f work, by good organization and careful
management, and by exercise of the will to prohibit worry over matters
large or small when worry will not help solve them. The teacher can in
some degree determine what food he will eat, even if it means a change
of boarding-place. And surely every teacher can control the supply of
fresh air for the schoolroom and his bedroom, and this is perhaps the
most important of all.

_d. Experience._--The young teacher, without experience, may from
sheer embarrassment and lack of mastery fail to show the enthusiasm
which he feels, for embarrassment of any kind and enthusiasm do not
thrive well together. But if the teacher is really fundamentally
interested in his teaching, the enthusiasm will soon come. And better
a thousand times the young teacher who is earnestly fighting for
freedom and mastery in the recitation, than the old teacher who has
grown wearied of the routine and has made out of the recitation a
machine process.

3. _Well-mastered lessons_

Probably the worst of all drawbacks to good recitations is poorly
prepared lessons. One of the greatest criticisms to which our
educational system is open is that teachers try to teach and pupils
try to recite lessons which are badly or indifferently prepared by
both. There is nothing more stupefying to the mind, or more fatal to
interest in school work than the halting, stumbling, ineffective
recitations heard in many schools. Teachers who try to teach lessons
with which they are not thoroughly familiar are but blind leaders of
the blind, and both they and their pupils are sure to fall into the
ditch.

_a. Preparation by the teacher._--The teacher is the key to the
situation. If he himself lacks in preparation, he can neither lead nor
compel his pupils to the preparation of their lessons. He sets the
standard. A stream does not rise higher than its source.

The teacher's preparation has two different aspects: (1) The general
fundamental knowledge of the subject as a whole obtained by previous
study; and (2) the daily preparation by study, thought, or reading for
the recitation.

In general it is safe to say that teachers enter upon their vocation
without sufficient education. Our certificate requirements are low,
and many enter upon teaching with little or no more schooling than
that obtained in the schools where they begin teaching. Of course this
is radically wrong, but it is the fault of our school system and not
of the teac