Education: Traveler’s Tale

School principals have gotten into trouble for their personal habits, their political views,or for such imprudent lapses as that of Charles O’Hearn of Norwood Park, Ill., who, his superiors charged, “couldn’t keep his hands off” his women teachers (TIME, Aug. 31). Until last week, however, no principal had lost his job simply for telling a bad joke.

Smooth-shaven, sleek Harry Jager has been head of the Providence, R. I. evening schools for 16 years, principal of big Hope High School since 1926. Last year Principal Jager was commended by the New England College Entrance Certificate Board, which rated Hope among the nine best public schools in New England. Providence parents like Mr. Jager because he is a glib, willing after-dinner speaker. When he returned month ago from an English vacation, Hope’s Parent-Teacher Association easily persuaded him to give a speech about his trip.

Principal Jager wandered on happily about England and Wales, told an anecdote about an experience in Cornwall. There, he said, he had visited an inn whose proprietor told him that it had been used as a “nunnery” in the 14th Century. When he was excavating for a new cellar, the proprietor added, he had come upon a tunnel leading to a nearby monastery. This tale Principal Jager, a good Methodist, enthusiastically and tactlessly retold together with the innkeeper’s comment: “There was dirty work going on even then.”

The Parent-Teacher Association listened politely, but Principal Jager soon realized his mistake when Providence’s Roman Catholic Visitor headlined: WIDESPREAD INDIGNATION CAUSED BY VILE REMARK OF PRINCIPAL. For three weeks thereafter Principal Jager made the front page of the vindictive Visitor. Finally the Visitor ran a “Who’s Who” of Providence’s School Committee, captioned: IT’S UP TO THEM.

Last week the School Committee, four of whose seven members are Catholics, held an open hearing to consider the case of Harry Jager. No complaint other than the storytelling was brought forward. Some of the 75 citizens who attended applauded a resolution by Catholic Physician John Philip Cooney that Harry Jager be stripped of both his executive jobs, demoted to a teaching position. To this compromise the School Committee solemnly and unanimously assented.