John MacPherson, a disenchanted history teacher, is sent to take over a colleague’s unruly high school class. Mr. MacPherson’s personal life is weighed with sadness and worry as he tries to attend to his seriously ill wife. He is a heavy drinker but not a problem drinker. In temperament, he is introverted and attempts to be fair minded. He hopes to make a difference in his students’ lives and imagines reconnecting with them decades later to share nostalgia-tinged memories. He differs from his colleagues in that he does not believe in corporal punishment and refuses to strike a student, no matter the offense.

At present, he isn’t making the inspirational and pedagogical inroads that he dreams of. His patience is tried by the teenage boys, some of whom have repeated the course numerous times without passing or having any real desire to learn and pass. The bane of his professional existence is a single student, Duddy Kravitz, who teases and torments him relentlessly without rhyme or reason. On MacPherson’s first day, Duddy pelts him with snowballs, then draws an insulting rendering of MacPherson on the chalkboard. When accused of these transgressions, Duddy tries to bail MacPherson into hitting him, but MacPherson sticks to his principles.