We cannot hope to achieve the reconstructed school until our notion of teaching and teachers has been reconstructed.  When we secure teachers who have education and not mere knowledge, we may begin to hope.  We must look to the colleges and normal schools to furnish such teachers.  If they cannot do so, our schools must plod along on the path of tradition without hope of finding the better way.  There are faint indications, however, here and there, that the colleges and normal schools are beginning to stir in their sleep and are becoming somewhat aware of their opportunities and responsibilities.  We shall hail with acclaim the glad day when they come to realize that the preparation of teachers for their work is a task of large import and goes deeper than facts, and statistics, and theories, and knowledge.  If they furnish a teacher who has the quality of serenity, we shall all be fully alive to the fact that that quality is the luscious and nutritious fruitage of scholarship, of wide knowledge, of much reading, of deep meditation, and keen observation.  But these elements, either singly or in combination, are but veneer unless they strike their roots into the spiritual nature and are thus nourished into spiritual qualities.  Excavating into serenity, we shall discover the pure gold of scholarship; we shall find knowledge in great abundance; we shall find the spirit of the greatest and best books; and we shall come upon the cloister in which meditation has done its perfect work.

The machine that is run to the extreme limit of its capacity splutters, sizzles, hisses, and quivers, and finally shakes itself into a condition of ineffectiveness.  But the machine that is run well within the limits of its capacity is steady, noiseless, serene, effective, and durable.  So with people.  The person who essays a task that is beyond his capacity is certain to come to grief and to create no end of disturbance to himself and others before the final catastrophe.  If the steam-chest or boiler is not equal to the task, wisdom and safety would counsel the installation of a larger one.  Here is one of the tragedies of our scheme of education.  The spirit is the power-plant of all life’s operations and in this plant are many boilers.  Instead of calling more and more of these into action, we seem intent upon repressing them and thus we reduce the capacity of the plant as a whole.  When we should be lighting or replenishing the fires under the boilers of imagination, initiative, aspiration, and reverence, we spend our time striving to bank or quench these fires and in playing and dawdling with the torches of arithmetic, grammar, and history with which we should be kindling the fires.  Thus we diminish the power of the plant while life’s activities are calling for extension and enlargement.  We seem to be trying to train our pupils to work with one or but few boilers when there are scores of them available if only we knew how to utilize them.