约翰·斯坦贝克/John Steinbeck
Adults often forget how hard, dull and long school is. The learning by memory of all the basic things one must know is a most incredible and un-ending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it. School is not easy and it is not for the most part very much fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a real teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of my luck. My first was a science and math teacher in high school, my second, a professor of writing at Stanford, and my third was my friend and partner, Ed Ricketts.
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
My three teachers had these things in common: They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell, but catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But the most important of all, the truth became beautiful and very precious.
I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery.
She aroused us to shouting, book-waving discussions. She had the noisiest class in school and she didn't even seem to know it. We could never stick to the subject. Our speculation passed over the world. She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths like fireflies caught in our hands.
She was fired and perhaps rightly so, for failing to teach basic things. Such things must be learned. But she left a strong desire in us for the pure knowable world and she inflamed me with a curiosity, which has never left. I could not do simple arithmetic but through her I sensed that mathematics was very much like music. When she was sent away, sadness came over us but the light did not go out. She left her signature on us, words of the teacher who wrote on minds. I have had many teachers who told me soon forgotten backs but only these three created in me a new thing, a new attitude and a new hunger. What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person!