Philip Garber Jr., a precocious sixteen-year-old from New Jersey who was taking history courses at the County College of Morris, recently held his hand up for most of his seventy-five-minute history class. He wanted to ask why China’s fifteenth-century explorers had not reached North America, since they had traveled as far as Africa. His teacher never called on him. Although Philip’s classmates reported that his queries did not habitually take up more time than other students’, and that his contributions were marked by insightfulness and wit, his teacher had already asked him not to speak in class because she considered his severe stutter “disruptive.” Philip reported the incident to a college dean, who arranged to have him transferred to another class, taught by a more tolerant instructor, in which Philip has been asking and answering questions freely.
