Inspirational Stories: A Special Teacher

Years ago a John Hopkins University 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 and information, 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 that 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 by the boys who were now men: "Well, there was a teacher..." They

pressed further, and found that in 75 percent of the cases it was the same female teacher.

The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a retirement home. How had she managed this

remarkable influence over that group of boys? Could she give any reason why these boys should have

remembered her?

"No," she said, "no, I really can't think of any reason that they would remember me." And then, thinking back

over the years, she reflected, more to herself than her questioners: "I loved those boys..."

Inspirational Stories