We have all experienced a teacher who in some way stands out from all the others we have had, a teacher who has made an important difference in each of our lives. While most of us can agree on some of the character traits — dedication, love for students, patience, passion for his/her subject — that such teachers have in common, we cannot agree on that special something that sets them apart, that distinguishes them from the crowd. For me, it was my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Engstrom, a teacher who motivated with her example. She never asked me to do anything that she was not willing to do herself. How many teachers show their love of ornithology by taking a student out for a bird walk at 5:30 in the morning, on a school day no less? For Thomas L. Friedman, it was his high school journalism teacher, Hattie M. Steinberg. In “My Favorite Teacher,” he relates how her insistence upon the importance of “fundamentals” (96) made a lifelong impression on him, so much so that he never had to take another journalism course. For Carl T. Rowan, it was his high school English, history, and civics teacher, Miss Bessie Taylor Gwynn, whose influence he captures in “Unforgettable Miss Bessie.” Miss Bessie taught Rowan to hold himself to high standards, to refuse “to lower [his] standards to those of the crowd” (370). And for Russell Baker, it was Mr. Fleagle, his high school English teacher. He recalls how prim and proper and predictable Mr. Fleagle was in the classroom. But that all changed after Mr. Fleagle read one of Baker’s essays aloud. In doing that, his teacher had opened Baker’s eyes to “a calling” and had given him “the happiest moment of [his] entire school career” (328). Interestingly, isn’t it mutual respect and appreciation that is at the heart of any memorable student- teacher bond?
—Marah Britto
Shame has long been used as an alternative punishment to more traditional sentences of corporeal punishment, jail time, or community service. American colonists used the stocks to publicly humiliate citizens for their transgressions. In The Scarlet Letter, for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne recounts the story of how the community of Boston punished Hester Prynne for her adulterous affair by having her wear a scarlet letter “A” on her breast as a badge of shame. Such punishments were controversial then and continue to spark heated debate in the world of criminal justice today. Like June Tangney, psychology professor at George Mason University, many believe that shaming punishments — designed to humiliate offenders — are unusually cruel and should be abandoned. In her article “Condemn the Crime, Not the Person,” she argues that “shame serves to escalate the very destructive patterns of behavior we aim to curb” (553). Interestingly, Hester Prynne’s post-punishment life of community service and charitable work does not seem to bear out Tangney’s claim. In contrast, Yale Law School professor Dan M. Kahan believes that Tangney’s “anxieties about shame . . . seem overstated,” and he persuasively supports this position in his essay “Shame Is Worth a Try” by citing a study showing that the threat of public humiliation generates more compliance than does the threat of jail time (558).
—Bonnie Sherman