Little Johnny was really struggling to learn arithmetic, which had his parents concerned about his education and they had tried everything to help him.
They got him a maths tutor. They bought flash cards. They even enrolled him in a special learning center.
They had pretty much tried everything that they could think of, but still little Johnny wasn’t getting the hang of arithmetic or maths in general.
Finally, in a last ditch effort, they enrolled their son in the local Catholic school, which had an excellent reputation.
After the first day at his new school, little Johnny came home with a very serious look on his face.
He didn’t even say “Hello” and kiss his mother when he got home from school, but went straight up to his room and started studying.
Later that evening when his mother went up to his room to see how he was doing, there were books and papers spread out all over the room and little Johnny was hard at work.
His mother was amazed.
She called him down to dinner and to her utter amazement, as soon as he was done eating, he marched back up to his room without a word and in no time he was back to studying as hard as before.
This went on for more than a week, with Johnny coming home from school day after day and going straight up to his room to study, while his mother tried to understand what was making all the difference.
Finally, little Johnny brought home his report card from school.
He quietly laid it on the kitchen table and went up to his room to do some more studying.
With great trepidation, his mother looked at his report card and to her surprise, little Johnny had got an “A” in maths.
She could no longer hold her curiosity, so se went to his room and said, “Son, what is it? Is it the nuns?”
Little Johnny looked at her, shook his head and “No”.
His mother replied, “well, is it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms, what is it?”
Little Johnny looked at her and said, “Well, to tell the truth, on the first day of school, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren’t fooling around and I thought I had better start studying!”
Image used under a Collective Commons License from https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/15786920788
