Big Think

Topic: On Teaching.

Jim Lehrer: Well I am one of those people who can honestly say; I’ll bet everybody can say this; I was influenced in my early years by individual teachers who said things to me, who did things for me, who explained things to me, who taught me things that, at the time, I had to be receptive for whatever reason.

I happened to like what I heard from a teacher. In grade school in Wichita, Kansas, I wrote a little description of a character. And the woman – her name was Ms. Litton – had me read it out loud. I was in the fifth grade. And she laughed and everybody laughed. And I thought it was just marvelous to think that I could make people laugh with something I’d written. And it had an impression.

Later on when I was a sophomore in high school, the biggest thing that ever happened to me happened then.

Recorded: July 4, 2007.