Issue link: http://latinschool.uberflip.com/i/97177
Jim Kaplan Class of 1972 We are talking about one of the greatest teachers I ever had ��� or probably anyone ever had. So I thought I would talk about some important things he taught me. ���I learned things from him when I was 15 that I still try to live by today.��� ��� Jim Kaplan, Class of 1972 1)Treat all people with dignity and respect. Listen (or read) carefully to what others say (or write). Their ideas are valuable. They are all ��� or almost all ��� worthy of consideration. Understand a thought or an idea before you reject (or accept) it. Listening (and reading) carefully is something he always did. The first time I met him I was 13 years old and interviewing (with my parents) to go to Latin, and he was our interviewer. He knew that 13-year-olds, by and large, don���t like to reveal much of themselves. But he said he noticed I flushed a little when he asked what I was interested in and I muttered, ���history(?),��� so he knew I was interested in that. He not only listened, he also watched ��� an important lesson. 2) Try to have really good conversations. His conversations with people ��� both inside and outside of class, both public and private ��� were models. He spoke (and wrote, because his written comments were just his side of a two-way conversation in writing) carefully, without tension or anger, from his heart and from his mind, and he listened to every word back. Both you and he got so much out of those conversations because he gave so much to it, and his example encouraged you to do the same. 3) Have faith in the ability of people to create beautiful and admirable things, and respect those creations more than almost anything. I think one thing that he loved about 46 L AT I N M AGAZINE the Iliad, about Bread and Wine, about Brideshead Revisited or Bleak House or Virginia Woolf ���s writing or Faulkner, was that they had all been created from scratch out of the artist���s imagination. They were powerful, irrefutable evidence of the capacity of people to create not just great things, in the sense of works of art that would endure forever, but even more important, good and virtuous things that taught lessons about living life and having faith and overcoming adversity (and, yes, overcoming evil, a word he rarely if ever used to me) through strength of character. That is what a lot of the literature he venerated taught him, and that is what those works teach us. 4) In life, pursue what you love, and work very hard at it. He loved education and learning and faith in God, and that is what he pursued with true passion. He spent almost all his waking hours with purpose, and those things were his purpose. 5) Say what you have to say, and then conclude. Someone else will speak next, and you should listen to them as intensely as you spoke. If you do, you will learn something. He was a magnificent teacher. I learned things from him when I was 15 that I still try to live by today. It was a blessing to have known him, worked with him and been shaped by him. He was unique, he was one of a kind, but his life was a testament to all of us of the quiet power of learning and faith and service to others. These are, shall we say, ���traditional��� or perhaps ���old��� ideas. But once absorbed from him, these things still exert a hold over us. Just as in Brideshead, one of his favorite books, Dr. Dolezal���s work and example could catch us for life and ever-so-gently tug us back, time and again, to those values he exemplified, ���with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.���