More Miss O'Neill

The most astonishing thing about Miss O'Neill was that she proceeded on the assumption that she could teach a pack of potential poolroom jockeys how to write clear, clean, correct sentences, organized into clear, clean, correct paragraphs -- in their native tongues.

I do not think Miss O'Neill had the slightest awareness of her influence on me, or anyone else. She was not especially interested in me. She never betrayed an iota of preference for any of her captive and embittered flock.

Nor was Miss O'Neill much interested in the high, grand reaches of the language whose terrain she so briskly charted. She was a technician, pure and simple — efficient, conscientious, immune to excuses or flattery or subterfuge. Nothing derailed her from her professionalism.

And that is the point. Miss O'Neill did not try to please us. She did not try to like us. She certainly made no effort to make us like her. She valued results more than affection, and, I suspect, respect more than popularity...

I think Miss O'Neill understood what foolish evangelists of education are bound to rediscover: that drill and discipline are not detestable; that whether they know it or not, children prefer competence to "personality" in a teacher; that communication is more significant than camaraderie; that what is hard to master gives students special rewards (pride, self-respect, the unique gratification of having succeeded) precisely because difficulties have been conquered, ramparts scaled, battles won; that there may be no easy road at all to learning some things, and no "fascinating" or "fun" way of learning some things really well.

People I have loved, known, or admired by Leo Rosten

This was written in 1970. Thirty six years later we are still waiting ...