Education – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

• A cart driver asked Rabbi Akiba to teach him the whole of the Torah all at once. Rabbi Akiba told him that Moses had stayed on the mountaintop 40 days and 40 nights to learn the Torah, but that if he really wanted to learn the basic principle of the Torah, he should learn this: “What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man.” Soon after, the cart driver went on a journey with two other men. They came to a field filled with seed pods, and the two other men took two seed pods each, but the cart driver took none. Then they came to a field filled with cabbages, and the two other men took two cabbages each, but the cart driver took none. They asked the cart driver why he wasn’t taking anything, and he replied, “Thus did Rabbi Akiba teach me: ‘What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man.’”

• The book The Unwritten Curriculumby Arthur and Phyllis Blumberg contains this story: In the 4th grade, a student was in band. Because of band practice, he always missed half of an hour-long class. Once, an IQ test was given during that hour, and he was given only 30 minutes to complete it although the other students had an entire hour. Because of this, the test said that he had a very low IQ and he was assigned to a “slow” class in the 5th grade. Another IQ test was given in this grade. Because he was in a slow class, the student was given extra time to complete the test. Of course, this time the test said that he had a very high IQ and he was assigned to a “fast” class in the 6th grade. The student grew up to become an educator whose goal is to end standardized testing.

• After Joe Hyams tried tricky moves against a more skillful sparring partner — and got beat — kenpo-karate master Ed Parker spoke to him. Mr. Parker drew a line on the floor with chalk and asked, “How can you shorten the line?” Mr. Hyams gave several answers, all of which Mr. Parker rejected. Mr. Parker then drew a second, longer line and asked, “How does the first line look?” Of course, in comparison with the long, second line, the first line looked shorter. Mr. Parker then said, “It is always better to improve and strengthen your own line or knowledge than to try and cut your opponent’s line.” After that, Mr. Hyams tried to improve his own knowledge and skills instead of trying to trick his opponent.

• Once a drought afflicted Israel. The King and his ministers prayed to God, but the drought continued. The wise men and the captains made their prayers, but the drought continued. The lords and the rich men made their prayers, but the drought continued. Finally, an old man made his prayer, and rain fell. The King asked who he was, that God listened to his prayer after ignoring the prayers of so many others. The old man replied, “I am a teacher of little children.”

• Peter Cartwright was a pioneer circuit-riding preacher who was suspicious of educated preachers. Once he met an educated preacher who addressed him in Greek in order to humiliate him. Not to be outdone, Mr. Cartwright spoke to him in German. The educated preacher, who did not know Hebrew, concluded that Mr. Cartwright had replied to him in that language, and said that Mr. Cartwright was the first educated Methodist preacher that he had ever seen.

• British boarding schools frequently provide a superior education. When actor Patrick Macnee (who as an adult played John Steed in The Avengers) was eight years old, he played the title role in a production of Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth. The play was performed in its entirety — completely uncut. (Playing the Dauphin — because he could speak both French and English — was eight-year-old Christopher Lee, who also became a professional actor.)

• When Leo Slezak was in the Austrian army, he taught other soldiers bugle calls by whistling them and having the other men imitate his whistles. Once he saw a man scribbling in a notebook and thought his efforts to teach were being ignored. However, when he looked in the man’s notebook, he found that the man was writing down the bugle call: “Tadaradatataratatada!”

• A sculptor once had a child in kindergarten. For an entire year, the sculptor came into the kindergarten class — at the request of the teacher — once a week and “loved” clay. He didn’t teach the children, but simply came in and “loved” clay. Just by watching the sculptor, the children also learned to “love” clay and became very creative with it.

• The Chofetz Chayim was against students pulling all-nighters; instead, he ordered that the lights be put out at midnight. He explained, “Whenever you have the desire to stay up all night to study, remember that this is a trick of the Evil Inclination. He wants you to go without sleep in order that you might be incapacitated for study altogether.”

• “If I were obliged to leave off preaching … there is no office I would rather have than that of school teacher; for I know that this work is with preaching, the most useful, greatest and best; and I do not know which of the two is to be preferred.” — Martin Luther.

• A school in Germany had only one Jewish student. The teacher told her, “Just like all the Jews, you are greedy. Your father pays tuition for only one student, but you are learning enough for three.”

• You can learn by teaching. This is well understood in the martial arts — the dojo, the place where the martial arts are taught and practiced, is known traditionally as the “Place of Enlightenment.”

• Milt Kamen once said that he was held back three times in first grade: “I hardly said two words to my teachers — but I said them all the time.”

• “A man that has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” — Theodore Roosevelt.

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

• While Malcolm Glenn Wyer was working as a librarian at the State University of Iowa, the library was moved into temporary quarters. One day, Mr. Wyer showed the library to a group of college presidents, but explained to them that these were only temporary quarters. The President of the University of Minnesota, Dr. George E. Vincent, heard him and laughed, then explained, “Mr. Wyer, when you have been around universities as long as I have, you will find out that in a university nothing is more permanent than temporary quarters.” Dr. Vincent was right — the library stayed in its “temporary” quarters for more than 45 years.

• The Emperor of Ryo wanted to learn about Zen Buddhism, so he asked Zen master Fu-daishi to explain the Diamond Sutra to him on a certain day. Fu-daishi arrived on the appointed day and stood behind the speaker’s table. Without saying anything, he rapped on the table, then left. Another Zen master, Shiko, witnessed the demonstration, and he asked the Emperor of Ryo, “May I be so bold, sir, as to ask whether you understood?” The Emperor shook his head, No, and Shiko said, “What a pity! Fu-daishi has never been more eloquent.”

• Rabbi Shalom Rokeach left his village at times to journey to visit the Seer of Lublin. Once, the Maggid of Kozienice asked him to stay in the village, promising that he would see the prophet Elijah if he stayed. Rabbi Shalom declined to stay. The Maggid of Kozienice again asked him to stay, promising that he would see the Patriarchs. Rabbi Shalom again declined. The Seer rejoiced to see Rabbi Shalom and said, “One who deprives oneself of the privilege of beholding Elijah and the Patriarchs in order to return to his teacher, is indeed a true Hassid.”

