To a Student Teacher

I recently received a rather touching letter from a former student who is now student teaching in a public school . She seemed to be more than a little upset by the realization that what she had found in the schools did not correspond to what her college professors had led her to believe would be there. The gap between the real and the ideal appeared to be so wide that she did not know what to do . Assuming that she had been exposed to undiluted educational humanism in college classrooms, I decided to offer her the sort of tongue- in- cheek advice that might shock her into a reexamination of her own educational stance