Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 1986, directed by John Hughes
I remember the meeting well.
A teacher discovered a student who had plagiarized a paper and gave him a failing grade. The father of the student demanded a meeting with me, the teacher and his son. He opened the meeting with line I will never forget: “My son never lies.”
The teacher, a woman with a sterling reputation for excellent teaching, exemplary character and an abiding concern for the welfare of her pupils, was stunned by the implicit assertion that she either had lied in making the accusation or made a terrible mistake in evaluating the student’s work.
Having worked with students for many decades, I, like most teachers, always assume the best of students. But when confronted with incontrovertible evidence of cheating, I accept the reality that students, even good ones, occasionally may do dishonest things.
WHEN I was in junior high school, I met Dolly, a sweet and personable girl. She went to a different school and one day I invited her to visit my school. Those were innocent years, and nothing seemed nefarious about my asking a girl that I knew to tour my school.
The tour was excellent except for one problem. A school janitor saw me in the building after hours with her and reported me to the principal. The next day I was summoned to the principal’s office where he lectured me about the appeara...
DECEMBER 25 is a very special day for me. It is my birthday, and from my early childhood I have fond memories of my sister Martha taking me to the Paramount Theater or Radio City Music Hall in New York City, where we would watch a new film that had just opened along with a stage show that included such luminaries as Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Johnny Ray.
It was there that I became enamored of the movies. I still remember the awe I had watching the curtains part at Radio City Music Hall...