• A Buddhist teacher from India once visited the United States. When he was asked what he thought of Buddhist practices in the United States, he said that they reminded him of a person in a rowboat rowing and rowing, yet getting nowhere because the rowboat is tied to the dock. Many people in the United States devote much time and effort to meditation about lovingkindness, he said, but they forget to practice lovingkindness toward other people in the course of their daily activities.

• Elena Vasilievna Shiripina taught ballet at the Kirov School in Leningrad. Once, ballet student Natalia Makarova lost her sense of direction while dancing tours chaînés on the diagonal. Ms. Shiripina told her, “Keep going, little one, all the way to the door.” Young Natalia did keep going and danced through the door — only to have Ms. Shiripina slam it in her face.

• According to Scott Barnard, ballet master with the Joffrey Ballet, master dancers such as Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev never missed a class. Mr. Nureyev might party all night long until 6 a.m., but at 10 a.m. he attended his ballet class. According to Mr. Barnard, “The people with the long careers are those who are sensible about their work, and who are prepared to take advice.”

• A scandal occurred early in this century when two female students from Smith College invited two male students from Yale University to swim with them in the reservoir providing drinking water to Smith College. President William Allan Neilson of Smith College scolded the two female students, then told them, “I prefer my drinking water unflavored by either Smith or Yale.”

• Princess Seraphine Astafieva ran a dance studio in London, where she helped many great dancers get their start. Often, when students with real potential — such as Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin — did not have money to pay for their lessons, she would tell them, “You pay one day. Now you learn to be great dancer.”

• Gustave Lussi of Switzerland coached American Dick Button, who won the gold medal in men’s figure skating in the 1948 and the 1952 Olympics. Mr. Button trusted Mr. Lussi completely, saying that if Mr. Lussi should order him to jump from a window, he would do it — while making sure his toe was pointed and his head was in the proper position.

• Two convicts were sitting in their cell. One convict was trying to read a book, while the other convict was trying to get him to carry on a conversation. The convict trying to read the book said to the other convict, “I’m going to study and improve myself and when you’re still a common thief, I’ll be an embezzler.”

• The USSR was known for its men’s singles skaters and its pairs skating teams, but it never produced a really fine women’s singles skater until after its breakup. While the USSR was still together, pairs champion and coach Stanislav Zhuk was asked why. He joked, “Because I don’t coach them.”

• Ballerina Natalia Makarova learned at the Kirov School of Ballet that the essence of a character can be found in the way she walks, and so Ms. Makarova approached characters such as Giselle, Odette, and Juliet by first figuring out the way the character ought to walk.

• The Dalai Lama once visited the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where meditation is both taught and practiced. Immediately on walking through the door, he said, “This place seems so different from the rest of America. What do you do here?”

• In the old days, ballet teachers could be slave drivers. In the ballet “The Lesson,” a ballet teacher drives the students very hard — and one by one they drop dead.

• “When you plant for a year, plant grass. When you plant for ten years, plant trees. When you plant for centuries, plant people.” — Chinese proverb.

• “A university without a philosophy department is like a body without a head.” — Lou Marinoff, Ph.D.

• “My teacher of literature at Yale insisted that I had no future as a writer. I became a novelist only to prove him wrong.” — Sinclair Lewis.

• “A little knowledge makes men irreligious, but profound thought brings them back to God.” — Francis Bacon.

• “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.” — Mark Twain.

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David Bruce: Dance Anecdotes

• Jacques d’Amboise studied ballet as a child after school. Unfortunately, he sometimes got into trouble at school and for punishment had to stay after school—until his mother requested of the nuns at his Catholic school that they not detain him because of his ballet lessons. This, however, led to a problem. Instead of serving detention, young Jacques would be excused with this public announcement that embarrassed him but amused the other truants: “Mr. d’Amboise is excused now to take his ballet lesson.” The first time he danced in public was equally embarrassing. He danced at his school, and he says, “I tried to do as many pirouettes and entrechats as I could.” Unfortunately, he was concentrating so hard on these acrobatic dance feats that he was totally unaware until the dance was over that he had split his pants.

• Kevin McHale, when he was General Manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves, spent hours teaching rookie Kevin Garnett how to play under the basket. At one point in his rookie season, Mr. Garnett worried about his statistics; they were lower than he would have liked, perhaps because he had entered the NBA straight out of high school instead of playing basketball in college like most other NBA stars. Mr. McHale showed Mr. Garnett the rookie stats of such NBA stars as Shawn Kemp and Scottie Pippen. Mr. McHale told Mr. Garnett, “Take a good look. These aren’t much different from your numbers. These players have gone on to become stars. The last thing I need is for you to get discouraged. I don’t care how good you are. I care how good you will be.” Mr. Garnett was good, and he quickly became much better.

• If you want a great education, study under people who really know their stuff. After graduating from art school, Judy Chicago noticed that art galleries featured work that was highly polished and highly crafted. She wanted to learn to do that, and she remembered what sculptor John Chamberlain had often advised her: “What I should do is go to auto-body school. Those are the guys who really know how to paint.” Ms. Chicago did exactly that. Her class consisted of herself and 250 men. She says, “I learned not only how to spray-paint, but about respect for the object—that I was actually creating a physical object.” For her final examination, she spray-painted a Chevrolet truck.

• Dalmatians are associated with firefighters. In Springfield, Missouri, a trained Dalmatian named Becky Thatcher taught children fire safety. A firefighter would talk at a school assembly or other event to children about safety, and Becky did tricks to make the lessons easy to remember. For example, the firefighter would talk about what to do if your clothing caught on fire: stop, drop, and roll. As the firefighter talked, Becky stopped, dropped, and rolled. Following one of these assemblies, a parent wrote the fire department that because of the firefighter and Becky, in an emergency the parent’s own child had stopped, dropped, and rolled—and put out the flames.

