Answer to Idleness

Harry E. Hanners, 40, is a onetime Manhattan adman who suffered a spinal disease for five years. A painkilling drug led to his addiction and a six-month sentence in Long Island's Nassau County Jail.

From the vantage point of his own cell, Hanners watched teen-age inmates wallowing in idleness, and soon got permission from enlightened Warden Edward O'Hara to start a school. Hanners cajoled books out of the Book-of-the-Month Club, 38 unmatched desks out of local schools. A born teacher, he encouraged his students to discuss everything from Plato to Shakespeare to current events.

Stirred out of their torpor, the boys leaped to Hanners' challenge. Said he: "Sometimes they write a paper for me without my asking."

In the close world of prison, Hanners found teen-age boys acutely status-conscious. Good marks in Hanners' class meant good standing in jail, and the competitive spirit of a regular high school seemed to be compounded. Complained one boy: "How come he got an E [for Excellent] when you had to speak to him last Tuesday?"

Several evenings a week Teacher Hanners held "guidance" sessions, and the boys freely brought him their problems, from abstruse moral ones to a shattered pair of glasses. Jaded prison officials, who had seen hardened criminals come and harder criminals go, marveled at the results. A 20-year-old named Robert, jailed for rape, sat sullenly through his first week in Hanners' class. Inexplicably, he perked up the second week, began drawing cartoons with facility and underwent a drastic change of personality. An incredulous parole officer told Hanners: "I don't see how you did it, but you've made a little gentleman out of him."

Last week, after serving his time, Teacher Hanners walked right back into jail--voluntarily. His mission: carrying on as a free man the job he had begun as a prisoner. Said he simply: "I guess people who've had problems of their own are more responsive to others'."

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