::A Geek in Korea::

I have a child in my kindergarten class that is dependent on me for attention in unbelievable ways. He is the boy in class that will talk to his neighbor when I hold up a picture and say "Color this!", then ask me to repeat the instructions for only him later. When someone asks a question, I answer it for everyone, yet he’ll ask me again and only respond if I talk directly to him.

This boy is four or five years old, and he acts like he’s never seen or done anything on his own before. While he might not have been in a classroom setting before, he has interacted with his environment. I think that anyone could push in a chair and realize it’s hitting a table leg without needing my help.

Today he raised his hands and said (in Korean, of course), "Teacher, I don’t know how to use scissors. Come help me!"

We’ve been using scissors in class for a week, and I didn’t see him ripping or eating the paper before today. Perhaps he didn’t know how to use scissors "well", so I decided to show him. I made an effort to explain it to him. "One hand on the paper in front of you, one hand on the scissors. Move the scissors, not the paper."  I held his wrist and navigated the first shape he needed to cut out. He pretended that he didn’t have the muscle coordination to pull the scissors up and down, but I sort of let him know I wasn’t going to do it for him.

I had to move on to another student who needed help, but when I came back to this boy, he had turned his paper into thin ribbon like strips sliced from the outside. He hadn’t figured out that you could slide the scissors up the place he had just cut to continue cutting out the shape. I showed him what he was supposed to do next, and he picked up the paper.

When I got around to him again, his shirt was covered in confetti. He had cut out the shapes, but all the scrap paper had fallen on him. He looked at me and said, "What do I do now?"

I told him, "Throw it away in the garbage can." He stared at me, then started shaking all the paper off onto the floor. I gave him a look that would have melted iron if I had heat ray vision. I yelled at him that he was going to pick up his mess, not me. He looked at me like the concept of "cleaning up" or "garbage can" was a new word to him in Korean and English. I was shocked.

No basic problem solving skills. No coordination. No focus. No listening. Unless this boy has some sort of mental problem, his mother has so completely taken care of him that he’s never done anything remotely responsible or difficult in his entire life. He’s absolutely impossible to have in class, because he requires the time of five other students to do anything. He’s not bad or mean spirited, just hopelessly time draining and exhausting.