• In 1950, George Balanchine went to England to work with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and stage Ballet Imperial. While there, he stayed with the noted choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton. Later, they talked over those good old days together, and Mr. Balanchine told Sir Frederick, “You know, you really taught me something.” Mr. Balanchine’s then-wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq, listened closely, hoping to learn something important about ballet, but Mr. Balanchine explained, “Yes, you taught me alwaysto pile up the dinner dishes in the sink and run water over them before your charwoman arrived.”

• Isiah Thomas left college before he graduated so he could make big bucks in the NBA. His not getting a degree disappointed his mother even though he bought her a nice house in a nice neighborhood, so she made him sign a contract saying that he would earn his college degree. On the same day that her son made a last-second shot to win a playoff game against Atlanta, she picked up his diploma. Talking with Isiah on the telephone, she was so excited about his getting a degree that she didn’t even ask him about the playoff game.

• Buddy Collette helped to join a white musicians’ union group (Musicians Local 47) and a black musicians’ union group (Musicians Local 767) together. In doing so, he had help from African-American celebrity Josephine Baker, who spoke to an integrated audience, saying that she didn’t see why there were two (segregated) locals; after all, the audience was integrated. She saw two little girls in the audience, one white and one black, and she spoke for a moment to them. The two little girls hugged each other, and Ms. Baker said, “I think you can learn a lot from these youngsters.”

• Many of Aesop’s fables contain wisdom—something that you would expect from teaching stories. For example, the fable of the lion and the mouse teaches children about kindness: A lion caught a mouse and prepared to eat it. The mouse begged for its life, and the lion felt pity and released it. Soon afterward, a trap made of ropes caught the lion, and although the lion struggled mightily, it could not get free. The mouse heard the lion’s roars and quickly chewed through the ropes, releasing the lion.

• R. Mendel, a Hassid, looked for a place to establish a House of Learning. He journeyed from city to city, and in each city he was welcomed and asked to establish his House of Learning in that city. But each time R. Mendel moved on. Eventually, he came to Kotzk, a city where people who opposed Hassidism met him and who threatened him with clubs. R. Mendel then said, “This is the place,” and he established his House of Learning in Kotzk.

• British long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe attended Sharnbrook upper school in Bedfordshire during 1987-1992. Vaughan Caradice was her maths teacher. One day Mr. Caradice was writing an exam question on the chalkboard when young Paula gently told him, “You might want to have another look at that.” Mr. Caradice says, “When Paula says that, you have another look—and she was right: I’d made a mistake.”

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Rabbi Bun was a scholar. When he died at an early age, Rabbi Zera spoke highly of his scholarly labors, comparing him to a worker in a king’s vineyard who worked hard for two or three hours. The king called the worker to him, and they walked together. At the end of the day, the king paid all his laborers, including the man who had worked for only a few hours, the same wage. The others complained, saying that they had worked for the entire day, and asking, “Is it right that he should receive the same wages we do?” The king responded, “Why are you angry? This man has done as much work in two or three hours as the rest of you have done in a whole day.” And so, Rabbi Zera said, “Thus, too, Rabbi Bun has accomplished more in the realm of the Torah during his 28 years than a diligent student could ordinarily accomplish in 100 years.”

Kevin Jennings, the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), was one of the United States’ first gay teachers to come out of the closet. In school, he wore a marriage ring because he and his partner had exchanged rings. His students asked about the ring, and he told the truth. However, afterward his students kept his response a secret, as if he had said something bad about himself. This bothered Mr. Jennings, so he made a speech to the entire school and came out publicly. The response was incredibly positive. Students hugged him, and he says, “I felt like a celebrity.” Unfortunately, his life as a student in high school was quite different. As the school “fag,” he was called names and occasionally beaten up.

As a youth, Wilson Mizner was an upper-class delinquent, so his family sent him to a school with a reputation for straightening out unruly youths: Santa Clara College. While there, Mr. Mizner developed a strong dislike for one particular educator, so he heated a cannonball in a fire for several hours, then he used a shovel to carry the red-hot cannonball to the building where the educator had an office. Mr. Mizner rolled the cannonball down the hall, the educator stopped the cannonball with his bare hands, getting badly burned in the process, and Mr. Mizner was quickly expelled from school.

When gay author Michael Thomas Ford was invited to his high school reunion, he thought about how miserable his classmates had made him feel as the class queer, and he wrote back, “Michael Thomas Ford is very proud to announce that he is still queer, despite the best attempts of his schoolmates to convince him that it is an unacceptable lifestyle. He would also like to take this opportunity to tell everyone he went to school with that he is happier, more successful, and a great deal more attractive than they are.”

R’ Yitzchak Meir of Gur once asked a young chasid, “Do you know the Torah?” How to answer such a question was perplexing. On the one hand, if he said he knew a lot of Torah, he would appear to be boasting, and after all, R’ Yitzchak Meir knew much more than he. On the other hand, he would be lying if he were to say that knew nothing of the Torah. Therefore, he answered, “I know a little.” R’ Yitzchak Meir replied, “And who knows more than a little?”

Kate Barnhart became an activist for AIDS at a young age. As a member of ACT UP, she has even been arrested a few times. When she applied for admission for college, she was asked to write an essay on her “most positive educational experience,” and instead of writing about such things as a favorite biology course, she wrote about her experiences as an activist. Ms. Barnhart says, “I was rejected by ten schools. But I figured I didn’t want to go to any school that wouldn’t accept me for who I am.”

A man once asked Rabbi Israel Salanter for advice. He explained that he had only 15 minutes a day to devote to study, and so he asked whether he should devote that 15 minutes to studying the Torah and Talmud or to studying a mussar (that is, pietistic) text. Rabbi Salanter advised, “Study the mussar text, and it will soon make you realize that something is terribly wrong with your life if you have only 15 minutes a day to study.”

