Reflections on weak students
READING Dr Mullai A. Ramaiah’s findings on dyslexia, “Decoding dyslexia” (StarLifestyle, Nov 27), the plight of some of my weak students came to my mind. I am a retired senior physics teacher with 25 years of experience.
During training, we were not taught how to handle students with disability like dyslexia or autism. As such, anyone who could not read or write was regarded as stupid and was relegated to the last of the streamed classes. No teacher was happy going to those classes. Every year, I was given three or more of them with the excuse that I could deal with them.
I distinctly remember Hashim (not his real name). He was always neatly dressed, spoke effectively but could not read or write. His peers were terrified of him although he was not particularly big. But he was a thug. I think he liked the science lab because he could “play” with some of the apparatus. The magnifying glass was his all-time favourite. He would go to the garden outside the lab and burn pieces of dry leaves, as the magnifying glass converged the sun’s rays to one point. “It is not raining today, what!” he would argue with me every time. It never bored him.
Hashim took a liking to me for letting him do what he wanted and enjoyed. In return, he volunteered to maintain discipline in the class. He would walk up and down with a meter rule. The class worked silently, not wanting to be punished by him. (I had refused to scold or cane them but showed interest when they wore clean clothes and maintained clean nails. One day, the entire class started trimming their nails noisily with nail clippers as I entered the class!)
There was another boy in the same class who could not hold the thin handle of the magnifying glass. I had to help him by guiding his fingers, but he found it very difficult due to poor coordination. “Stubborn, lah!” the girls in his class mocked, and he cringed.
For teachers trained specifically to teach normal pupils, it can be exasperating to teach such students. Some (most?) teachers take it as their failure when students do not rise to their expectations. As a result, they mete out punishment verbally or physically.
A colleague once told me proudly about her disciplinary method: “I hit the boy’s hand with a thick block of wood!”
Another dyslexic boy’s fate. Rashid was an autistic boy who was made the class monitor by his classmates. His qualification? He was tall. I taught the class English. Throughout the year, I had to prompt him to say “Good morning, teacher” or “Good afternoon”. He could never remember.
It is important to identify such students early so that they do not suffer in school. When school life becomes unbearable, they are lured by anti-social groups. And they finally find acceptance and purpose – in a life of crime.
NIRMALA RAGHAVAN Sungai Buloh, Selangor (The author is a bilingual writer. Her novel, A Journey Through Schools, can be found in Amazon Kindle and Amazon paperback. It is a loose translation of her prize-winning novel written in Tamil.)