One morning Oscar was unusually stupid in Caesar. Mr. Watkins kept him on his feet asking him question after question and growing more and more angry with every wrong answer. He even asked him to translate the beginning chapter about “All Gaul,” so well known to every student of Latin. Oscar ludicrously stumbled over the easiest parts. Mr. Watkins was the angrier because he had thought to cause Oscar to be ridiculed by his classmates, who only seemed to suffer with the tortured boy. Finally, in disgust, Mr. Watkins banged the textbook down on the table and said, in angry tones, “Oscar Colegrove, you shall not play another game of basketball until you can make a decent recitation in Latin.” “You don’t mean that I can’t play tonight. (That night a game was to be played at Vernon with a famous out-of-town team.) “O, I know you want to show off tonight! You’re afraid somebody else will get the honors due to you, if you drop out. You’re too selfish to want to give up being a hero. This is your last game until this Latin is learned.” That night Oscar played on the team and the next day he was absent from school. When Mr. Watkins went to the recitation room to meet his class in Caesar, he found not a student there. On his desk was an envelope addressed to him; opening it mechanically, he found this note within, signed by all but three of the class. “The Caesar class will be adjourned until the most unselfish of its members, Oscar Colegrove, is allowed to play basketball as well as to go on with his studies.” Mr. Watkins called a meeting of the school board that night and admitted that he had not handled the case of the delinquent pupil wisely. “I contemplated dropping him from the team and I wanted to show the class that I was justified by letting them see how little he knew,” Mr. Watkins said in self-defense. In the private conference the next day, Oscar promised to study his Latin more faithfully and the entire class reassembled. Oscar’s lessons were better learned thereafter and Mr. Watkins seemed to have gained his point, but he knew too well that he would not be able that year to fulfill his earlier prophecies of being an ideal leader of his students. CONSTRUCTIVE TREATMENT Mr. Watkins should have delayed passing sentence until he had calmly decided upon the best method of communicating his decision to Oscar. He should have said to Oscar privately: “I know all of the pupils want you to stay on the team and I do myself. I know also that you and I are agreed that you must keep up your studies. For a week I will assign you certain topics for review and hear you recite them here in the office or at my home, whichever suits you better. With this extra effort and a reasonable amount of time put on your daily lessons, you will be able to please everyone including yourself, by both carrying your work and playing for the school.” COMMENTS