I WAS A MUTANT STUDENT (The Lessons I Have Learned)
[Download PDF]
[Listen <explicit>]

by Edward K. Brown II

My parents were bedazzled by my youthful maturity. They decided to insure my precocious instincts with a staunch education. They were concerned that I might one day put on Airs, so even before I went to school, my mother would not allow me to play with a basketball, or any ball for that matter. My parents were into corporeal education, yet they filled my mind with nothing but ideas. Every day I was assigned twenty vocabulary words. I was made to look up each word in the dictionary, write down the definition, then rewrite the word and the definition five times--each with a different sentence.

When I got into the first grade, my teacher sent my parents a letter stating that I should be placed in remedial classes. Infuriated, my parents questioned the teacher's credentials. In a meeting, the teacher stood firm with her declaration, "Your son, in comparison to the other students, is not able to keep pace. Yes, he speaks very well and has an accomplished vocabulary, but when I am conducting the lesson the students are able to absorb the material almost immediately. Your son is not like the others; he has to have things repeated to him--sometimes as much as five times!