As a mathematics professor at Princeton, John von Neumann acquired a reputation among his students for writing numbers on the board, then erasing them before the students were able to copy them. He was also known for driving poorly. in fact, he had so many auto accidents at one particular corner that it became informally known as the “Von Neumann Corner.”

Mathilde Marchesi, the voice teacher of Francis Alda, could be temperamental. Once, she angrily told Ms. Alda to leave at once: “And don’t come back. I will teach you no more.” Ms. Alda believed her, but the following afternoon Ms. Marchesi’s valet stopped by Ms. Alda’s apartment to ask her why she hadn’t shown up for her usual morning voice lesson.

Some dance students are very loyal to their teachers. José Limón once overheard a couple of students at the Bennington College of Dance talking together after witnessing a performance of a dance choreographed by Doris Humphrey. One woman said to the other, “I don’t know how she can compose so well. She never took lessons from my teacher.”

Shirley Temple did a lot of tap dancing in her movies. Whenever one of her movies came out, parents would see it, then enroll their children in classes to learn tap dancing. Gene Kelly used to say that enrollment at his dance schools would nearly quadruple whenever a new Shirley Temple movie came out.

Some students sneakily get religion into public schools. For example, in 1993, the graduating class of River Valley High School in Three Oaks, Michigan, arranged for one student to fake a loud sneeze, then the other graduates yelled in unison, “God bless you!”

Dipa Ma, a meditation teacher, once suggested to Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein that they sit in meditation for two straight days. Ms. Salzberg felt that such an effort was beyond her capabilities, but Dipa Ma, a demanding teacher, told her, “Don’t be lazy.”

Yogi Berra was a great ballplayer but a poor student. On one school test, he missed every question, so his teacher told him, “I don’t believe you know anything.” Yogi replied, “Ma’am, I don’t even suspect anything.”

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Jay Leno attended Emerson College, where he was a mediocre student at best. However, one semester he surprised his parents by getting straight A’s. This is what happened: For one semester only, Emerson College implemented a “progressive” idea — it let students grade themselves. Mr. Leno recognized an opportunity when he saw it, and he put himself on the dean’s list. The next semester, Emerson College reverted back to its old system of grading, and Mr. Leno received his usual D’s and F’s. His father asked, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?” — and Mr. Leno said that his courses were harder this semester than last semester.

What counts as a good education varies from culture to culture. The white American settlers once took some youths of the Six Nations and gave them an eduction, then returned them to the Native Americans. However, the Native Americans were dissatisfied because the youths knew nothing about hunting and trapping, or about making war. Therefore, the Native Americans approached the white settlers to say that if the whites should give them some youths to be educated, they would make sure the youths learned the important things in life.

When soccer superstar Julie Foudy was ready to attend college, she had scholarship offers from several universities, including Stanford and North Carolina. Stanford was expensive — $20,000 a year — and Ms. Foudy was offered only a partial scholarship of $2,000 a year to go there. North Carolina was much less expensive; in fact, when the North Carolina coach visited her, he said, “How would you like for us to save you $80,000?” (Ms. Foudy ended up going to and graduating from Stanford anyway.)

Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller’s father is a university physics professor. As such, he knows to take a look at the big picture. Whenever Shannon is upset because she didn’t get a high enough score on a chemistry test, he will ask her a few questions to test her knowledge, If she knows the answers — she usually does — he will tell her, “So you forgot a few things for one hour, but you told me everything you were supposed to know. What’s important is that you learned the material.”

In 1903, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler became President of Cincinnati, Ohio’s Hebrew Union College. A youthful guide named Samuel Caplan took a group of people around to see the sights of the college, and coming to Dr. Kohler’s house, he announced, “This is where Dr. Kohler lives.” He then picked up some gravel and threw it against an upstairs window. Instantly, the angry face of Dr. Kohler appeared. Mr. Caplan turned to his group and announced, “And that is Dr. Kohler.”

When he was ready to enter junior high school, Eric Gregg, who was later to be the third black umpire in the major leagues, looked at the school in his neighborhood in inner-city Philadelphia. He decided that the school was “nothing but a dead end,” and he decided that he wasn’t going there. Therefore, completely on his own, he faked an address and attended a much better junior high in another neighborhood, riding city buses by himself to get to the school for classes.

King Wej was depressed and unable to enjoy life, so he said to Si-tien, a Buddhist priest, “I am troubled, I am pained, and nothing gives me pleasure. What shall I do?” Si-tien took King Wej to see King Hsu, who sat on his mat, talking, smiling, laughing, eating, and drinking with other people. Si-tien then told King Wej, “Sit down near him, and do as he does. Joy is something to be learned.”

Caroline Gall was a veterinarian who made a good salary, something that made many women envious of her in the 1970s. She once said, “If they would just go ahead and do something instead of bitching all the time. I run into housewives who will say, ‘I wanted to be a vet, but I can’t stand chemistry.’ Well, I can’t stand chemistry either, but I learned it.”

Zero Mostel was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Middlebury College. Also being given an honorary doctorate was David Rockefeller, who was interested in insects and had a collection of 50,000 rare specimens. When Mr. Mostel heard this, he said, “I also have a collection of 50,000 insects — cockroaches.”

A college professor once got upset because his students were only half-listening to his lecture, and he told them, “I’m offering you a dollar and you’re only taking fifty cents.” A friend of author Peg Bracken was in that course, and she says now that she didn’t take even a nickel, for she can’t remember the name of the course.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise knew a couple who had gotten their son accepted into an excellent boys’ school before he was even born. Rabbi Wise asked what they would have done if they had had a girl, but they assured him that they had considered that and had also applied for their child’s admission into an excellent girls’ school.

Amy Chow, who won gold (team) and silver (uneven bars) at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, got into gymnastics by accident. When Amy was three years old, her mother wanted her to take dance lessons, but the dance studio thought she was too young for lessons, so her mother enrolled her in a gymnastics class instead.

