ABSTRACT

This is the story of Anthony, seven-and-a-half years old, child of a mixed African-European marriage, and currently repeating the equivalent of first grade at a private French elementary school in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, West Africa. In fact, Anthony was about to repeat first grade for the second time, his teachers told me; the end of the school year was approaching and he was still not making any progress in learning to read. His classmates, mostly a year younger than Anthony now, had once again passed him by. For a full year, I was told, he had made absolutely no gains in written language, none at all. The end of the academic year brings a sense of urgency in educational problems, and the adults in Anthony's school life were starting to panic. His teacher was out of ideas; his mother was getting extremely anxious. In his teacher's view, the mother was beginning to ask herself whether her son really had normal intelligence or whether he was suffering from severe learning disabilities, although these questions were somewhat embedded, as is often the case, under a barrage of questions and challenges about whether the teaching methods of the school were really up to date or appropriate for her child. At the same time, both mother and teacher wondered about a psychological block, which might explain Anthony's inability (or was it a refusal?) to learn.