Thanks to all my colleagues who helped guide throughout this class. I enjoyed your thought-provoking discussions and questions. Good luck with the rest of your education and to all your future endeavors.
IQ tests are an important tool to help educators and
parents determine what paths their young children might take. The problem,
however, exists if ONLY the IQ test is used. There are different types of
intelligence that cannot be measured simply by a test. Although lacking in what
others perceive as intelligence, a child could be emotionally intelligent
or overflowing with creativity. I think that the if a holistic
approach to child development is used, an IQ test should be only a small aspect
to consider. People are not just computers that you can fill the hard drive
with information, rather people, especially young children, are dynamic and
always growing. Case in point, it is accept that IQ's change as people get
older. They can rise or they can fall. A child who is slightly delayed could
end up being the most gifted of adults and the opposite is true as well.
There was an interesting study done
in Kenya about intelligence. The Luo people in Kenya measure intelligence using
four categories:
"rieko, which largely corresponds to the Western idea of academic
intelligence, but also includes specific skills; luoro, which includes social qualities like respect,
responsibility and consideration; paro, or practical thinking; and winjo, or comprehension. Only one
of the four--rieko--is
correlated with traditional Western measures of intelligence."
(Benson 2003)
I
think the Luo would be hard pressed to come up with an intelligence test that
would measure these aspects of intelligence, nor do I think they would want to.
I think having a system like this in our culture would alleviate some of the
pressures associated with education and intelligence. If a child is a little
behind in one aspect but a little more advanced in another, that child is not
ostracized but rather praised. I think there is a lot of undue pressure from
parents, schools, teachers, governments in the US for students to achieve at a
basic level according to a standardized test. If things were like in Kenya,
would we have the educational problems we have?
Reference
Benson,
E. (2003, February) Intelligence
across cultures: Research in Africa, Asia and Latin America is
showing how culture and intelligence interact. American Psychological Association. Retreived August 5, 2012 from http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligence.aspx.
As regular readers of this blog know, I live in Korea. What you see above is a map of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). As I was thinking about what to write for this week's blog, I saw that on the bottom of that list of stressors was violence. Earlier I wrote about actual violence, but now I am going to write about the constant threat of violence and how it may affect children.
I have lived in Korea for 3 years now. And in those 3 years, there have been for me, very shocking developments between North and South Korea, who by the way are in a continuous state of war.
Surprisingly, none of these events seem to phase the population. Even the children are unaffected. The fact that approximately 10 million people live less than 40 miles from the most heavily defended border in the world has no effect. This must be a way to cope. This has no basis in science and it is just my theory, but it seems the constant threat of war has desensitized the general population. I was teaching at a English academy for young children when the Cheonan was sunk. I literally freaked out, because I thought there were going to be bombs flying any moment. I even had the quickest route to the US embassy mapped out on Google. But the children in my classes, did not seem concerned. I do not know if they did not care, or did not know, but it was shocking.
Is this the way people cope? Do people become numb to constant violence and constant threats of war? I wonder how it is like in the West Bank, and India and Pakistan. Are the children as nonchalant about war there as they are in Korea?
In 1992, there was a huge riot in Los Angeles. I was 14. I had some younger cousins, however, who were young. They were 4 and 5 years old. They were old enough to realize that something terrible was happening, but too young to realize why. This is a very famous picture, that many Korean-Americans like myself can relate with. My uncle's were out defending the stores with those men on the roofs. Nothing terrible happened to them, but I can't imagine what my cousins went through.
They both ended up well-adjusted people. But they still talk about it sometimes. Maybe more as a story told to them than actually remembering it themselves. It could be how they cope with it.
I am a huge poker fan. I love to play it and I love to watch it.
Recently there was a huge tournament in Las Vegas that had a 1 million dollar buy in, the largest ever. The winner received a whopping 18.3 million dollars and 5.4 million went to the charity, One Drop. One Drop is a charity whose mission is to bring clean water to those who do not have it.
I knew that there was a problem in the world, but I did not know it was such a serious problem. According to the onedrop.org website, approximately 1 billion people in the world lack adequate access to clean, potable water. That is a staggering amount, 14% of the world's 7 billion people.
One issue that was especially surprising was how the lack of water affects women and girls around the world.
