They're as fine a bunch as I've ever had, and I've been teaching
now for seventeen years.
"Yet you can see for yourselves that if I teach these bright
pupils only what is printed in the books, and if you provide only
something for their dinner buckets, clothes to go on their backs,
and a shelter for them at night, we all fail.
"During the short years that boys and girls are in our care,
we must show them more than reading and writing and how to plant
crops and how to get bread and meat on the table and how to marry
and rear their own little ones. If this is all we do, we will
have done no more than a 'possum that sacks its young around or
any bird that tires its wings making trip after trip to the nest
with worms and bugs for its fledglings. They too know how to get
the necessities and to train their offspring to do the same.
"If we show children no more about life than this, that's
likely all they'll ever know. The desire to search for life's
full meaning, its sweetness, will never be theirs.
"I don't pretend to understand the purpose of human life.
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