How do I hate fourth grade? Let me clout the babes....My wife told me this morning of another harrowing tale of fourth grade, Taiwan style. CL, my daughter's friend with the learning problems, has no one to protect her in the afternoons because we only let my daughter go a half-day. One afternoon last week when my daughter was away, seven of the other students took CL's bookbag, dumped out the stuff and scattered it, and then filled it with trash by the simple expedient of upending the garbage can into it.
One of CL's problems is that she cannot put together a comprehendable narrative of the events in her life -- she can answer a question like "Is your mother here?" but cannot communicate what happened to me yesterday -- so her mother is unaware of when things go wrong. Eventually it came to her attention, and naturally she took it up with my daughter's teacher. My daughter's teacher told her to take it to the principal. No biggie.
Those of you who are apt to feel that in the US we overreact to little things should ponder events like this. The seven suffered no punishment for a severe and degrading act of bullying that others also witnessed but did nothing to stop. The student harmed had not provoked the act in any way, except in being learning disabled, no more than the do our dogs, whom our neighboring kids regularly torture in small ways. There is an unwritten rule in Taiwan's authoritarian social culture that if I can bully you because you cannot stop me, I should bully you.....the culture of impunity, learned young.
[Taiwan]
teacher can even say, "you are so stupid!" to the kids, and hitting women are legal in taiwan,,, i guess it's not a big deal to them
ReplyDelete1) Reading this post makes me wonder why her parents want to put her in a normal school when the poor girl is, in your words, “… unable to put together a comprehendible narrative of the events in her life”.
ReplyDelete2) Aren't there other options for her parents to place her in a special school for kids with learning disability? A place where she can learn at her own pace and get her self-esteem back?
3) She is clearly unable to learn at the same pace as the other kids. I can guess that she would probably be doing badly in her fourth grade exams and tests too if she has difficult expressing herself. Wouldn’t this be a greater blow to her self-esteem too? Kids have a pretty good idea of where they stand in the class i.e. who is the smartest kid in class and who is not. She would most probably know that she belongs to the latter category.
They just say "she's short one gene". We have the same appalled view of things, believe me.
ReplyDeleteIsn't the phrase, "something something pa ying", ie
ReplyDelete"Bully the weak, fear the strong"?
that sucks.... bullying really is cruel, and children all over the world are past masters at that. The minority really does ruin it..
ReplyDeleteThis is a horrendous story. In many ways, it reminds me of schooling where I grew up. What we sometimes think of as the overreactions of contemporary schools has a reason. If you don't do anything about bullying, you end up with problems. We've learned our lesson about this in North America. Taiwan and Asian schools have yet to learn this.
ReplyDeleteI am appalled by Meesiam's response to this terrible problem that children all over the world who are different suffer. He asks, "Why would the parents want to put her in a normal school when the poor girl is..." Gee, maybe because they would like her to grow up thinking she is normal and not some freak that has to go to a "special" school. It's pretty sad when we try to solve a problem by removing the child who was the target instead of addressing the real issue of bullying and ignorance of differences. If we start sending those children with learning disabilities to other schools, then soon it will those students whose rank in the class is too low. This solution just perpetuates the fundamental problem with education in Taiwan-competition and sorting the smart ones from the not so smart ones. It's pretty sad when the innocent children are the ones who suffer.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I would definitely like to have her in a 'normal' school but my point is that
ReplyDeleteshe doesn't have the necessary skills to survive in a 'normal' school. Wanting her to be
normal and whether she really is normal are two separate things. This is the problem i often
see when i was in school and it is repeating here.
Scenario: The kid is slow in learning, the parents only want to believe that their kid is normal and refuse to put the kid in a special school because they will 'lose' face if the relatives find out that their kid is 'stupid'. In the end, the kid fails all his/her exams,drops out of elementary school, goes out to society to work, gets pregnant out of wedlock at 15 and the story goes on. Do you think this is the best scenario for the girl?
This girl is slow in learning and she definitely needs help in coping with school. From what I gather, a 'normal' school in Taiwan doesn't appear to have the facilities or the means to help her.
In the case of this girl, she clearly doesn't have the ability to express herself. Therefore, I felt that it maybe better for her to start off in a special school where she can learn basic communication skills before joining a normal school when she is older.
Just like children who suffer from hearing disabilities. Most of them start off in a special school where they learn to lip-read and only when they have achieved a certain level of capabiliy,
then they are placed in a 'normal' school where they learn with the other normal children.
Also, I have never said that the bullying problem shouldn't be addressed. It should but the girl
needs help more.
Anonymous: One more point to you is that kids in special schools are not 'some freak'. It is people with such wrong perceptions that has resulted in the present problem where kids who have genuine learning disabilities are denied access to more help because their parents refuse to have them seen as 'some freak'.
ReplyDeleteSpecial schools are for children with special needs.
As a special education teacher, I can gaurantee you that the only thing these children want is to be considered "normal." Who are we to determine what is normal and what is not? In my opinion, we all have "special needs" in some area, unfortunately it is those children whose differences stick out more that become labeled as having "special needs." By implying that she is not normal and placing her in a school that is specifically for children who cannot survive in the "normal" school, you will not help her self-esteem but rather hurt it. I do believe that these schools have every good intention of helping children learn but whenever you start to segregate and separate children based on ability (or race back in the day), you create problems. I believe it is not the girl who does not fit in the school, but the school that does not fit the girl, and must therefore change in order to do so. But I also realize that this is not realistic in Taiwan, where differences are rarely accommodated for.
ReplyDeleteAlso-I used the term "freak" because you referred to the other children as being normal and therefore implied she is not, which is another way of saying she is a "freak."
Bullying is a complex problem. While you are fuming about why the school and teachers and parents not help this poor girl, you need to understand in Taiwan's schools most bullying incidents were and are ignored. Think of it as bullying at the workplace in any industrious countries, say US. The bullied has little recourse. You are on your own while in school, unless you are so lucky to have a good teacher who would look after you, or a good friend who would stand up for you. I was never bullied when I was in school back in TW. I developed this persona of being tough and fiesty throughout the years to prevent becoming a target. I am sad to see the mentality of "because you are not able to protect yourself, so I will hurt you" still exist. To solve her problem, her parents would have to be the squeakiest door with her school principal and homeroom teacher in order to get her some relief. But I wonder if her parents would stand up to the school for her?
ReplyDelete