Comments on: Justice Is a Group Affair

By: Mary Lynn Hutchison

Mary Lynn Hutchison — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:16:40 +0000

Thank you, Ardis, for finding this story. Eva Willes Wangsgaard is my grandmother. I have been combing through archives of both church and commercial magazines for years to collect her stories and poems. This is one I missed.

I’m quite sure that this story is at least semi-autobiographical. Eva was a precocious and gifted student who did receive “special promotion” and suffered for it. When she graduated Normal School, she married one of her professors. Their pet names for each other were Judy and Daddy, taken from Jean Webster’s Daddy Long Legs. (My mother always called her father by his first name and my older sister was named Judith, after Eva.) Most of the time in her stories, a character named Judith was a stand-in for her own personal experience.

Eva taught school for several years, until the Great Depression gave Ogden City Schools the excuse to lay off all married women teachers. It was then that she began her writing career.

By: Kent Larsen

Kent Larsen — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:03:51 +0000

I never thought I’d see a Church magazine promoting any affairs, let alone group affairs [GRIN]

By: Maurine

Maurine — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:49:21 +0000

When I was in high school, my aunt was the English teacher over advanced English, or whatever it was called. I had a really bad teacher, who took a dislike to me because he thought that my aunt had corrected all my assignments. One day he diagramed a complicated sentence wrong on the blackboard. I couldn’t stand to see him teaching something wrong, so I went to the board and changed it. He just gave me an evil look and changed it back the way he had it first. Nobody said a word to me until after class when the “smart” kids said they agreed with me, as did my aunt when I showed her afterwards. I wasn’t at all unhappy when he left after the term. I can’t believe I did that now, because I was really quite shy.

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 21:34:28 +0000

A beautifully-written and observed story, Ardis. I have to say that my experience was that both teachers and pupils could be unpleasant, for a variety of reasons, none of them ever justifiable – especially not as regards the teachers. It always baffled me, particularly in the first few years of my education, why grown-ups in such a position of responsibility could be so harsh and intolerant. It amazed me that anyone could learn under that kind of regime.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 21:33:42 +0000

Wow, Mina. That sounds like a severe case of someone choosing the wrong career. Wangsgaard is an easy name to locate. The author, Eva Wanda Willes Wangsgaard (1893-1967) published a few books of poems in the 1940s and 50s. One of them included a forward written by David O. McKay. Wangsgaard is noted as a noteworthy contributor in an article about the Relief Society Magazine.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:53:24 +0000

I think Mr. Peterson never had any interest in the subject. Ouch!

Getting inside Judith’s head as a younger student is what interested me most. In my experience, it isn’t the teachers who give grief to such kids; it’s the older kids who aren’t more or less passively unwelcoming, as in this story, but who actively torment the skipper-aheader. Not being challenged in your school work is one thing; being forever a social outcast for something that is not your fault is hell.

By: Mina

Mina — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:18:06 +0000

As a teacher, I found this story fascinating in many ways.

But as a student, this detail stood out:

“Mr. Peterson looked out into the room, then dropped his eyes and went on making little fishes with his pencil on a blotter on his desk.”

Mr. Peterson apparently shares a similar habit with the weirdo who taught me Utah History in the 8th Grade. He would never interact with the class, just give reading assignments and then sit in front and write at his desk the whole hour. One day, he was called away and some of us snuck up to look at what so occupied him: there on his desk was a tablet of paper covered in hundreds of tiny frowny faces.

No wonder it took nearly 40 more years for me to recover an interest in the subject.