My good friend, DT, is retiring from the teaching profession, having successfully eluded prosecution, and firing, at the very minimum, for keeping dodgeball in the fifth grade phys. ed. curriculum. Dodgeball has been outlawed by the state school board. Rather than submit to the authoritarian state, he circumvented the rule by changing the name of the game. The surprise retirement party for DT was last night. He was totally blown away. The guy who planned the roast did a great job.
Afterwards, Stacey and I stayed the night at DT's and Lee's 100-acre farmstead.
DT and I did find out that a guy who played on our college baseball team died recently. He suffered from Pick's Disease. The dementia-causing brain disease attacked him at about age 30, early by most estimates. He behaved inappropriately as a teacher in the classroom. It is my understanding that the disease first became manifest in his case by extreme outbursts of temper and aggression and hypersexual behavior, from which sprang a preoccupation with sexual expressions and jokes and compulsive masturbation, which are not good traits for an elementary school teacher. He was run out of town for his strange behavior, but was eventually diagnosed and was able to retire from teaching due to his disability. His father stood by him before he was diagnosed. His father knew something was wrong with an intelligent and talented son and finally found out why and that the disease was not curable. His father has stood by him or the past 15 years, dealing with and witnessing continuing changes in personality and impairment of reasoning and memory. When I saw him about 10 years ago, he didn't remember me or much of anything else, for that matter.
It could be another good reason for federal funding of expanded stem cell research.
Posted by Bill at May 21, 2005 05:08 PMStrangely enough, this weekend, we heard of a teacher in France who was dismissed for similar behavior. We usually think that 'those kind of people' should be put into prison, but there is a lot going on we don't understand.
Posted by: Anji at May 23, 2005 08:41 AM