A Special Teacher
Years ago a John Hopkin’s professor gave a group of graduate students
this assignment: Go to the slums. Take 200 boys, between the ages of 12
and 16, and investigate their background and environment. Then predict
their chances for the future. The students, after consulting social
statistics, talking to the boys, and compiling much data, concluded
that 90 percent of the boys would spend some time in jail.
Twenty-five years later another group of graduate students was given
the job of testing the prediction. They went back to the same area.
Some of the boys – by then men – were still there, a few had died, some
had moved away, but they got in touch with 180 of the original 200.
They found that only four of the group had ever been sent to jail.
Why was it that these men, who had lived in a breeding place of crime,
had such a surprisingly good record? The researchers were continually
told: “Well, there was a teacher…” They pressed further, and found that
in 75 percent of the cases it was the same woman.
The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a home for retired
teachers. How had she exerted this remarkable influence over that group
of children? Could she give them any reason why these boys should have
remembered her? “No,” she said, “no I really couldn’t.” And then,
thinking back over the years, she said amusingly, more to herself than
to her questioners: “I loved those boys…”
No comments:
Post a Comment