Elfi Schlegel missed a lot of school while performing in gymnastics at a young age, but her competing in international gymnastics had an advantage for her class. After Ms. Schlegel returned to her native Canada after competing in another country, she would give a class presentation on that country.

Marguerite Yingst Parker was one of comedian Richard Pryor’s schoolteachers. She came up with an original way to motivate him to attend school. If he attended school on time for a week, she would allow him to perform a school comedy routine in front of his classmates.

Mme. Viardot-Garcia was a famous voice teacher in Paris. Once an American woman wanted to take two lessons with her. Why two? The American wanted to go back home and say that she had taken lessons with the famous Mme. Viardot-Garcia.

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was a poor student and graduated from high school with a D- average near the bottom of his class. (He later claimed, “I only said I was the greatest; I never said I was the smartest.”) Some teachers didn’t think he should be allowed to graduate, but the principal, Atwood Wilson, felt differently and argued that Cassius would be a success in life: “Why, in one night, he’ll make more money than the principal and all you teachers make in one year. If every teacher here fails him, he’s still not going to fail.” When Cassius’ name was announced at the commencement ceremony, his fellow students gave him a standing ovation.

When the U.S. women’s national soccer team won the first Women’s World Cup in 1991, team member Julie Foudy thought that women’s soccer would immediately become very popular in the United States. She was wrong, although later women’s soccer did become much more popular. No one met the team at the airport, and when one of her Stanford professors learned what she had done, the professor said, “You won the World Cup? Oh. That’s wonderful. Welcome back. Here is your final exam in human biology.”

Even at six months old, Tiger Woods was learning how to be a golfer. As Tiger sat in a highchair, his father, Earl, demonstrated to him how to hit golf balls. When Tiger was old enough to swing his first golf club — a putter with the top of the handle sawn off — he wiggled the club twice before hitting the ball, exactly as his father was accustomed to do. His father says, “His first swing was a perfect imitation of mine. It was like looking at myself in a miniature mirror.”

While attending college, Steven Spielberg made a film titled Amblin’ that attracted the notice of Sidney Sheinberg, head of television production at Universal Studios. When Mr. Sheinberg offered young Steven a job, he objected that he hadn’t graduated from college yet. Mr. Sheinberg asked, “Do you want to go to college or do you want to direct?” Mr. Spielberg said later, “I quit college so fast, I didn’t even clean out my locker.”

As a female student in medical school in the late 19th century when that was unusual, Maria Montessori showed unusual dedication. When a snowstorm battered Rome, Ms. Montessori still made it to class, even though the bottom of her dress was wet from the deep snows. That day, she was the only student to show up for the class — the professor did not cancel the class, but instead lectured to her alone.

As a young girl, future Secretary of State Madeleine Albright attended the Kent School for Girls in Denver, Colorado, where she once won an eighth-grade contest by listing all 51 member states of the United Nations in alphabetical order. At every school she attended, she started a new club to study foreign policy — she admits that one advantage of starting a new club is that you can name yourself president.

As an 11-year-old boy, Rudolf Nureyev auditioned for Anna Udeltsova. She was impressed and told him, “Child, you have a duty to yourself to learn classical dancing! With such an innate gift, you must join the students of the Maryinsky Theater.” Unfortunately, young Rudolf’s family had no money to pay for ballet lessons. Fortunately, Ms. Udeltsova was so impressed by young Rudolf’s talent that she taught him without charge.

While living in Burr Oak, Iowa, Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie, used to live above a grocery store. In the afternoons, she and her sister Mary practiced elocution — reading out loud with feeling — for school. They didn’t know it, but grocery store customers used to come by regularly and stand where they could hear the girls read exciting stories and poems.

While in high school, oceanographer Jacques Cousteau was bored, so he broke 17 windows. The high school authorities were unimpressed by his explanation for his misdeed — he said that he had wanted the windows to look like they had been shot out by a band of marauding cowboys. His parents immediately sent him to a strict boarding school where he matured and improved his grades.

Even after releasing a single titled “It’s Like That” in March of 1983, the members of the rap group Run-D.M.C. weren’t sure that their music career would continue, so they enrolled in college. Jay “Jam Master Jay” Mizell later explained, “Everyone said rap was a fad. I knew death wasn’t a fad, so I majored in mortuary science.”

Jackie Bouvier, who was later known as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, attended Miss Porter’s Finishing School in Farmington, Connecticut. That was a good idea, as she did need finishing. At the school, she once dumped a chocolate pie — upside down — onto the lap of a teacher she disliked.

International students make major contributions to the colleges and universities where they study. In 1981, the University of Texas-El Paso won the NCAA Track and Field Championships. Not one of its 70 points was scored by a USAmerican.

Trinity College at the University of Cambridge is known for its arrogance. When one of its Fellows won a Nobel Prize, the Master began his speech by saying, “Anywhere else, I could say that is a very special occasion.”

Colin Powell was accepted by both New York University and the City College of New York in 1954. Deciding which college to attend was easy — yearly tuition at NYU was $750, while yearly tuition at CCNY was only $10.

Gymnast Mary Lou Retton was once asked whether training for the Olympics and missing school had hurt her education. She replied, “While other kids were reading about the Great Wall, I was walking on it.”

On his 16th birthday, Neil Armstrong, who became the first person on the moon, received his student pilot’s license — before he received his driver’s license.

Seattle Mariner Alex Rodriguez’ mother was a waitress. To teach her baseball-playing son math skills, she used to have him count her tips.

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

A young warrior started a fight with a peasant, but no matter what he did he could not defeat the peasant. Astonished, the young warrior asked the peasant how he had acquired such skill, and the peasant explained that he had been taught by an old master in the village. The young warrior visited the old master, but instead of listening and learning, the young warrior bragged loudly at great length about his accomplishments. The old master listened politely, but when he poured tea for the young warrior, he filled the teacup and then kept on pouring, causing the teacup to overflow and spill. Finally, the young warrior pointed out that no more would go into the teacup, and the old master replied, “The cup, young man, is much like your mind — so full that anything else put into it will only spill out.”

