Andy (Andy Griffith): They fired the gun, and the shot was so loud it was heard clear around the world.
Barney (Don Knotts): Oh, get out.
Andy: It's a fact. That's the way this country started. You read the book.
Barney: What book?
Opie (Ron Howard): Yeah, what book? Where'd you get that story, Pa?
Andy: Oh, your history book.
Coming from a family of teachers as I did (and having done some teaching myself), I always appreciated the episode of the Andy Griffith Show that first aired on this night in 1963, "Andy Discovers America."
I enjoyed it for the same reason I enjoy any segment of a TV program or a movie that demonstrates the great creativity that is required to be a successful teacher.
Most teachers don't measure success the way people in other professions do. For them success is measured by how many students absorb the knowledge they have to give, not by how much money they make.
For example, I always enjoy an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati in which disc jockey Venus Flytrap, whose background was always a little murky and who was said to have been a teacher at one time in his life, offered to talk to the son of the radio station's cleaning woman. This young man, who was making a lot of money with a street gang, was thinking of quitting school, and Venus had to convince him that education was worthwhile.
Venus concluded the young man felt that school had conquered him and that he craved the feeling he got from conquest outside the classroom. Venus' challenge was to make the young man believe he could master education. They made a deal — if Venus could convince him in two minutes that he could conquer school instead of believing it had conquered him, he wouldn't quit. Venus proceeded to explain the atom to the young man in terms he could understand, and he stayed in school.
Andy's challenge in "Andy Discovers America" wasn't exactly like Venus', but it required the same kind of outside–the–box creativity.
Opie (Ron Howard) and his buddies were rebelling against their new teacher, Old Lady Crump, and her history assignments, and Andy commiserated with them, but there was a misunderstanding. Opie and the boys thought he was giving them permission to not study history, and that led to a classroom confrontation in which Miss Crump (the first of many appearances on the show by Aneta Corsaut) doubled the boys' homework.
In retaliation they pledged not to do it.
She and Andy met for the first time when Miss Crump came to the sheriff's office to complain that his comments, however misunderstood, had set her back. When she took the job, she had found her new students to be woefully behind where they should be, and she had attempted to bring them up to speed by applying a little extra pressure. Her efforts had been showing some positive movement when this had come up.
Not long after, the boys told Andy that it appeared Miss Crump would be leaving, perhaps before the next week began.
Andy realized what he had done, and it was clear he was looking for a solution to the problem. Then it came to him. He told the boys he was glad they wouldn't have to learn "all that dull stuff about Indians and redcoats and cannons and guns and muskets and stuff."
That didn't sound like history to the boys. It sounded like adventure stories.
And Andy got the hook in them when he mentioned the gun that fired a shot heard around the world.
He got the boys back on track, to Miss Crump's great surprise when she convened what she believed would be her last class day. After the class had said the Pledge of Allegiance, she asked the boys if they ever heard those words or knew how the country began — and she was pleasantly shocked when the boys knew what to say.
And she made a return trip to the sheriff's office to express her gratitude — and to find out what he had told the boys.
Andy confessed that he didn't know what to tell them, and he didn't think what he said would hold up under scrutiny in court. He said he just told them a story and put "a little extra jam on the bread."
That, it seems to me, is the essence of great teaching — putting a little extra jam on the bread.
Those who are great teachers, like those who are great at anything, can make it look effortless. But appearances can be deceptive.
It reminds me of a story about Johnny Carson, who believed so strongly that the audience deserved fresh material each and every day that he arranged for guest hosts to take over his late–night program when he went on vacation rather than run previous programs. Few, if any, late–night hosts have had the courage to do that.
On one such occasion, Carson arranged for a new guest host to fill in for him when he was out for a day or two. During his absence, he watched the program. The new guest host had not prepared adequately, thinking it would be a breeze, and he bombed.
Afterward, Carson called the guest host and gently observed, "It ain't as easy as it looks, is it, kid?"
Teaching definitely isn't as easy as it looks, but I always thought Andy would have been a great teacher. Jam can make even stale bread taste good.
