Educational Humor -- From My Dad

My Dad taught English and Mathematics in High Schools for a thousand years, and he was a high school principal for at least half of those years. There are many stories that he shared with me over the years. I always enjoyed the one submitted below. By the way, my wife and I are heading to Florida for a one-week vacation, so there will be no more posts to this site for a while. Tune in again at the end of the month.

THE SYSTEM

My Father was an English teacher who prided himself on being able to reach even the most poorly prepared students. One student, Charlie Cook, was really struggling with such things as subject-verb agreement, tense, irregular verbs, and pronouns. Dad had a series of professionally prepared practice exams that listed mostly two choices and occasionally three. Two examples are: The gentlemen (was/were) very happy; and Please (lay/lie) the book on the table.

It seems that Charlie was consistently making scores in the twenties and thirties. Nothing that my Father could try seemed to help. Recognizing that Charlie came from a lower socioeconomic group, it was possible that he rarely encountered correct English usage. Nevertheless, Dad con-tinued to work with him.

One day, miraculously, Charlie started scoring in the seventies and eighties on all tests of cor-rect usage. Excited at this progress, my Father called him in for office counseling.

"Charlie," my Father said, "I'm very pleased with your progress. Lately you've done very well. What turned you around?"

"Shucks, Prof," he said with a grin, "Ain't no small wonder. You know what I done? I fig-gered I was missin' most every one of 'em anyhows. So I just decided on ever which one of them answers was right, and then I'd pick the other 'un."