There was a woman in Detroit, who has two sons. She was worried about them, especially the
younger one, Ben, because he was not doing well in school. Boys in his class made jokes about him because he seemed so slow.
The mother decided that she would, herself, have to get her sons to do better in school. She told them to go to the Detroit Public Library to read a book a week and do a report about it for her.
One day, in Ben's class, the teacher held up a rock and asked if anyone knew it. Ben put up
his hand and the teacher let him speak. "Why did Ben raise his hand?" they wondered. He always
said anything; what could he possibly want to say?
Well, Ben not only knew the rock; he said a lot about it. He named other rocks in its group
and even knew where the teacher had found it. The teacher and the students were surprised.
Ben had learned all this from doing one of his book reports.
Ben later went on to the top of his class. When he finished high school, he went to Yale
University and at last became one of the best doctors in the United States.
After Ben had grown up, he learnt something about his mother that he did not know as a
child.She, herself, had never learned how to read.