ion at all if
they had not had me as their teacher; now I am beginning to wonder
how much further along they might have been if they had had some
other teacher. But probably most of the misfits in life are in the
imagination, after all. We all think the huckleberries are more
abundant on the other bush.

Hoeing potatoes is a calm, serene, dignified, and philosophical
enterprise. But at bottom it is much the same in principle as
teaching school. In my potato-patch I am merely trying to create
situations that are favorable to growth, and in the school I can do
neither more nor better. I cannot cause either boys or potatoes to
grow. If I could, I'd certainly have the process patented. I know
no more about how potatoes grow than I do about the fourth dimension
or the unearned increment. But they grow in spite of my ignorance,
and I know that there are certain conditions in which they flourish.
So the best I can do is to make conditions favorable. Nor do I
bother about the weeds. I just centre my attention and my hoe upon
loosening the soil and let the weeds look out for themselves. Hoeing
potatoes is a synthetic process, but cutting weeds is analytic, and
synthesis is better, both for potatoes and for boys. In good time,
if the boy is kept growing, he will have outgrown his stone-bruises,
his chapped hands, his freckles, his warts, and his physical and
spiritual awkwardness. The weeds will have disappeared.

The potato-patch is your true pedagogical laboratory and
conservatory. If one cannot learn pedagogy there it is no fault of
the potato-patch. Horace must have thought of _in medias res_ while
hoeing potatoes. There is no other way to do it, and that is
bed-rock pedagogy. Just to get right at the work and do it, that's
the very thing the teacher is striving toward. Here among my
potatoes I am actuated by motives, I invest the subject with human
interest, I experience motor activities, I react, I function, and I
go so far as to evaluate. Indeed, I run the entire gamut. And then,
when I am lying beneath the canopy of the wide-spreading tree, I do a
bit of research work in trying to locate the sorest muscle. And, as
to efficiency, well, I give myself a high grade in that and shall
pass _cum laude_ it the matter is left to me. If our grading were
based upon effort rather than achievement, I could bring my aching
back into court, if not my potatoes. But our system of grading in
the schools demands po