Students will miss “Henry's wisdom”

"We Want Henry."

The plea speaks volumes about how a teacher can touch the lives of students.
Fifteen years after he retired as a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, young people who had heard of Henry Maier would seek him out for knowledge.

"Henry's Wisdom," they called it.

Maier would oblige, hosting informal classes about child development from the living room of his North Seattle home.
Maier, who died quietly in late April from congestive heart failure at 86, wore many hats in his rich life. He worked in a small shoe factory. He was a conscientious objector during World War II. He drew the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. He penned a well-regarded textbook on child development. Near the end, he wrote an online column on child-care issues.
His hat with the broadest brim was this: master teacher at the UW for more than two decades.

To sit in a Maier classroom was to witness a unique approach to pedagogy at the time. On the first day of class Maier wouldn't hand out the syllabus. Such time-squandering formality could come later. He'd plunge in, employing creative techniques, in class and one-on-one.
If a student dropped by his office, Maier would pull a balloon from his pocket and blow it up. He would swat the balloon at the student. By instinct, the student would swat it back. Back and forth this volley would go — along with an energetic exchange of ideas.
"A balloon has unusual power to engage a person, even a reluctant participant," Maier wrote in a paper called "Play in the University Classroom." "It's almost impossible to let a balloon drop in front of one. The natural inclination is to bat it away, and automatically then become part of the playful scheme."

Maier believed such tools — he was armed with a plastic frog, a rubber giraffe, string and beanbags — removed psychological barriers to student interaction. Once those barriers were down, tension in class was reduced and thinking was enhanced. "To play is to invent; and to invent is to learn," he once wrote.
In 1984, the UW bestowed Maier with its Distinguished Teacher Award, one of the highest honors on campus. He retired the following year.
What made Maier's approach — playfulness wedded to practicality — more remarkable was that it blossomed from a tough patch.
Maier was born in Germany in 1918 to middle-class parents. His father held a government job as an undersecretary of welfare. As the Nazis rose to power, his father, who was of Jewish heritage, criticized Hitler. The Nazis forced Maier's father from his job; he died a short time later.
At 20, Maier fled Germany, coming to America by himself, parentless and penniless. He landed in New York briefly, then went to Maine and sewed moccasins.

Through Quakers he met at a summer camp, Maier ended up getting a college scholarship. But the draft pulled him into the war — a war he refused to fight. Maier felt the Nazis were evil, but he also believed the war was not the solution. He won conscientious objector status and was sent to fight forest fires in California.
At the end of the war, Maier attended Oberlin College, then Case Western Reserve University, where he met his wife, Jeanne. From there, he headed to the University of Minnesota, where he received his doctorate in 1959 — the same year the UW hired him.

Early in his UW tenure, Maier made a ripple. He put his job in jeopardy by refusing to obey a rule that all university employees take an oath to uphold the laws of the United States. The oath was part of a drive to remove communists. Maier said he refused not for lack of loyalty but because "it was an untenable law. The oath asked for people to commit themselves not to challenge the laws of the country, where there are times when laws are unjust."
Maier's refusal became part of a test case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1964 the high court ruled that the loyalty oath was unconstitutional.
Maier was outspoken against the Vietnam War. In the '70s, he traveled as a visiting professor to Germany, where student radicals had been challenging the system. Student leaders there questioned Maier about what gave him the authority to teach them. Hear me out, Maier cajoled, and decide if I stink or not.

The students decided he did not stink; they loved him.

In 1985, Maier was arrested for protesting South Africa's apartheid. He had to fill out forms at the police station. His most embarrassing moment came, he said, when he had to put down that he had never been arrested before.
With the iron will he used to champion social justice, Maier challenged his students. Playful techniques aside, he was as tough on them as he was on himself. He routinely rose at 5 a.m. to revise lectures.
If students offered a poor thought in class, Maier's eyeglasses would slide down his nose, a gentle gesture that said they could do better. If an idea was terrific, he would engage other students in the class to help shepherd it along. He would talk, waving his hand in balletic sweeps. He would listen, hunching his frame and folding his hands, as if in prayer.
Maier believed it was better for young people to leave his class having thorough knowledge of a few key concepts rather than leaving only knowing a little about a lot. He wanted students to think, not memorize — to analyze how they could put classroom learning to practical use in the world.

Maier leaves behind his wife of 56 years; three sons, Mark, Peter and Scott; six grandchildren; and an inspiring legacy of mastering the teaching game. His philosophy, stitched by optimism, is one that more students need these days and more teachers could use.
A memorial service will be held Sunday. Generations of students, family and friends, and former colleagues will come from all parts of the globe to celebrate the beloved scholar.

Balloons will be present — lots of them, just as Henry would have liked it.

Memorial

A celebration of Henry Maier's life will be held 4 p.m. Sunday at University Friends Meeting, 4001 Ninth Ave. N.E.

The family asks that remembrances be made to:
Henry W. Maier Endowed Visiting Professorship in Clinical Skills,
UW School of Social Work
4101 15th Ave. N.E. or
Box 354900
Seattle, WA,
98105
(Attention Kim Isaac).

Robert L. Jamieson Jr.
20 May 2005

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/224413_robert16.html

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