Vacations give those of us who are teachers wonderful opportunities to get a wider view—a more impersonal one—of our work. We have time to get away from the distractions of personalities and to see what we are really doing.

School need never again appear as an agglomeration of relatively older minds struggling to civilize relatively younger ones; that concept of a teacher's life is what produces frustration, gray hairs, and exhaustion. Let's abjure it: let's give up, once for all, the unenlightened concept that a teacher's job is to plow, cultivate, and seed—all by the sweat of his brow—the barren soil of the human brain.

Let's have some thrill and joy about this life of ours! Talking about it, thinking about it, some of us have begun to feel that we are on the edge of a wonderful, new-old approach to teaching, to educating, to the functioning and achievements of a school. Christian Science helps the teacher in this approach.

First: What is a school? The word is derived from a Greek word meaning "employment of leisure." There are times, undoubtedly, when we question the wisdom of the Greeks! In the Middle Ages a "school," as defined by Webster, was "a place for lectures... in logic, metaphysics, and theology." But when as Christian Scientists we think of education as the disciplined unfoldment by Mind of our own Christliness, our concept of a school becomes vital, joyous.

Second: What is a teacher? The drab concept of one who merely instructs, who imparts knowledge, seems to be breaking down under the impact of a growing realism, for both he who imparts knowledge and he who is the bored recipient are making adjustments, and the educator is beginning to appear. That is a step in the right direction: but aren't there more steps which we can take? Maybe this is the time for us to examine our own beliefs about intelligence, teaching technics, and our function in this chosen field of ours. What a wonderful opportunity for each one of us to see and to reflect God, the Love that is Principle!

We can apply to our sense of a teacher, and of the school where we work, the truths taught by Christ Jesus and by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of the Science which Jesus demonstrated. The Master said, "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things" (John 8:28). And Mrs. Eddy, our Leader, states (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 183), "Man must love his neighbor as himself, and the power of Truth must be seen and felt in health, happiness, and holiness: then it will be found that Mind is All-in-all, and there is no matter to cope with."

Third: What is intelligence— a quality of brains or of Mind? Christian Science reveals that it is a quality of God, divine, infinite Mind. Mind, by its very universality, is omnipresent and therefore omniscient. This Mind, then, is the only instructor. We obviously cannot teach it things; for the one Mind knows all and expresses its knowing with its infinite intelligence. As Elihu said to Job (Job 36:22), "Who teacheth like him?"

What is the educator's function then? Isn't it the insistent seeing of the intelligence of the one Mind in every expression of being—seeing it so insistently that it becomes increasingly evident to others?

But how does this apply to English, history, mathematics, foreign languages, the physical sciences? It means that each of these subjects should be fundamentally an exercise in perception, in accuracy, in judgment, in understanding. Above all, the results should include mastery of problems by the student, learning the joy and the strength of the solution of each problem by his application to it of laws which he discovers are impersonal and vital—laws of Mind, laws of Love.

Much of this sort of approach is already being used with exciting success, even in such so-called measurement devices as percentile ratings, IQ's, and college board examinations. But Christian Scientists who are teachers have a marvelous opportunity, here and now, to prove the infinite intelligence of the one Mind and of all its ideas; and they not only can do it but have already done it to a considerable degree.

What joy there is—what inevitable unfoldment takes place —in each student as the teacher holds tenaciously to the unalterable fact that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all"! (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468.)

As we go into each new day, let us firmly decide to shut the door of our thoughts and conversations, and to keep it shut, on any suggestion of mental mediocrity in ourselves, in our students, or in our fellow teachers. Let us insist that the windows of heaven are eternally pouring forth on everyone the clear light of intelligence—the intelligence of infinite, omnipotent Mind—and that everyone, is by divine right heir to this infinite intelligence.

As we insist too on seeing the fact that this one Mind is Love, then the darkness and heartaches caused by gossip, fears, sensitivities, sidelong glances at and comments about another, will fade into their native nothingness. We shall see our brother's face as though we were seeing the face of God, and our lives, the life of each student, the life of the school, will unfold with joy.