platitudes which
have been uttered in the same form and in the same tones a hundred
times. She is so intoxicated with her own verbosity that she can neither
listen to the sounds of her own voice nor analyze her own utterances.
While her neighbor is teaching she is talking, and then with sublime
nonchalance she ascribes the retardation of her pupils to their own
dullness and never, in any least degree, to her own unprofitable use of
their time.

=The voluble teacher.=--And while she rambles on in her aimless talking
the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the
learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the
ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about in
their seats and this affords her a new point of attack. She calls them
ill-bred and unmannerly and wonders at the homes that can produce such
children. She does not realize that if these children were grown-ups
they would leave the room regardless of consequences. When they yawn,
she reminds them of the utter futility of casting pearls before swine.
All the while the twenty minutes are going and the pupils have not yet
learned how to divide fractions. Over in the next room the pupils know
full well how to divide fractions and the teacher is rewarding their
diligence with a cookie in the form of a story, while they wait for the
bell to ring. Out of the room of the thirty-minute teacher come the
children glowering and resentful; out of the other room the children
come buoyant and happy.

=The test of teaching.=--Not alone did the former teacher use the time
of her pupils for her own ends, but, even more, she dulled their
interest, and the damage thus inflicted cannot be estimated. Many a
child has deserted the school because the teacher made school life
disagreeable. She was the wet blanket upon his enthusiasm and chilled
him to the marrow when he failed to go forward upon her traditional
track. The teacher who can generate in the minds of her pupils a
spiritual ignition by her every movement and word will not be humiliated
by desertions. Indeed, the test of the teacher is the mental attitude of
her pupils. The child who drags and drawls through the lesson convicts
the teacher of a want of expertness. On the other hand, when the pupils
are all wide-awake, alert, animated, eager to respond, and dynamic, we
know that the teacher has brought this condition to pass and that she is
a ten-minute teacher.

=Me