In the late 1860s, the American Medical Association decided to advocate the raising of standards for the education of physicians by recognizing the schools that met stricter standards and not recognizing the schools that didn’t. Harvard raised its standards, requiring oral and written exams in several areas of study, terms lasting nine months each, and three years of study. Students’ reaction was decisive — during the years following the raising of standards, Harvard medical school enrollment dropped by 43 percent. Many students decided instead to attend medical schools with lower standards. (But by the 1920s, higher standards were in place everywhere in the United States.)

Union organizer Mother Jones knew the effects of child labor at first hand. To learn about working conditions in Southern mills, she had taken jobs at some of them, where she had worked alongside children. Once, she saw heavy machinery tear off one of the fingers of a child employee. Another time, she attended the funeral of an 11-year-old in Alabama who had died in a factory accident. In 1903, Mother Jones drew attention to the situation of children working in the mills in Philadelphia by having them display their injuries — some children were missing thumbs that had been cut off at work, while other children were missing entire hands that had been cut off at work.

Pioneer teachers in the west often had to be resourceful. In Kansas, a tornado headed toward a new schoolhouse. The schoolhouse had a cellar, but no door had yet been built to serve as an entrance to it, so the teacher grabbed a hatchet and chopped a hole in the floor so her students could reach safety. Fortunately, the tornado moved away from the schoolhouse, and no one was hurt. Afterward, the parents of the students teased the teacher and said that after scaring away a tornado with a hatchet, she should have no discipline problems with her students.

Allison was eight years old, lived in Minnesota, and was being educated at home — a process called homeschooling. Her parents were her teachers, and they were very creative at coming up with original ways to teach Allison. For example, at breakfast one day, Allison pretended to be a waitress and wrote down each person’s order, figured out the total cost of their meal, and made change from the money her mother gave her. The words she misspelled on the orders were added to her spelling list, and her father checked her math to make sure it was accurate.

Franz Liszt once read a score by a young man who could not write music. Liszt pointed to a place on the score, then said, “This must not be done in music.” The young man haughtily replied, “But I have done it.” Liszt dipped his pen in an ink well, then splattered the ink all over the young man’s white waistcoat, and said, “This, too, can be done, but it must not be.” Then Liszt bought the young man a new white waistcoat.

When Oprah Winfrey was five years old and in kindergarten, she wrote a letter to her teacher, saying that she felt that she deserved to be in a higher grade. Her teacher agreed, perhaps because Oprah had started to learn to read when she was only two and a half years old, and put Oprah in the first grade. Later, because of her educational attainments, Oprah was able to skip the second grade, too.

As a teenager, Jennifer Capriati played professional tennis, making millions through endorsing products and winning tournaments. Nevertheless, she was also a student and had to turn in homework. Often, at important tennis tournaments, she would fax her homework to her school, Palmer Academy in Wesley Chapel, Florida, then go out and compete. (As a teenager, she also studied on the road with a tutor.)

The native Americans known as the Western Mono are basketmakers. One of their traditions is that a basketmaker must give away the first basket that she creates — this encourages generosity. Contemporary basketmakers such as 11-year-old Carly Tex learn the craft by making baby cradles for dolls.

Every Navajo blanket has an opening in its border. Sometimes, the border will be dark, with one piece of white-colored yarn reaching to the edge of the blanket. This is done so that the weaver will keep her mind open and be able to learn more. When one’s mind is closed, one is unable to learn.

As a high school student, George Lucas, who grew up to make the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, seemed unremarkable, but an art teacher recognized the talent that was hidden inside him. The art teacher told young George’s parents, “You have no idea what ability this boy has.”

When Steve Wozniak gave his valedictorian speech at the University of California at Berkeley, he spoke about his formula for happiness, saying, “H = F³. Happiness equals food, fun, and friends.” He also said that “the only way you can measure life” is “by the number of smiles per day.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s father was hard to please. Hillary would come home from school with a report card full of A’s, and her mother would be pleased and say, “Oh, that’s wonderful, dear.” However, her father would say, “You must go to a pretty easy school.”

Author Boze Hadleigh used to have a teacher who told him, “You either have class, or you belong in one.”

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Sister Helen P. Mrosla, a Franciscan nun, taught Mark Eklund in the third grade at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, MN, and she taught him again in a math course in the ninth grade. One day, the students were struggling in class, and she decided to do something different to stop their bad spirits and crankiness. She asked each student to take out some paper and list each classmate’s name on it, leaving some room in between each name. She then asked students “to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.” At the end of the class, she collected the papers. Over the weekend, she wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet and then she wrote down on each sheet of paper the nice comments that the other students had written about that student. On Monday, she gave each student his or her list of nice comments. She remembers, “Before long, the entire class was smiling. ‘Really?’ I heard whispered. ‘I never knew that meant anything to anyone!’ ‘I didn’t know others liked me so much!” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.” A few years later, in 1971, a grown-up Mark Eklund died in Vietnam—not in combat, but from a pulmonary and cerebral edema while sleeping. Sister Helen attended his funeral, and a soldier who was a pallbearer asked her, “Were you Mark’s math teacher?” He then said, “Mark talked about you a lot.” And Mark’s father said to her, “We want to show you something. They found this on Mark […]. We thought you might recognize it.” The something was the piece of paper on which was written a list of students’ nice comments about Mark. The well-worn paper had obviously been read often. Mark’s mother said, “Thank you so much for doing that. As you can see, Mark treasured it.” Several other students who had been in the class, including Mark’s wife, kept their own lists of nice comments. One former student showed Sister Helen her list and said, “I carry this with me at all times. I think we all saved our lists.

