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bovinerebel
Joined: 27 Feb 2008
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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject: "Mentally disabled" students. |
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I brought this up in a forum before but I think I got banned or something for saying naughty things about god. Anyway I have this one student who they assure me is mentally disabled. I just don't believe it. She seem fully aware of what's going on but they Koreans and classmates seem to have written her off. They make her sit alone and never talk to her. I often let her work on a computer alone for this reason and watch in amazement as she browes a the internet with perfect adequecy and interest. Nothing she does at all has ever lead me to think she's any less capable than anyone else.
In my humble opinion all the girl is sufering from is the obvious result of being a social outcast. She's cronically shy and awkward rather than mentally disabled. It's so obvious to me I want to scream at the Korean teachers who force her not to partake even in the simplest things well within her abilities. After giving it some thought in a society that so highly values the ability to confrom in extremes , how many "quirky" but perfectly mentally healthy (potential highly intelligent) kids aren't written off here ?
The sad result is the kids will stew in their loneliness and alienation and only become more and more quirky thus reinfircing this crazy notion than kids that don't fit in are mentally unhealthy. It breaks my heart to think about it. |
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ricky_lamour
Joined: 19 Jan 2006
Location: jikdongli
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Thats horrible. There are a few in my school and the opposite is true. They're always helped and encouraged to take part by everyone, teachers and students alike - even if they aren't friends. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm surprised a qualified psychologist fluent in Korean is teaching ESL. |
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Davew125
Joined: 11 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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i've found the opposite to be true more often. I once had a kid, about 8 years old (western), who would always sit on his own in the corner, yelping, headbutting the table and punching himself in the face. the other kids were terrified of him and he would never say a word to me. every lesson i would tell my co teacher that i thought there was a serious problem here and once a week he'd phone the parents, only to be told that he always did it so it was fine......
Im not pretending to be a pyschologist here but this child certainly had issues that needed to be resolved but the parents were just burying their head in the sand. |
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bovinerebel
Joined: 27 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| I'm surprised a qualified psychologist fluent in Korean is teaching ESL. |
I'm not pretending to be a qualified psychologist (even though technically I come closer than most). I just know that is someone has the potential to follow English instructions , surf the internet etc that there can't be so much wrong with them mentally that they can't be included in a simple esl activity like participating in a role play. |
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mrsquirrel
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:09 am Post subject: |
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| bovinerebel wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| I'm surprised a qualified psychologist fluent in Korean is teaching ESL. |
I'm not pretending to be a qualified psychologist (even though technically I come closer than most). . |
Don't they all say that.
There are so many nearly doctors just about shrinks on this forum it amazes me that there is a shortage of qualified medical staff in the west. |
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IncognitoHFX
Joined: 06 May 2007
Location: Yeongtong, Suwon
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:34 am Post subject: Re: "Mentally disabled" students. |
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| bovinerebel wrote: |
In my humble opinion all the girl is sufering from is the obvious result of being a social outcast. She's cronically shy and awkward rather than mentally disabled. It's so obvious to me I want to scream at the Korean teachers who force her not to partake even in the simplest things well within her abilities. After giving it some thought in a society that so highly values the ability to confrom in extremes , how many "quirky" but perfectly mentally healthy (potential highly intelligent) kids aren't written off here ?
The sad result is the kids will stew in their loneliness and alienation and only become more and more quirky thus reinfircing this crazy notion than kids that don't fit in are mentally unhealthy. It breaks my heart to think about it. |
It happens back home more than you might think. This really reminds me (off-topic) of a kid I knew in Jr. / Sr. High back. He was really maladjusted, had difficulty speaking or communicating to others, and from what I could tell it was more of a result of him being bullied directly and indirectly by the faculty and the students than any inherent condition.
He was labeled mentally challenged by most of us (never written down officially). We even had a particularly bad social studies teacher who told us it was important for the group at large to single out individuals like this and ostracize them for the good of everyone else--like a human stress ball. It used to make me sick, and I was one of a handful of people who left him alone.
Anyway, I think he started to believe it all because he did so terribly in his courses that they dropped him down to special education, where we could find him outside picking up garbage with the other "speds" on most days. After graduation, I heard he went to community college and got all his academic credits.
I facebook'd him a few months ago and found out he was working on his MA in Astronomy at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. I facebook'd a few of the people who gave him crap (coincidentally), and they were working in forestry, Wal-Mart or just bumming around at their parent's place. Funny how things work out.
...and poor girl. As I've seen this happen before, I know it's very unfortunate. A lot of the time people ignore the "chicken or the egg" argument and assume that she's one thing and always has been, without taking into account that she could have gained the appearance of that thing as a result of foul treatment.
