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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ReachUpYourHand,DarkBoy,andTakeaStar Reach up your hand, dark boy, and take a star. Out of the little breath of oblivion That is night, Take just One star. —from “Stars” by Langston Hughes You Think I’m Stupid, Don’t You? D errick could barely read. Held back the previous year and self-consciously towering over the younger children, he was in danger of failing the fourth grade yet again, and that prospect terrified him. Derrick struggled to master the printed page. Approaching each reading assignment with a gritty determination, he tried valiantly to conquer the letters arrayed against him on the page, willing them to submit to his invading eye. But no matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t capture the sounds of the letters or the meaning of the words. As he haltingly struggled to sound out each word, his frustration would build and build, until he erupted into anger or broke down in tears. The first time I tried to help him, he looked at me with wary eyes and said to me, his voice at once accusing and resigned, “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Because his reading skills were so rudimentary, Derrick used a beginning reader written for first or second graders that Mrs. Stockton had found among a stack of abandoned books in the supply closet. Its cover was frayed, its pages worn from years of use. Clearly humiliated by it, he complained bitterly that it was a book for babies. His classmates , who generally liked him, nevertheless made fun of his poor reading skills. Many of them were only slightly stronger readers and Reach Up Your Hand, Dark Boy 63 seemed to feel compelled to mark the distance between Derrick and themselves: they did not read books written for babies. At a secondhand bookstore in Charlottesville, I managed to find a book for older students who needed remedial help in reading. It had stories in very simple prose about famous athletes, musicians, artists, and scientists and was illustrated with vivid, realistic pictures meant to appeal to pre-adolescents. Despite its elementary language, it was designed to look like a book for older students. I brought it into school for Derrick to use, assigning him a story about a baseball player because I knew he was fanatic about the sport. A short while later, he came rushing up to my desk, grinning from ear to ear and bursting with excitement. Holding the book up and waving it exuberantly in front of me, he exclaimed proudly and triumphantly, “This book isn’t just for stupid kids, is it?” “Stupid kids.” The words haunted my classroom. Derrick, Louis, Marcus, Donna, Cheryl, Earl, Lillian, Duane, Wendell, Charlie, Adele, Vernice: all firmly believed they were stupid. Many of the other children feared they were as well, an anxiety that undermined every academic task they tackled. Unlike Derrick, many had learned to concede defeat without a fight. For them, school functioned merely to confirm what they already “knew”: they were so stupid that trying to learn any academic subject was futile. When a math problem challenged them or a science concept baffled them, they gave up quickly, finding it more comfortable to assume they could never understand than to make any real effort to comprehend. They seemed to prefer the certainty that came from accepting failure to the stress of having to perform. Perhaps , by pre-judging themselves, they achieved a measure of control or protected themselves against disappointment. Perhaps they had already given up on school and were simply marking time until they could drop out. Fewer than half would graduate from high school. Whenever I gave a test, many of my students panicked. Some carefully copied out the question I had written on the board and then stopped. Some wrote what appeared to be nonsense sentences. Some picked out key words, wrote them clearly, then scribbled wiggly lines that vaguely resembled written words. A few were so sure they would fail that they didn’t even try, simply handing in a blank sheet of paper . Math tests revealed that many were hopelessly lost. Spelling tests produced indecipherable writing. Here, for example, are the twenty 64 Reach Up Your Hand, Dark Boy “words” that one child wrote on his spelling test: bamed, sanemu, sonnem, hamem, canam, balkm, monim, lavele, renlen, falsnu, falem, isarum, canim, gamon, salme, trye, plyll. Even when they were able to complete a task, many of them did so without understanding the basic...

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