It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull and long school is. The learning by memory of all the basic things one must know is a most ineredible and unending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don' t believe that ,watch an illiterate adult try to do it. School is not easy and it is not for the most part very much fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a real teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of my luck. Mу first was a science and math teacher in high school, my second, a professor of creative writing at Stanford, and my third was my friend and partner, Ed Ricketts.
　　My three had these things in common: They all loved what they were doing. They did not tell;they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.
　　I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery.
　　She aroused us to shouting, book-waving discussions. She had the noisiest class in school and she didn t even seem to know it. We could never stick to the subject. Our speculation ranged the world.She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths shielded in our hands like captured fireflies.
　　I can tell my son who looks forward with horror to fifteen years of drudgery that somewhere in the dusty dark a magic may happen that will light up the years if he is very lucky.