I’ve got an afternoon student (Korean age ten, Western age nine) who I’m almost certain has a learning disability. I’m not a doctor, but after teaching high school in America for two years and having dozens of meetings with parents and counselors for students who were going to be screened, a lot of the warning signs are there. I told my supervisor and her assistant about my suspicions a while back, and I politely suggested that if this kid was in an American school he would have been screened by now.
I guess their response was just about what I expected — pretty much nothing. My supervisor came to class one day and sat directly behind the student in question. She physically restrained him from getting out of his seat, and gently pushed his head towards the front of the classroom when I asked for the students’ attention (something he doesn’t do normally or, in my opinion, isn’t capable of doing due to processing issues).
The problem is that for as over-diagnosed as learning disabilities are in the United States, the situation here is the complete opposite. To paraphrase another K-blogger, mental health issues in Korea don’t register as “medical” issues here at all (and arguably throughout a large part of Asia) but rather as moral failings. As crazy as this sounds, this strikes me as about as accurate a description as possible of Koreans and their attitudes toward mental health concerns. (To bring up one notorious anecdote, Canada recently granted asylum to a mentally ill Korean woman since sending her back into the Korean mental health system would have been tantamount to “persecution.”)
I’ve actually met with the student’s mother, and she’s aware from feedback from his Korean teachers as well that there’s a “behavior” issue here outside of academic ability. Again, I’m pretty cynical about the over-prescription of drugs to kids back in the States in cases where the behavior could probably be sorted out without meds. But this is a kid that really needs some outside help and frankly, he’s not getting enough of it from me (although Lord knows I’m trying).
But this is Korea, and to tell a mom that her kid needs more discipline is usually a welcome suggestion. To tell her that her kid might need to see a child psychologist or developmental specialist would probably get me fired.
