[Sidenote: Undeserved Standings]
(4) _Cheating by teacher to please principal._ There are times when an
almost irresistible pressure is brought to bear upon teachers to yield
to custom or concede to circumstance. James C— was a junior in the State
University of Iowa when it became necessary for him to teach to earn
money for his senior year. He secured a position in a small town as
science teacher in a high school which had a staff of three—the
principal, a good-natured time-server with an eye to reappointment at an
advanced salary, and a very pretty and popular young English teacher,
whose easy standards and sweet helpfulness endeared her to all her
students.
Now football ruled the day at North Burley High School. The team had
beaten every town within a radius of fifty miles the year before, and
now they proposed to play the teams from some of the larger towns of the
state. The coach, an old college player, was exceptionally good, and his
team worked like a machine. The star player was Leslie Linwood, a boy
who passed his days in sleepy toleration of lessons, only to wake up on
the gridiron to a mechanical perfection of response and a cool
initiative of successful leadership that insured the winning of games.
He was the idol of the school, although he could do nothing but play his
wonderful games. Every one bowed down to him as the chief element in a
proudly-maintained championship.
There was, however, one old-fashioned board member who thought football
an unimportant side-line in a high school, and it was through his
influence that a rule existed to the effect that no student who had not
passed in three studies for a month previous to the playing of a game
should participate in a game. The rule had not troubled the football
team—all its members always had 70 or above each month.
But Leslie Linwood took two sciences that year under Mr. C—. He failed
outright in physics, which seemed to be worlds beyond his mentality; and
he delayed the preparation of the notebook in biology until Mr. C— was
compelled to fail him in that study also. He was therefore ineligible to
play upon the team, and three big games were coming. Leslie, at the
suggestion of the coach, went to Mr. C— and asked for more time for his
notebook.
“You had all month in which to write it up,” replied Mr. C—. “Two girls
failed to get theirs in, and I failed them. You were not ill; you were
just lazy and indifferent. I don’t see why I should give you a chance
that the others don’t have.”
“Will you let me have another examination in physics then?” asked
Leslie.
“I don’t see why I should. But you can ask Mr. Rounds, and if he says to
do it, I will.”
Leslie did ask Mr. Rounds, and Mr. Rounds consented. So Mr. C— gave
Leslie another examination in physics, in which Leslie made the grade of
35; and things were worse than they were before.
“But see here, C—,” said the astute Mr. Rounds, “you know you must
manage to pass Leslie in one or the other before next Saturday. The
whole school expects it; we need him for the Patterson game.”
“But I don’t know how to pass a boy who simply doesn’t know an induction
coil from an apple pie,” replied the innocent Mr. C—. “I can’t tell a
lie, can I?”
“No, you don’t need to do that, of course. But you must get him through
some way. Give him some coaching, can’t you? Of course every one knows
he’s stupid; but he can play football, and the school simply wouldn’t
stand for his being off the team—to say nothing of the townspeople.”
To Mr. Rounds’ representations the pretty English teacher added some
pretty advice, and a score of students haunted his footsteps to know how
Linwood was coming on in biology; “Well, then, in physics?” Mr. C— grew
a bit thin, as men do who fight a hard fight; for Mr. C— was fighting
for his honor.
Mr. C—’s honor lost. To make a long story short, he gave Leslie Linwood
another examination on Friday afternoon; and when he had reached his
room, he deliberately burned the paper in the Franklin stove without
looking at it. He had no delusions as to what he did; he grimly called
himself a name that he knew he deserved as the bright flames flashed
into his face.
Mr. C— went to the game the next day, and received the smiles of a
pleased community with outward calmness. His inward writhings smoothed
themselves out after a few days; he found a certain pleasure in being
popular, and the contempt of the few people who knew just what he had
done did not show itself openly. He finished the year without
unpleasantness of any kind, and was “regretted by a large circle of
friends” when he declined reappointment in June. He looked like the same
man who had gone out to teach the fall before, but he had lost an
inestimable treasure; the greatest tragedy that can happen to man had
happened to him—he had deliberately sold himself to the public. A chance
to work a great reform, to replace a low ideal with a high one, to teach
the plastic minds of a whole school the difference between the
worth-while and the not-worth while, had been lost. All that had taken
place because he had not courage to take a stand upon a plain question
of truth and falsehood. He had yielded to mob control.