Everyday Greatness

A young sociology professor sent his students out to a Baltimore slum to

interview two hundred boys and asked them to predict their chances for the

future. The students were shocked by the poverty they found there. Violence

and crime seemed to be round every corner. Sadly the students’ statistical

analysis predicted that about 90 percent of the boys they had interviewed

would someday do time in prison.

Twenty-five years later, the same professor assigned another class to find

out how these predictions had turned out.  His hard-working students managed

to track down 190 of the original boys. If the earlier students were

correct, then  perhaps as many as 170 of these men would have spent some

time in prison.  In fact – the figure was only 4.  4 out of 190.

Why had the predictions been so wrong?

The students went back again.

More than 100 of the men remembered one high-school teacher, a Miss

O’Rourke, as having been an inspiration in their lives.

After a long search, Sheila O’Rourke, more than seventy years old, was

found. But when she was asked to explain her influence over her former

students, she was puzzled.

“All I can say,” she said, “is that I love every one of them.”

Original Source:

Everyday Greatness, published

by the Reader's Digest: