=1 "Teachers' test"

Teachers' test

When the class is over and you ask your children a question on the subject matter you have just taught, if more than two children give you the same answer you have failed as a teacher. You are only an instructor. If there were only one correct answer, God would have created only one man.

Man expects the universe always to give him the same answer to the same question, but the universe expects man to give a different answer every time. And if he doesn't, Nature will classify him among the fossils, and she has her own way of dealing with fossils. If there were only one answer, nature would have given man a kind of gramaphone-record memory, but she took tremendous pains to evolve man as an individual, and it is the most advanced part of his brain which has the highest capacity of erasing and forgetting. In future schools great pains will be taken to help a child forget the lessons of yesterday.

In the schools of the past the ideal was: the sooner he gets a brain like that of an old man, the better. In the future, the longer he remains a child, plastic and eager to learn, able to experience and to forget, to discover and enjoy, the better it will be.