Her laughter and we all stared at her.——青夏教育精英家教网—

      My favorite teacher's name was "Dead-Eye" Bean. Her real name was Dorothy. She taught
American history to eighth graders in the junior high section of Creston, the high school that served
the north end of Grand Rapids, Mich. It was the fall of 1944. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president;
American troops were battling their way across France; Joe DiMaggio was still in the service; the
Montgomery bus boycott was more than a decade away, and I was a 12-year-old black newcomer
in a school that was otherwise all white.
     My mother, who had been a widow in New York, had married my stepfather, a Grand Rapids
physician, the year before, and he had bought the best house he could afford for his new family.
The problem for our new neighbors was that their neighborhood had previously been pristine(in their
terms) and they were ignorant about black people. The prevailing wisdom in the neighborhood was
that we were spoiling it and that we ought to go back where we belonged (or, alternatively, ought
not to intrude where we were not wanted). There was a lot of angry talk among the adults, but
nothing much came of it.
    But some of the kids, those first few weeks, were quite nasty. They threw stones at me, chased
me home when I was on foot and spat on my bike seat when I was in class. For a time, I was a
pretty lonely, friendless and sometimes frightened kid. I was just transplanted from Harlem, and
here in Grand Rapids, the dominant culture was speaking to me insistently.
   I can see now that those youngsters were bullying and I was culturally disadvantaged. I knew
then that they were bigoted(偏执的), but the culture spoke to me more powerfully than my mind
and I felt ashamed for being different - a nonstandard person.
   I now know that Dorothy Bean understood most of that and disapproved of it. So things began
to change when I walked into her classroom. She was a pleasant-looking single woman, who looked
old and wrinkled to me at the time, but who was probably about 40.
   Whereas my other teachers approached the problem of easing in their new black pupil by ignoring
him for the first few weeks, Mrs. Bean went right at me. On the morning after having read our first
assignment, she asked me the first question. I later came to know that in Grand Rapids, she was
viewed as a person who believed, among other things, that Negroes were equal.
    I answered her question and the follow-up. They weren't brilliant answers, but they did establish
the fact that I had read the assignment and that I could speak English. Later in the hour, when one
of my classmates had failed to give an answer, Miss. Bean came back to me with a question that
required me to clean up the girl's mess and established me as a smart person.
   Thus, the teacher began to give me human dimensions, though not perfect ones for an eighth
grader. It was somewhat better to be a teacher's pet than merely a dark presence in the back of the
room.
   A few days later, Miss Bean became the first teacher ever to require me to think. She asked my
opinion about something Jefferson had done. In those days, all my opinions were derivative(缺乏独
创性的). I was for Roosevelt because my parents were and I was for the Yankees because my
older buddy from Harlem was a Yankee fan. Besides, we didn't have opinions about historical figures
like Jefferson. Like our high school building or Mayor Welch, he just was.
    After I stared at her for a few seconds, she said: "Well, should he have bought Lousiana or not?"
    "I guess so," I replied tentatively.
   "Why?" she shot back.
    Why? What kind of question was that, I complained silently. But I ventured an answer. Day after
day, she kept doing that to me, and my answers became stronger and more confident. She was the
first teacher to give me the sense that thinking was part of education and that I could form opinions
that had some value.
    Her final service to me came on a day when my mind was wandering and I was idly digging my
pencil into the writing surface on the arm of my chair. Miss Bean suddenly threw a hunk of gum
eraser at me. By amazing chance, it hit my hand and sent the pencil flying. She gasped, and I crept
(爬) shamefacedly after my pencil as the class roared. That was the ice breaker.
    Afterward, kids came up to me to laugh about "Old Dead-Eye Bean." The incident became a
legend, and I, a part of that story, became a person to talk to.

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