The ancient people of Japan passed on what they had learned from their experiences of tsunamis. Those who heeded the wisdom of the ancient people fared better in the great tsunami of 2011 than those who did not. For example, in the village of Aneyoshi, a stone slab that is hundreds of years old stated, “High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.” The people of Aneyoshi had not built any homes below that point, and they fared well in the earthquake. On the coastline of Japan, hundreds of stone slabs bear good advice. For example, a stone slab states, “If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis.” Another stone slab states, “Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables.” Such advice is needed. Large tsunamis occur rarely, and without such reminders, people can forget the danger and do such things as build homes on the coastline—as many people in other areas of Japan had done. Tetsuko Takahashi, 70, who lives in a hillside house in Kesennuma, saw from her window a ship swept inland a half-mile—it crushed buildings as it was swept inland. She says, “After the earthquake, people went back to their homes to get their valuables […]. They all got caught.” The names of towns also provide warnings. For example, one town is named “Octopus Grounds” because lots of sealife was washed onto it because of a tsunami. Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at Tohoku University, says, “It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades.” In Aneyoshi, people remembered. Yuto Kimura, who is 12 years old, says, “Everybody here knows about the markers. We studied them in school. When the tsunami came, my mom got me from school and then the whole village climbed to higher ground.”

Ross P. Mayo, a male nursing student working in the nursing station at an elementary school, ran into a problem when a little girl named Tammi came in to have a scratch treated. Even though he told her, “I am a nurse. I can help you, Trust me,” Tammi was terrified because she thought that all nurses were female and she did not know who this strange man was. Fortunately, Ms. Walker, the school nurse, walked in and reassured Tammi. Even then, Tammi did not believe that Ross was a nurse. Ross asked Tammi why she did not believe that he was a nurse, and Tammi answered, “Because you’re not a lady.” Therefore, Ross decided to teach the students that some nurses are men. He addressed the second-grade students because he felt that they would be able to understand what he had to say to them. He turned it into a game and had the children determine his occupation by asking him questions. It took a while, with the children guessing that he was a doctor or a dentist, but finally they figured out that he was a nurse. Ross was able to explain in words that the children could understand that some women are doctors and that some men are nurses. Before the meeting, the children had written about nurses. After the meeting, he had the children write again about nurses. The writing showed that the children had learned a lot about nurses. A sample BEFORE paper: “I think a nurse is a nice lady who helps people.” A sample AFTER paper: “A nurse can be a lady or a man. Nurses are working in clinics, schools, and hospitals. And some nurses are going to people’s houses, too. And a lady can be a doctor.”

“I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” — Edith Ann, aka Lily Tomlin.

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old English schoolgirl, saved approximately 100 people at a resort on the Thai island of Phuket from a tsunami on 26 December 2004. The tsunami killed at least 178,000 people. Fortunately for the people at the resort, Tilly had studied tsunamis in her geography class in Oxshott, a small town south of London, just two weeks earlier. Tilly said, “I saw this bubbling on the water, right on the edge, and foam sizzling just like in a frying pan. The water was coming in, but it wasn’t going out again. It was coming in, and then in, and then in, towards the hotel.” Tilly told her mother, Penny, “Mum, I know there’s something wrong. I know it’s going to happen—the tsunami.” Her mother did not believe her at first. However, her father, Colin, said, “Tilly went hysterical.” Colin and Tilly’s 8-year-old sister, Holly, went to the hotel and spread news of the approaching tsunami, and Tilly told a Japanese-born hotel chef who recognized the word “tsunami.” The chef and a hotel security agent helped spread the news of the approaching tsunami at the beach, and people left the beach. Minutes later, the tsunami hit the beach. According to media reports, “The beach near the Marriott Hotel was one of the few in Phuket where no one was killed or seriously hurt.” Former United States President Bill Clinton met with Tilly the following year. He said, “Tilly’s story is a simple reminder that education can make a difference between life and death. All children should be taught disaster reduction so they know what to do when natural hazards strike.” Because of Tilly, many people lived through the tsunami who otherwise would have died. Fortunately for them, Tilly likes studying geography.

In May 2011, when gunfire broke out outside a school in the northern state of Nuevo Leon in Mexico, kindergarten teacher Martha Rivera Alanis remained calm and instructed her class of 5- and 6-year-old children to do a duck-and-cover drill for their protection. In recognition of her outstanding civic courage, Gov. Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz gave to her a framed certificate. Ms. Alanis said, “Of course, I was afraid, but I tell you, my kids get me through it.” During the emergency she told a little girl, “No, my love, nothing is going to happen—just put your little face on the floor.” The gunshots were from an attack in which five people were killed at a taxi stand. Monterrey, Mexico, has been the site of much drug-related violence. To keep the children from being frightened, Ms. Alanis had them sing a song from the children’s TV show Barney and Friends. The children sang, “If the rain drops were chocolate, I would love to be there, opening my mouth to taste them.” Ms. Alanis said, “My only thought was to take their minds off that noise [the gunshots]. So I thought of that song.” She said, “I’m going to carry on; of course, it is possible. If my 5- and 6-year-olds can do it, it is up to the rest of us to carry on.” Part of carrying on is being prepared. Ms. Alanis said, “We do [emergency] drills constantly, because the area where we are is a high-risk zone. She adding that the kids “behaved in the way we had practiced.”

The first-ever class taught by Kari-Lynn Winters consisted of first-graders with behavioral problems; however, after the first day of class Kari-Lynn very seldom had any problem with any child. On the first day of class, Kari-Lynn passed out some candies that were to be used in a math lesson. She gave the children strict orders not to eat the candies yet, but a small girl did eat some candies and started choking. Kari-Lynn was so scared that she uttered some profanity in front of the children and then ran over, grabbed the child, and used the Heimlich maneuver (lifting the child off the ground as she did so) to get the candies out of the child’s throat so the child could sit at her desk and breathe again. Kari-Lynn then telephoned the child’s mother to come and pick up the child. That day she got a reputation as the school’s strictest teacher. Students spread the word that you better not mess with Kari-Lynn because if you did, Kari-Lynn would do these things to you: 1) Cuss you out in front of the other children, 2) Grab you and lift you off the ground, 3) Break all your ribs, 4) Sit you down at a desk and let you suffer from the pain of the broken ribs, and 5) Call your mother and tell on you so your mother would take you home and punish you again. After the first day of class, Kari-Lynn received many compliments on how well her students behaved.

