After
reading a short story, Molly’s Pilgrim,
in which a young girl in a new school is made uncomfortably aware of the
physical, cultural, and linguistic differences between her and her classmates,
I gave the children three reading comprehension questions. The first, “Why did
Molly want to leave her new school?” elicited this from Alli: “Because she was discluded.”
“Discluded?”
I asked, wanting to make sure I had deciphered her handwriting correctly.
Yes.
Alli confirmed it.
“I
didn’t know discluded was a word,” I told her.
It
is, Alli insisted with an imperiousness that unmistakably said that she was now
the teacher and I the student.
I
wonder if that’s how Boswell and Johnson got started.
