Best Teacher

Who is the nation's best schoolteacher? How can anyone possibly tell? Nevertheless, a sensible, good-natured rural New Jersey schoolmarm was so designated last week. She found the idea "rather silly."

The "Best Teacher of 1946" is greying Mrs. Edith Creed Binker, 42, wife of an insurance man. Says she: "I'm just an ordinary teacher who got in a rut 22 years ago and has been polishing the groove ever since."

She was picked as follows: some 14,000 listeners to the Quiz Kids radio program nominated a favorite teacher, giving their written reasons.* A girl and a boy voted for Mrs. Binker. Three college professors picked the seven best letters, then sent out legmen to see the seven teachers.

They found Mrs. Binker teaching English, spelling, science and music at Central School, Warren Township, eight miles out of Plainfield, N.J. She earns $1,950 a year.

Her virtues, as summed up by pig-tailed Rita Eversole, 13: "the ability to laugh, her readiness to take criticism, her open-mindedness, her patience with someone who trys . . . her sternness with those who shirk, her ability to make a subject interesting and her fairness. . . . She was the kind of teacher who did not pretend to know everything. . . ."

Mrs. Binker's reward: $1,000, a year's free graduate study, and an appearance on the Quiz Kids' program. Said she firmly: "But they won't get me into any math quiz with Joel Kupperman."

* Sample (from nine-year-old Charles Smith of St. Louis, whose nominee did not win): "Im going to have a new teacher tomorrow. Ive been promoted up to three high. I wont say Im not glad to be promoted. But it makes me feel kind of sad when I think about going up above Miss Tobin. She was my teacher all through three low and no matter how high I ever go she will still be the best teacher in the world. All of the kids say that. Michael Reed will tell you the same. Michael and I were walking home from school . . . and he said aint it awfull going up above Miss Tobin and I said yes Aint it. And he said do you think we will have to go on all our lives getting used to people and learning to like them and then going above them. . . . Miss Tobin is awfully old. She must be more than 30, but she still Remembers what it was in three low. I guess thats why she helps us out any time we get stuck or in trouble."

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