Topic: The school drop out

[piersdad]

a 14 yr old boy came to my dad and asked if he could have a job.
He was not able to even read or write as he had been brought up in a poverty stricken environment.
Dad asked why he was not at school and the boy said the teachers were hopeless and always put him down as a dumb cluck.

Well dad was a surveyor/engineer and started the boy off as an assistant for his surveying work. Soon the young lad took great interest in everything  and with a bit of encouragement  started correspondence school as well as progressing up the job ladder at dad’s construction project.
Soon the boy had shot ahead and in just a few years had learned to read  write and was studying engineering  with great  enthusiasm.

forward 30 years

Night classes  were the flavor of the day and as a student I was  starting the years  series of evening classes.
Monday  6 pm at room 12  was the day I had to go to a mechanical engineering class.
Well, I settled down at the desk and a Mr. Watson introduced him self.
He then said
 “well we are all new here and I will not presume to insult your intelligences  but here is a couple of problems for you to solve and your responses will show me how each of you are at.”

Whew the diagram alone had me thinking in high gear but I did not have a clue how to solve it.
His explanation later showed me how and even today I remember how to solve  a  similar problem.
As the 2 hour session moved on I was even further flummoxed by the problems but each time this  lecturer was able to give a really good way of explaining the way to solve the problem.
Wow what a teacher  he was brilliant and it was only near the end of the 2 hours that I realize I was actually in the wrong class and was in a universary lecture on advanced mechanics.
How ever with my head reeling with the lessons of the 2 hours I found out where I should have been and got into a class more to my then education.

When I got home I told my mother about this brilliant teacher and how I wished  he was my teacher.
When I told  her the name of the teacher  mother  asked if he had a distinctive scar on his face and yes he had.

 Yes that was the Mr Watson
 
 
  All this because my dad had just told him he was not a dumb cluck and could succeed if he wanted to.
So in the end  I met the most brilliant teacher I had ever met and all because my dad had some 30 years  before had recognized he could educate himself

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