SCIENCE TEACHERS
SIR,—Writing last week about science teachers, your correspondent Mr. MacPher- son says, with justice, that the secondary school should set the "really able boy" among "minds and personalities that com- mand his admiration and respect." What strikes roe as odd is the assumption, implicit in Mr. MacPherson's letter, that not only are able scientists and mathematicians a priori possessors of such personalities, but that their First Class Honours minds make them automatically first class teachers.
Anyone who has to do with scientists knows quite well that scientific brilliance is often found where personality is least apparent—there is, in scientific jargon, no apparent positive correlation between the two. Likewise, anyone who has to do with teachers knows' that the most brilliant (as teachers) by no means all exhibit brilliance (as minds ').
Academic brilliance seems fairly reliably revealed by examinations, 'personality,' and whatever it is that makes a good teacher (they are not necessarily the same, I believe, although in some way related), are much more mysterious. •
lt is no use luring the brilliant botanist into a school with a -high salary if he is going to be bored stiff with boys; he is probably a brilliant botanist because his con- suming interest is botany. The driving impulse of the scientist is exploratory; I don't know what the driving impulse of the teacher is (or should be), but I am sure that it is not this; the teacher might teach the better for possessing it to some degree as well, but another quality, which has nothing to do with Firsts, must be there too.
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