the land if only the teachers were
alive to the fact. But we have been so busy measuring, estimating,
scoring, and surveying the child for our purposes that we have given but
scant consideration to the child's point of view as regards the teacher.
We have not been quick to note the significant fact that the child is
estimating, measuring, scoring, and surveying the teacher for purposes
of its own and in the strictest obedience to the laws of its nature.

=The child's need of ideals.=--Every child needs and has a right to
ideals, and finds the teacher convenient both in space and in the nature
of her work to act in this capacity. Because of the character of her
work and her peculiar relation to the child, the teacher assumes a place
of leadership, and the child naturally appropriates her as the lodestar
for which his nature is seeking. And so, whether the teacher leads into
the morass or into the jungle, the child will follow; but if she elects
to take her way up to the heights, there will be the child as faithful
as her shadow. If the teacher plucks flowers by the way, then, in time,
gathering flowers will become habitual to the child, nor will there be
any need to admonish the child to gather flowers. The teacher plucks
flowers, and that becomes the child's command. Education by absorption
needs neither admonition nor homilies.

=The ideal a perpetual influence.=--And all this is life--actual life,
fundamental life, and inevitable life. Moreover, the inevitableness of
this phase of life serves to accentuate its importance. The idealized
teacher gives to the child his ideals of conduct, literature, art,
music, home, school, and service. Take this teacher out of his life and
these ideals vanish. Better by far eliminate the formal instruction,
important as that may be made to be, than to rob the child of his
ideals. They are the influences that are ever active even when formal
instruction is quiescent. They are potent throughout the day and
throughout the year. They induce reactions and motor activities that
groove into habits, and they are the external stimuli to which the
spirit responds.

=The teacher's attitude.=--The vitalized school takes full cognizance of
this phase and means of education and gives large scope and freedom for
its exercise and development. The teacher is more concerned with who and
what her pupils are to be twenty years hence than she is in getting them
promoted to the next grade. She knows full