Exactly why David Pologruto, a high-school physics teacher, was stabbed with a
kitchen knife by one of his star students is still debatable. But the facts as widely reported are these:
Jason H., a sophomore and straight-A student
at a Coral Springs, Florida, high school, was fixated on getting into medical
school. Not just any medical school – he dreamt of Harvard. But Pologruto, his physics teacher, had given Jason an 80 on a
quiz. Believing the grade – a mere B –
put his dream in jeopardy, Jason took a butcher knife to school and, in a
confrontation with Pologruto in the physics lab,
stabbed his teacher in the collarbone before being subdued in a struggle.
A judge found Jason innocent,
temporarily insane during the incident – a panel of four psychologists and
psychiatrists swore he was psychotic during the fight. Jason claimed he had been planning to commit
suicide because of the test score, and had gone to Pologruto to tell him he was
killing himself because of the bad grade. Pologruto told a different story: “I think he tried to completely
do me in with the knife” because he was infuriated over the bad grade.
After transferring to a private school, Jason
graduated two years later at the top of his class. A perfect grade in regular classes would have
given him a straight-A, 4.0 average, but Jason had taken enough advanced
courses to raise his grade-point average to 4.614 – way beyond A+. Even as Jason graduated with highest honors,
his old physics teacher, David Pologruto, complained that Jason had never apologized or even
taken responsibility for the attack.
The question is, how could someone of such obvious intelligence do
something so irrational – so downright dumb? The answer: Academic intelligence has little to do with emotional
life. The brightest among us can founder on the
shoals of unbridled passions and unruly impulses; people with high IQs can be
stunningly poor pilots of their private lives.
