Thought for the week: William Marcy and his teacher

Those who make snide references to the fact that teachers enjoy long school holidays tend to overlook the long hours which teachers work after the final bell has rung. Long evening hours are spent in lesson preparation, in marking pupils’ homework , and in framing helpful reports on each pupil’s progress.

Besides, the demands which parents make of teachers have changed much in recent decades. Had I complained to my parents about something a teacher had said or done to me, they would have concluded that the fault was mine. Nowadays, parents seem to regard their children as unfailingly angelic, and take the teacher to task for any discipline that has been administered.

The role teachers play is crucial in any society and can have an immense impact in an individual’s life.

One notable example is that to William Marcy, after whom the highest peak in New York State is named. In his youth, William Marcy was regarded by his neighbours as the worst boy in town. One winter, he and his gang drove the school-teacher out of their town of Southbridge, Massachusetts.

The school board brought in another teacher, Salem Towne, and the neighbourhood waited to see how the new teacher would fare. Fast forward some decades. William Marcy has died, and over 100,000 are estimated to have joined the funeral procession of a man who was a U.S. Senator, three times Governor of the State of New York, and a Secretary of State of the Union under President Polk.

His services to his country were recognised when the highest mountain in New York State was named in his honour. How did the schoolboy rascal become a pillar of society? Present at a reception which the Governor of Massachusetts was giving for the Honourable William Marcy is the retired teacher Salem Towne.

As the two men greeted one another affectionately, the Governor enquired how they knew each other.

‘This’, said Marcy ‘ is the man who made me. When I was a boy, everybody was against me; none, not even my own father and mother, saw any good in me. He was the first who believed in me…. Whatever of merit or distinction I have attained to I owe to him more than to any other living person’.

In Robert Bolt’s play, ‘A Man for all Seasons’, based around the life of Sir Thomas More, there is an interesting exchange between More and the young Richard Rich, who is angling for a position at court.

More, sensing that Rich was a man likely to be corrupted by the pressures of public life, advises him to be a teacher.

‘You’d make a good teacher, Richard, perhaps even a great one’, says More. ‘But if I do’, Rich replies, ‘who would know?’

More closes the conversation by saying, ‘You would know, your pupils, God. That’s not a bad audience’. Let’s all be thankful for dedicated teachers.