What makes a great teacher great? Last week one of education's timeless questions got a partial answer: a great teacher makes his students stretch.
Houston Peterson, head of Manhattan's Cooper Union forum and onetime Rutgers philosophy professor, served up this judgment in a unique anthology: Great Teachers, Portrayed by Those Who Studied under Them (Rutgers University Press, $3.50). Its 22 essays ranged from a profile of Anne Mansfield Sullivan by her only pupil, Helen Keller, to impressions of Ralph Waldo Emerson by James Russell Lowell.
Emerson, Anne Sullivan and the good and great teachers...