She could be a late bloomer too. Keep and eye on her and watch how well she fares later on in life. Too bad for her, Korea doesn't seem to foster late bloomers as I don't think there is anyway to get back into the system once you're out of it.
As ESL Teachers, we're pretty low on the pecking order and there's not much we can do about it, unfortunately. |
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IncognitoHFX
Joined: 06 May 2007
Location: Yeongtong, Suwon
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:44 am Post subject: Re: "Mentally disabled" students. |
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| bovinerebel wrote: |
| After giving it some thought in a society that so highly values the ability to confrom in extremes , how many "quirky" but perfectly mentally healthy (potential highly intelligent) kids aren't written off here ? |
A lot of us have had second chances. Maybe we bombed High School but aced university, or we bombed university and aced the job market. Who knows, but the thing is, we've all had opportunities to try and try again. I doubt these Korean kids have or will have the same chance.
It makes you wonder how many Einsteins have fallen through the cracks. |
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bovinerebel
Joined: 27 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 3:45 am Post subject: Re: "Mentally disabled" students. |
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| IncognitoHFX wrote: |
| bovinerebel wrote: |
| After giving it some thought in a society that so highly values the ability to confrom in extremes , how many "quirky" but perfectly mentally healthy (potential highly intelligent) kids aren't written off here ? |
A lot of us have had second chances. Maybe we bombed High School but aced university, or we bombed university and aced the job market. Who knows, but the thing is, we've all had opportunities to try and try again. I doubt these Korean kids have or will have the same chance.
It makes you wonder how many Einsteins have fallen through the cracks. |
Just a little personal story to give an example of how wrong people can get it.
I had a brain disease (encephalitis) when I was a child and was taken out of school for a year to recover at hospita/home. They knew very little about the disease at the time and it was quitely suggesed to my parents that perhaps they should be wary of long term effects. These days they know that "most people with encephalitis make a full recovery. In a small percentage of cases, swelling of the brain can lead to permanent brain damage and lasting complications like learning disabilities, speech problems, memory loss, or lack of muscle control. Speech, physical, or occupational therapy may be necessary in these cases."
Anyway because of this and the run on effect of being put back into school (the same grade) but developmentally a year behind, I never blossomed achademically.I was estranged to the other children in my small class of 12 . My parents and teachers, being the kind and caring souls that they were ,thought it best not to "push me" and allowed me carry on at my own speed. To a child this special treatment meant I simply was under no pressure to perform. Despite this I found the work extremely easy and despite putting much less effort in than anyone else maintained an average grade which was always histrionically praised which didn't motivate me to try any harder.
My parents being people of "means" checked me into weekly sessions with child psychologists up into my teens who all confused my highly active imagination for the buzz word of the time "add" and retalin was administerd for a year or two. My mother eventually came to her senses and gave me back my personality and took me off my "concentration tablets".
The teenage years and coming of examinations came into being. For the subjects I enjoyed I was well above (top) of my class , and for those I didn't , well below. Everyone else was being expected to study , so this was not really surprising. It remained like this with people talking down my failures and giving me false credit for working hard for my achievements. I was never bullied by peers but the stigma of being the "quirky" kid with the 'brain disease" in a small private school like mine never wore away/
This remained the case until well into high school where mandatory IQ testing was given which suggested that I had an extremely high intellectual potential. This puzzled everyone so much that at the age of 16 my parents took me to the local university to extensive testing (a days worth of various tests) which concluded I was in the "gifted" range. I wasn't at all surprised and by this stage of life , like any teenagers, was already fully convinced that everyone else was an idiot. But everyone else was amazed and saw no evidence of it. Teachers were made aware of this and suddenly I was expected to perform not the same as , but better than the other students. From this point of course my grades picked up as my self esteem picked up (well too a point ...never tell a tennager he's a genius unless you really want him to rest on his laurels and do as little possible more than enough) . By university I was doing pretty well in all the subjects I enjoyed.
Well that's a bit long and boring....sorry. Anyway...it's just an issue close to my heart. There is no doubt in my mind that this girls is capable of much more than they are allowing her to do. The fact that the teachers just seem to ignore how the other students make her sit alone at a table and show no concern to assimulating her alone is wrong, even if she was mentally disabled.
Oh one example I forgot to mention. The school has a special seperate program for mentally disabled kids , so often during lunch time I see the girl in question running and spending her time with a downs syndrome girl who she leads around , helps buy food and generally takes care of her. The one aspect is how mentally fit you have to be to be able to take care of someone as well as she does, and the other is how much we all crave human interaction. Anyway....it's all a little sad and there really is nothing i can do about it. |
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NightSky
Joined: 19 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:59 am Post subject: Re: "Mentally disabled" students. |
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| bovinerebel wrote: |
| it's all a little sad and there really is nothing i can do about it. |
right. end of story. |
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