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Writing at Western |
Nora Wolthers
Classroom Management
28 Jan 04
An Adult’s Education
James Fogel suffered from the fatal character flaw of caring too much. He showed this tendency way back in the ‘70’s when he quit being a physicist and started being a lawyer in the wake of a life-changing experience (surviving cancer) and he wanted to “change the world.” At the age of 50, having not changed the world one iota as a lawyer or as a judge, he entered the teaching profession as a “teaching-fellow.” He still wanted to change the world, only this time he wanted in on the ground floor. He wanted to teach disadvantaged teenagers math because “it was the right thing to do.” Since the legal system seemed to be failing those in need, he would serve society by educating its youth.
His strength was his weakness. When you care this much it is easy to try to hold others to the standards you have set for yourself. Although we are not told much about his background, we do know that he was white and from a privileged background. He attended Harvard and Yale. His capacity for abstract thought was vast, hard-wired into him long before he entered school. His IQ was obviously very high, and whether or not we believe that the IQ measure actually indicates innate intelligence, we must allow that it does measure something. He had that something in abundance; however the students he was sent to educate did not.
Fogel made the mental and emotional errors of assuming that if he treated his students as he wished to be treated and set standards that he himself considered to be high, those students who were capable of doing so would rise to the challenge. How much better it would have been for him and the students had he first determined how they wished to be treated and then decided whether or not he was able to do so.
And he made a major tactical blunder. He put his toe on that invisible line, blurring the crystal-clear distinction of never having done anything reproachful. When dealing with those who will not conform one must be diligent in never giving them the slightest opening for charges of impropriety. Fogel touched a student, leading him back to his desk by the arm, which all students- especially the disruptive, uncooperative ones - know is forbidden. They know their rights, and they defend forcefully all of them ... except the right to learn. The students who most disliked him had a seed of truth from which to grow the lie that would rid them of Fogel. They claimed that he had hit them.
His real sin was that he had attempted to sell a product - his knowledge - to customers for whom it had little or no value. His insistence that they pay a high price did not convince them that his product had any worth. As the story ended, we were told that he was cleared of the charge of hitting students and yet was “intransigent to the end.” (It is not made apparent why he should not be intransigent, given that he was proven innocent, but it makes for a dramatic ending.)
Fogel apparently continued on as a “teaching-fellow” after reassignment to a different school. One can only hope that there was a better match between what his new students were willing and able to accept and what he was willing and able to give them.