From a December 2007 NYT article.

“When you get up there that first time and you don’t do well, you’re basically hearing ‘No’,” he said., looking out the window of an office from which you can see all the way to Harlem. “How are you going to approach this ‘no’? Are you going to respect it and put the blame on yourself and improve who you are, or are you going to blame the audience like an idiot?”

“It’s never their fault,” he said. “No matter how late it is, no matter how much they did or didn’t drink, no matter what the sound system is like, no matter how hot the building is or how cold the building is, it ain’t the crowd’s fault. You want to get up there, you want to be a good boy, you want to headline, that’s what you have to go in there with.”

Guess who.

Even though it’s a different context, this excerpt reminds me of a common dynamic among some middle and high school teachers and their students. When some middle and high school teachers bravely try out innovative, student-centered methods like cooperative learning, socratic seminar discussions, simulations, or debates, and things don’t go perfectly the first time, they’re far too quick to conclude, “These students just aren’t mature enough to handle anything but traditional lectures, answering textbook questions, and completing worksheets.”

What would happen if instead of projecting their lessons’ shortcomings onto their students, and often, their students’ families and communities by extension, they took our mystery comedian’s “It’s never their fault” approach to heart?