According to a 2011 national survey of 638 public teachers, 61 percent of these teachers buy food—spending on average $25 monthly—so that they can feed hungry children at school. Share Our Strength, a non-profit organization, sponsored the survey. Quite simply, some children are not getting enough food to eat at home. Fortunately, many teachers are doing the good deed of feeding them. Stacey Frakes, who used to teach third, fourth and fifth grades at Madison County Central School in Florida, remembers that students would almost cry in her classes because they had not eaten breakfast and were hungry. She said that the hungry students were hard to teach because they “couldn’t focus at all. All they could think about was wanting food. They would ask, ‘What time is lunch? Is it lunchtime yet?’” She kept peanut-butter crackers handy so that she could feed hungry students, and once she gave a hungry student her own lunch. The United States government does provide breakfast to 11.6 million school children. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 74 percent of these breakfasts are free; in addition, 8.8 percent are reduced price.

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.’ — Anatole France

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David Bruce: Education Anecdotes

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Alex Tabarrok remembers, “Tyler once walked into class the day of the final exam and he said. ‘Here is the exam. Write your own questions. Write your own answers. Harder questions and better answers get more points.’ Then he walked out.” In a 13 August 2012 comment on this blog entry, Ragbatz wrote, “In the 1960’s a Harvard chemistry professor posed a question on a chemistry final examination along these lines:‘10% Extra Credit. Write a question to be used as an extra credit question on a final examination in chemistry. The ideal extra credit question should be worth about 10% of the grade on the examination as a whole, and test facility with the material covered during the course.’ My friend Tom Hervey received full credit with the following answer:‘10% Extra Credit. Write a question to be used as an extra credit question on a final examination in chemistry. The ideal extra credit question should be worth about 10% of the grade on the examination as a whole, and test facility with the material covered during the course.’”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The House of Seven Gables, was a little wild while he was attending Bowdoin College. He played cards and gambled, drank alcohol and smoked tobacco, and cut class—all of which were against the rules of the college. In May 1822, William Allen, the president of Bowdoin, sent his mother a letter that said in part: “By the vote of the executive government of this college, it is made my duty to request your cooperation with us in the attempt to induce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution.” After he was caught gambling, the college fined him 50 cents. At the time, that amount of money would buy enough food to feed a person for two days. He wrote his mother and asked her to pay the fine. He also promised not to gamble again—at least until the last week of the term. In May of his senior year, he received a bill. The cost of his tuition was $2, and the cost of his fines was $2.36. The college fined him 20 cents for not turning in papers, 20 cents for missing church, 36 cents for missing prayers, and $1.60 for cutting class.

Growing up with a cartoon creator for your father can have disadvantages. Chuck Jones directed and co-wrote the cartoon “For Scent-imental Reasons,” starring amorous skunk Pepé le Pew. His daughter, Linda, saw the cartoon just before she entered a junior high school spelling bee. She was asked to spell the word “sentimental.” Guess how she spelled it? Chuck remembered, “She came home furious.” By the way, when Linda was little and she and her friends were watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon, she told her friends that her father had drawn the cartoon—which he had. Unfortunately, they did not believe her. One child even said, “Yeah, sure, and my father’s Clark Gable.” Given the time and place the Jones family was living, that may even have been true. Also by the way, when Linda was four years old, she drank a teaspoonful of champagne and sugar to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Asked if she liked it, she said, “Yes, it’s full of jokes.”

Censors can come up with some funny things to object to. For example, in the early 20^thcentury, a Midwestern women’s organization objected to the nudity of the Walt Disney cartoon character Clarabelle Cow. Fortunately, this objection was easy to disarm. Mr. Disney simply drew the character a skirt to wear. By the way, being able to draw a convincing cartoon character takes both talent and lots of study. For example, Disney artists study movies of a cow. At first, the cow is a calf, then it grows up, and then it is milked. By studying the movie, Disney artists discover such things as this fact: “Look! No matter how fat a cow gets, her hips still stay bony.” Another artist discovered this fact: “When she eats, she moves her jaw from side to side instead of up and down the way we do.”

Victor Mature and Jim Backus acted together, and they were cadets at military school together. Neither did well at military school; both succeeded in infuriating the Colonel in charge of the military school. The Colonel even bawled them out, told them to stay out of his sight, and predicted that they would end up as gutter bums. A few years later, Mr. Mature and Mr. Backus were successful movie actors. One day, they were making a movie together, and Mr. Mature got an idea. The movie set was a penthouse, and Mr. Mature, Mr. Backus, two starlets, and not much feminine clothing posed together on the set for a photograph that Mr. Mature sent to the Colonel with this note: “Best wishes from Cadets Mature and Backus. P.S. How are your honor students doing?”

Artist James Montgomery Flagg’s father did a very good deed during the Great Blizzard of 1888 in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, during which he got caught in the blizzard. While he was walking home, he came across a young woman who had fainted in the cold. He carried her a mile to her home and then walked the rest of his way to his home, where he used hot towels to melt the ice in his beard. (Young James, then eleven years old, had walked to school in snow up to his waist. When he arrived at the school, he discovered that school had been cancelled.)

As a child, African-American diva Grace Bumbry was very self-critical, often coming home despondent after a voice lesson. Often, her teacher, Kenneth Billups, would call her mother to tell her not to worry about her daughter’s mood: “She’s all right. She just had another voice lesson today.”

Conductor Pierre Monteux taught at a school for conductors, where a student conducted a very light Mozart piece as if it were a heavy, leaden piece. Mr. Monteux stopped the student and informed him, “Mon Dieu! It is not Strauss, it is not Mahler, and it is not Khrushchev!”

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