I just speed read this story because I know it so well. I was in the advanced class established in 4th grade when I was 10 yers old. And our Ben was a Brian, a brilliant but disruptive(and always hilarious cut-up) kid who'd be in the back of the class facing away with his arms wrapped around his neck with the hands clasped around his neck appearing to be making out with some girl. But we, and he, were fortunate .Ms. Woodward, the most wonderful, patient woman in the world, was assigned to teach 30 (and over the next 3 years never more than 30) extremely bright kids who had all tested out with IQs over 150. So she never condemned Brian to a premature drunken death but would patiently call out to Brian, who would hold out so everyone could see the show, and coax him back to attention.
And I learned math and science and thrived at history and creative writing. I graduated 7th in a class of 350 eight years later, with all my 4th grade classmates in the top 50 of our graduating class. In 10th grade in a creative writing/lit class ,a paper I had written was read aloud by the teacher as the best. For the first time I experienced the muse, the energy that overcame me and the story came out the end of my pen and was complete with the first draft.
Without the quality of teachers provided to the brightest of the bright none of us would have excelled as professionals and artists and published poets. We lost very few over the years and in 2022 we gathered for our 50th reunion perhaps for the last time. And we'd all succeeded. No premature deaths to suicide or drug abuse. Brian was a successful father, husband and entrepreneur. I a U of Chicago grad and successful trial lawyer and political operative and musician.
Today the notion of accelerated classes, small in student size reserved for the high IQ kids, is condemned by idiots as exclusionary because one doesn't want to hurt somebody's (the parents) feelings. The nihilism of DEI, wokeism and claims of systemic racism are ruinous to our society and the education of our children. Thank goodness for Ms. Woodward and a generation born of The Depression and WWII who knew the brightest must excel to assure the success of society, and the sensitivity of other, emotionally stunted individuals must be ignored.
This is a wonderful piece. I’m pretty old, so it helps me see that I wasted both the structured instruction of my youth and the years of relative freedom that followed. But still! A wonderful piece!
Shelley, Orwell and Auden might have looked on tradition more favourably had they not gone to public school but they might have become lesser writers. It's possible to make the case that it was the gulags that made Aleksander Solzhenitsyn a great writer.
I just speed read this story because I know it so well. I was in the advanced class established in 4th grade when I was 10 yers old. And our Ben was a Brian, a brilliant but disruptive(and always hilarious cut-up) kid who'd be in the back of the class facing away with his arms wrapped around his neck with the hands clasped around his neck appearing to be making out with some girl. But we, and he, were fortunate .Ms. Woodward, the most wonderful, patient woman in the world, was assigned to teach 30 (and over the next 3 years never more than 30) extremely bright kids who had all tested out with IQs over 150. So she never condemned Brian to a premature drunken death but would patiently call out to Brian, who would hold out so everyone could see the show, and coax him back to attention.
And I learned math and science and thrived at history and creative writing. I graduated 7th in a class of 350 eight years later, with all my 4th grade classmates in the top 50 of our graduating class. In 10th grade in a creative writing/lit class ,a paper I had written was read aloud by the teacher as the best. For the first time I experienced the muse, the energy that overcame me and the story came out the end of my pen and was complete with the first draft.
Without the quality of teachers provided to the brightest of the bright none of us would have excelled as professionals and artists and published poets. We lost very few over the years and in 2022 we gathered for our 50th reunion perhaps for the last time. And we'd all succeeded. No premature deaths to suicide or drug abuse. Brian was a successful father, husband and entrepreneur. I a U of Chicago grad and successful trial lawyer and political operative and musician.
Today the notion of accelerated classes, small in student size reserved for the high IQ kids, is condemned by idiots as exclusionary because one doesn't want to hurt somebody's (the parents) feelings. The nihilism of DEI, wokeism and claims of systemic racism are ruinous to our society and the education of our children. Thank goodness for Ms. Woodward and a generation born of The Depression and WWII who knew the brightest must excel to assure the success of society, and the sensitivity of other, emotionally stunted individuals must be ignored.
This is a wonderful piece. I’m pretty old, so it helps me see that I wasted both the structured instruction of my youth and the years of relative freedom that followed. But still! A wonderful piece!
Shelley, Orwell and Auden might have looked on tradition more favourably had they not gone to public school but they might have become lesser writers. It's possible to make the case that it was the gulags that made Aleksander Solzhenitsyn a great writer.
What have you read of Roger Shattuck?