With the mashing up of different classes, I’ve got students that I haven’t taught for a while. One of them is a bright, cute boy that is in my lowest level class. He’s been at the school for as long as I have, and tries hard to study as well as he can. The only thing “off” about him is a crippling fear of tests of any kind.
Every day since I’ve started teaching him, the first question he’s asked me when we meet is if we will have a test in class. I tend to test two times a week if possible in his class. This means he’s got pretty good odds of seeing a test. His reaction has always been to fall straight down on the ground and possibly start crying too. He once did this for 20 minutes in the teacher’s office in the fetal position under a desk.
Everyone else in the class sort of shrugs and says to cheer up. He will run off, lie on the ground, and sulk until class starts. This is weird behavior, because Koreans treat a floor of a school like it contains a coating of Ebola virus. Seeing a student lying on a floor weeping is not common at all. Other than this weird panic attack brought on by tests, the boy is pretty normal. He’s smart, does homework, and has friends. He’s a good reader, and wants to learn English. He just really hates tests. His homework scores and anything else is fine for a boy his age.
Today on his test, he had another serious fit. First, he crumpled up the paper and started crying when he started writing. I kept telling him it was a “True/False” style test, so he should do very well. Then when I graded the paper, he made some mistakes and got an average score. This sent him into tears, then he ran out of the room. I found out later he had ran to the bathroom and had vomited into the toilet repeatedly. When he returned to class, he was still crying hysterically.
My near daily tests are NOT A BIG DEAL. It’s simply a mandatory thing instituted by my director to provide parents feedback as to the effort their children put into their studies. I write down a score, and they are forgotten about until the report cards are issued for another term.
Forgotten by everyone except this student’s mother. When the boy ran out to vomit in the bathroom, I looked around the class to try to get a clue why tests sends this student into a full blown panic attack. His friend told me in low voice why the boy is so upset by tests.
His mother beats him for every incorrect answer he brings home on a test.
In hindsight, that was a spectacularly obvious answer to all the questions I had about this particular student. His obsession with tests. His crippling fear. His obsession with correcting tests perfectly. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Perhaps I was too innocent to believe a parent could do something so cruel to a child so young.
What can you do when you find out information like that? The student in question doesn’t know that I know about what’s going on. It seems everyone else in the class knew long before I did and they must have thought I was a moron for not figuring it out on my own.
I went to speak to the director after my class was finished. My coworker also confirmed the boy’s behavior in class with tests with the director. He told me that after one of his tests, while he was waiting for the bus, he was so upset that he vomited on the street. Our director was shocked that I found out this information, but doesn’t seem to be willing to do anything about it. I think she was shocked to know it was happening, more that I had figured it out. She deals with mothers all the time. She probably knows this is happening, and probably at more than one house.
In her position, there is almost nothing she can do. Calling someone and accusing them of abuse is a serious allegation. Simply suggesting someone did a crime, proven or not, is defamation. Korea has INSANE laws that no other country in the world has to prevent attacks on people’s character. I can’t use real names for fear I’d get sued for this post. Even physical evidence wouldn’t be enough to prove something like this in Korea. There are no “Child Service” workers to deal with something like this.
I don’t have physical proof anyway. Other than the panic attacks, vomiting, cowering, and mental breakdowns of a student 9 years old I’ve witnessed for the past few weeks, there could be nothing wrong. For all other intents and purposes, the student is well adjusted. I don’t know what kind of abuse he is going through. He wears a coat because our classrooms are freezing. If there is a physical mark on his body, no one would ever see it.
My coworker and I were at a loss as to a course of action. Do we change the class to stop giving as many tests? Do we alter the student’s tests so that he always gets perfect scores? How would the other students and parents react? Can we do anything to help the student avoid having to bring home tests? Should we tell the Korean teachers to alter their classes? What do they talk about when they phone this mother about class? Did they know about the behavior? When did this start? How will it affect the student in the long run? How do we go on teaching this student knowing that something we do can cause physical harm for him at home?
The abuse alone is horrifying. But taking to it’s logical conclusion, devoid of the intense pain it’s causing this wonderful boy, it’s just stupid too. If the mother in question is trying to INCREASE a student’s desire to study and do well, and lets assume that’s the “rational explanation” for this crime, giving a child a literal panic attack at the word “TEST” is the stupidest thing ever. This boy will have profound psychological damage from this abuse, and it will never help him in the long run.
If he freaks out when he hears about a five minute test that literally means nothing in the long run, what kind of damage is this student going to do to himself when he has to take a test to get into a competitive high school? College? Will he even be able to live under the stress that affects even well adjusted students leading up to that test? I don’t think so. Why would a parent do something like this?
It makes me sick. The words of a foreign teacher in this situation means NOTHING. I’m powerless to prevent this from happening, but I have to keep doing my job knowing. The “Korean” solution to the problem would be to provide the boy with a second test to write corrected answers on so that he could bring home a perfect test to spare him some punishment. I don’t know what other rubric the parent uses to judge the student, so even that might not be good enough.
This is one of those times when those “commonly known” but “never discussed” sorts of problems Korea has in it’s culture infuriates me. Everyone will go on trying to act like nothing is happening to keep the parents from getting upset. The school gets the money. The parents get to think they are raising a smart son, and everyone ignores that a child is being hurt. This situation is wrong. It happens everywhere, but that doesn’t make it right.
