I was born and reared on a family farm in northwest Illinois and obtained my elementary education in a single-teacher village school. Apparently I had a mild case of dyslexia, for I was virtually unable to read until I had been in school for more than two years. Then, through the valiant tutelage of my mother, who had been a school teacher, I suddenly became able to read and ever afterward did so, well and extensively. Our farming community was not included in any secondary school district, and my parents managed to have me admitted to Kewanee High School which, at the time, was considered to be the most outstanding school, academically, in the area. There, indeed, I received an excellent education from an outstanding group of teachers. I was especially inspired by the Misses Minnie Trask and Wildred Ewan, who posed demanding intellectual challenges and encouraged imaginative but rigorous modes of thought. It seemed that I learned most from having to solve difficult problems and rather little from classroom exposition, however excellent it was. Because of this, the emphasis of my own teaching has been on the posing of meaningful and challenging problems. In this, I have tried to follow the dictum, attributed to Galileo, “you can't teach a person anything, you can only help them to find it within themself”.