Constructing Kasun, Educator

Sometimes we miss each other completely.  Sometimes what I value has nothing to do with what the other values.  And we end up speaking at each other, unpenetrated by the meaning.

That’s what’s happening in a book about a very young Hmong girl born to immigrants in California, http://www.spiritcatchesyou.com/.  She has epilepsy and seizes a lot.  The Hmong usually value this in their culture; she is both cursed with the suffering and but also blessed to become one who sees in spiritual realms which most people never will.  For her western medical doctors in California, she has a disease which must be cured.  For Western eyes, the Hmong perspective may seem “primitive,” but as I read the story, I am drawn into seeing the perspective behind Hmong eyes, where doctors make a baby cry, where the baby’s condition seems to get worse with medicine.  Meantime, the doctors are frustrated that the parents do not follow the treatment regimen as they prescribe, and both sides are frustrated–missing each other in their meanings and intentions.

There’s a connection here with an immigrant student who I won’t be seeing much longer.  His time at one of his sites is almost up, and, based on his progress, he will move to a location with less observation.  I’ve enjoyed every session I’ve worked with him.  I learn from him.  He’s brutally honest about a past he wants to leave in the past; he writes about it freely.  His writing isn’t exactly linear, it’s more like stream of consciousness, the details about abuse, people who have abused him, concrete metaphors spill out in a way that is usually hard to understand yet rich with meaning.

So he’s not a natural writer.  But his thoughts and feelings are intense, heavy.  Heavier than those of many adults I know.  I learn from him and the way he battles his demons every day.  I try to support him in that. 

Part of that support was pushing his case forward to receive special education services.  I find him so bright on many levels, but not the ones our education system has deemed are important–logic, math, reading and writing.  In fact, during one of our lessons, I administered a multiple intelligences survey to see where his strengths lay (see this link for a description of Howard Gardner’s development of multiple intelligences theory http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm). 

Of eight intelligences Gardner has defined, my student scored highly on all but two–the only two that often count in US schools–verbal linguistic and logical/mathematical.  As such, I explained to him why I was submitting the paperwork for his testing.  What I couldn’t effectively explain was that he really is intelligent, just not the way schools value intelligence.

And what a shame.  My student is so introspective and good at expressing himself.  He’s creative, funny, good on the basketball court (we played once together for about fifteen minutes at his request and with the permission of his site).  He’s existential and loves music.  But these qualities don’t seem to count, and I wonder how he’ll do in this country.  Will his strenghts be missed over and over again, as they’ve been in the past, and might a sensitive soul go unnoticed, or, worse, get beat down by a culture that just doesn’t value his ways of being intelligent?