To give them an alternative to a life of beggary, the Irish taught blind people to play the harp. As much as this says about the large-heartedness of the Irish, it says even more about the art of teaching or of sharing one's knowledge with others so that both the givers and the receivers are enriched in the sharing. And this, of course, brings to the fore the debt that each of us owes to the teachers in our lives.

First, our upbringers, who taught us everything from personal hygiene to good manners. Then, professional teachers from whom we learned the basics -- the American language, history, mathematics, geography, the discipline of sports and so on. After high school, when we were no longer pupils but students (voluntary learners), there would be more history, more literature, social and physical sciences, the choice of major and minor areas of study -- and sports.

At my university there was a swimming instructor named Gil Burdick. He taught students basic and advanced swimming for three or more decades (swimming was required in those years). Upon reflection I have often asked myself how many lives did he save? And how many other lives did he save when those he taught taught others to swim?

Thinking of Gil Burdick's life as his mission, I was reminded of what a ski instructor once mentioned to me in passing while we were talking about the value of teaching per se: "Anyone who teaches anybody anything is doing God's work."

Perhaps it was because of the implication of that ski instructor's statement that I have always had a kind of reverence for schools and libraries, two institutions that exist to make the pursuit of truth and the sharing of knowledge possible. In schools -- elementary, secondary, undergraduate or graduate -- there is always the possibility that one will encounter a gifted teacher -- someone who is more than a qualified academician, who knows his subject and has the good of his students at heart and who has the ability of putting students in touch with their true selves and coaxing their minds into motion.

One of the most important truths I learned as an undergraduate from one such teacher was that a student has four brief but crucial years to decide what he doesn't want to do and then to choose what he or she loves to do and does well. Settling for second best or even less (something that promises "security" or "promotion" or some other myth) may result in survival, but it could involve failure and it never would allow for excellence in the truly personal sense.

Choosing what one loves eliminates the possibility of failure, assures survival and makes excellence possible if excellence is defined as enabling us to do better than our presumed best. Following such a choice permits us to excel in the only way that makes sense since it allows for growth, and a person so committed will in time not only demand excellence in his own life but eventually in his neighborhood, his city, his state and his country.

And then there are libraries where there are shelves upon shelves of teachers speaking from silent pages (as long as books are the medium of choice more than screens).

Tertullian: "Men fear torture more than death."

Minucius Felix: "Is it not foolish to weep for what one ought to worship and to worship what one ought to mourn for?"

Or Bernard of Clairvaux's advice to his students: "I would urge you to be more like reservoirs than waterpipes regarding your knowledge, for waterpipes pass off their water as fast as they receive it while reservoirs share their superabundant water without any loss to themselves."

Or T. S. Eliot: "The last temptation is the greatest treason -- to do the right thing for the wrong reason."

Or Socrates, whose only crime was asking why (reminding us of the millions of Socratic "criminals" who have been asking this same question of our government for the past seven and a half years).

I suppose that great teachers like Socrates always manage to disturb a society's comfort level by encouraging the pain of thought, but the alternative is mental atrophy just as entropy is the only alternative to physical exertion.

Small wonder that such teachers are often excoriated in their lives and then lavishly praised when they are safely dead. But they are the real champions of the human spirit regardless. And at times they are so recognized and honored as in the recent memorials for two local educators, Roger Babusci ("Mr. B" of Schenley High School) and the deservedly renowned headmaster of Kiski -- Jack Pidgeon.

At their memorials their former students reacted to each death as if it were the death of a family member or of someone deeply loved. No sham, no phony tears, only an undisguised sense of loss softened by profound and inexpressible gratitude.

Who can ever gauge the influence these men had on their students through their words and actions? And who can gauge the good that has already come and will come of that in their lives and in the lives of those they touch?

History is rife with examples. Abraham Lincoln openly acknowledged that he owed everything to his "angel mother" -- not his birth mother Nancy Hanks, who died when Lincoln was only eight years of age, but to the widow who became his stepmother, Sarah Johnston. It was Sarah Johnston who loved Lincoln more than she loved her own children and who raised him, taught him to read and write, gave him his first books.

What would Abraham Lincoln have been without Sarah Johnston? And what would the United States (emphasis on United) be without the Lincoln that Sarah Johnston made possible? All this because of the efforts of one woman who is rarely if ever remembered.

Many of the great teachers in human history, like Sarah Johnston, are not known by name. Their legacy is in those they taught and inspired.

They lived the basic truth that all we really have is what we voluntarily give away with no expectation of return. Think, for example, of the foresight of the unknown Irishman who taught one blind man to play the harp so that he could gain some measure of independence. Then think of the legacy of music created by one of Ireland's greatest composers -- Carolan, a blind harper.