intellectual infirmity-this periodic upwelling of the springs of hope that distinguishes the true gardener, the true teacher, or the true artist of whatever craft, and makes him what he is. He is a little mad, for his mind's eye is ever fixed upon a vision which his hands can never quite materialize. Others, viewing his works undimmed by comparison with the shining ideals which only he perceives, say that he has wrought well. He, alone, suffers the pain of knowing better. He is insane, and usually he knows it, but he is happier so. 1673
