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...."

Bits & Pieces - June 1995

Economics Press