Anecdotes and Fables

The Mouse and Henry Carson

Use this story to illustrate the importance of expectation.

ne evening deep in June, mid-summer to be exact, a mouse ran into the office of the Educational Testing Service, and accidentally triggered a delicate point in the apparatus just as the College Entrance Examination Board's data on Henry Carson was being scored.

Henry was an average secondary school pupil, uncertain of himself and of his talents. Without the mouse, Henry's scores would have been average or below, but the mouse changed all that, and the computer obligingly produced amazingly high scores in both verbal and quantitative areas.

Henry's extraordinary abilities were soon known throughout the school. His teachers looked at him in a new light, wondering how they could have underestimated his ability. Counsellors were puzzled at how they had missed his obvious talent, and college administrators vied with one another to win Henry for their colleges.

For Henry the world changed, and he grew as a person and as a student. For the first time he recognised his potentialities, and gained in confidence, beginning 'to put his mind in the way of great things'. So was born one of the best men of his generation.

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