children of our schools. The yearning to
achieve is the urge of the divine part of each one of us, and it naturally
follows that whoever does not have this yearning has been reduced to the
plane of abnormality in that the divine part of him has been subordinated,
submerged, stifled. Every fervent wish is a prayer that emanates from this
divine part of us, and, in all reverence, it may be said that we help to
answer our own prayers. When we wish ardently we work earnestly to cause
our dreams to come true. We are told that every wish comes true if we only
wish hard enough, and this statement finds abundant confirmation in the
experiences of those who have achieved.

The child's wishes have their origin and abode in his native interests and
when we have determined what his wishes are, we have in hand the clue that
will lead us to the inmost shrine of his native tendencies. This, as has
been so frequently said, is the point of attack for all our teaching, this
the particular point that is most sensitive to educational inoculation. If
we find that the boy is eager to have a wireless outfit and is working
with supreme intensity to crystallize his wish into tangible and workable
form, quite heedless of clock hours, it were unkind to the point of
cruelty and altogether unpedagogical to force him away from this congenial
task into some other work that he will do only in a heartless and
perfunctory way. If we yearn to have him study Latin, we shall do well to
carry the wireless outfit over into the Latin field, for the boy will
surely follow wherever this outfit leads. But if we destroy the wireless
apparatus, in the hope that we shall thus stimulate his interest in Latin,
the scar that we shall leave upon his spirit will rise in judgment against
us to the end of life. The Latin may be desirable and necessary for the
boy, but the wireless comes first in his wishes and we must go to the
Latin by way of the wireless.

It is the high privilege of the teacher to make and keep her pupils
hungry, to stimulate in them an incessant ardent longing and yearning.
This is her chief function. If she does this she will have great occasion
to congratulate herself upon her own progress as well as theirs. If they
are kept hungry, the sources of supply will not be able to elude them, for
children have great facility and resourcefulness in the art of foraging.
They readily discover the lurking places of the substantials as well as of
the tid-bits a