Moreover, he is a product of the reconstructed school, for this school does already exist, though in conspicuous isolation.  But the oasis is accentuated by its isolation in the desert which spreads about it and is the more inviting by contrast.  When, as a child, he entered school, the teacher, who was in advance of her time in her conception of the true function of the school, made a close and sympathetic appraisement of his aptitudes, his native dispositions, his daily environment, and the bent of his inherent spiritual qualities.  First of all, she won his confidence.  Thus he found freedom, ease, and pleasure in her presence.  Thus, too, there ensued unconscious self-revelation and nothing in his life evaded her kindly scrutiny.  He opened his mind to her frankly and fully, and never after did she permit the closing of the door.  Only so could she become his teacher.

She regarded him as an opportunity for the testing of all her knowledge, all her skill, and the full measure of her altruism.  Nor was he the proverbial mass of plastic clay to be molded into some preconceived form.  Her wisdom and modernity interdicted such a conception of childhood as that.  Rather, he was a growing plant, waiting for her skill to nurture him into blossom and fruitage.  Some of his qualities she found good; others not.  The good ones she made the objects of her special care; the others she allowed to perish from neglect.  Her experience in gardening had taught her that, if we cultivate the potatoes assiduously, the weeds will disappear and need not concern us.  She discerned in him a tender shoot of imagination and this she nurtured as a priceless thing.  She fertilized it with legend, story, song, and myth, and enveloped it in an atmosphere of warmth and joyousness.  She led him into nature’s realm, that his imagination might plume its wings for greater flights by its efforts to interpret the heart of things that live.  Thus his imagination learned to traverse space, to explore sights and sounds his senses could not reach, and to construct for him another world of beauty and delight.

So, too, with the other spiritual qualities.  Upon these goals her gaze was fixed and she gently led him toward them.  She taught the arithmetic with zest, with large understanding, and in a masterly way, for she was causing it to serve a high purpose.  Whatever study she found helpful, this she used as a means with gratitude and gladness.  If she found the book ill adapted to her purpose, she sought or wrote another.  If pictures proved more potent than books, the galleries obeyed the magic of her skill and yielded forth their treasures.  She yearned to have her pupil win the goals before him; everything was grist that came to her mill if only it would serve her purpose.  She disdained nothing that could afford nourishment to the spirit of the child and give him zeal, courage, and strength for the upward journey.  If more arithmetic was needful, she found it; if more history, she gave it; and if the book on geography was inadequate, she supplemented from libraries or from her own abundant storehouse of knowledge.  She dared to deviate from the course of study, if thereby the child might more certainly win the goals toward which she ever looked and worked.