From the One Drop website:
Too often, women are not included in the decision-making process surrounding water issues, even though the struggle to get water typically falls on their shoulders.
The task of gathering water can take up to four hours a day. Moving as much as 100 kg of water over many kilometres means risking health and personal safety; in certain cases, there is no choice but to go through areas that leave them vulnerable to attack by people or wild animals.
Over 70% of those who collect water under such circumstances are women and girls. As such, the daily chore prevents tens of millions of girls from going to school, and those who do find the opportunity to attend school often leave due to inadequate sanitation facilities.
Women are also more susceptible to waterborne diseases because it is they who care for ill family members and wash clothing in rivers filled with contaminants and bilharzias (blood flukes).
Time lost on collecting water could be better spent on life-improving activities such as going to school or learning a trade. Safe local water pumps can give them more of that precious time. Furthermore, cutting down the duration of a woman’s daily water tasks to one hour puts an extra US $100 into her pocket every year.
This poker tournament raised my awareness of a serious public health issue that could be solved by a worldwide collective effort. I will definitely try and educated those around me about this issue as I think this could eventually affect the world, especially with the global climate changes we are experiencing. Kinda like Waterworld.
After he was born, I had a chance to briefly see him to make sure he was okay. He had all his toes and fingers and he looked great. From here is where my experience soured and differs I think from babies delivered in the USA. It was 6 days from the day he was born to the day we left the hospital. My wife was recovering from surgery but she was doing very well. We planned on breastfeeding exclusively, but for some reason the Korean nurses and doctors wouldn't let my wife nurse. They kept him in the nursery and we had viewings twice a day. I did not get to hold him until the day we left. It was only after 3 days that my wife had a chance to go down to nurse. I was very upset by this. From everything I had read, the best chance of long term success in breastfeeding was trying immediately after birth.
I think it is standard operating procedure in Korea to whisk away the baby after even natural births. There is no time for bonding between mother and child. And the child is kept isolated from the parents. Our gentle birth plan allowed for one hour after birth for the baby to rest on his mother's chest to bond and then I was to give him a bath, but the emergency C-section dashed our plans.
I think that the bonding time after child birth is so crucial for the child development. The child has gone through such a traumatic experience to enter the world, I think just by knowing that his mother is close and has survived the process is so beneficial to the baby. Korea is very advanced in many ways. But their child birthing practices are very much stuck in the past.
This is my son just a few days ago. He is now 9 weeks old, and he's doing very well.
My son was born this year on April 27th in Daegu, South Korea.
Before he was born, we wanted a natural (vaginal) birth. South Korea has one of the highest rates of C-sections in the world (Gibbons, 2010, pg 18). We were wary about C-sections and how sometimes doctors in Korea suggest surgery even if it is unnecessary. Everything was going according to our plan... We took a gentle birthing class, something not very common in Korea. We also changed OB/GYN, because we felt that the hospital we were going to kind of felt like a baby assembly line. Doctor's visits were so short, maybe a couple of minutes at the most, and I felt that our doctor wasn't concerned with my questions.
As an aside, the medical system in Korea is really efficient and excellent. Everyone has healthcare by the single payer system, and it really is cheap and affordable. Basic care and basic visits are covered by a copayment of less than 5 US Dollars. And up to 80% of medicine costs are covered by insurance, so you usually end up paying a few dollars for your prescription. The downside is all of the prices of medical services are dictated by a board consisting of influential doctors and government officials. As a result, doctors are pressured to see lots of patients in a day and sometimes recommend a lot of expensive and unnecessary exams and procedures. And since doctors are revered here in Korea, the people ask no questions and completely trust doctors.
Because of this, my questions were not received very well. I grew up in the US and armed with google I went in with A LOT of questions. So everything was going well, but because of the Korean medical system, the doctors wanted us to come in often. Biweekly in the first trimester, once a month during the second trimester, and weekly in the third. We had a lot of sonograms. One per visit. For those of you in the States, what is the normal amount of sonograms?
Anyway, everything was going swimmingly until April 26th about 10 days from the expected due date. My wife calls me and says she's leaking something. We call the doc and she says to come in. We go in and she says its time. Arrgh. We are totally unprepared, because just that morning, we went in for an exam and she says there were no signs of labor at all and our son would probably be a little late.
So my wife checks into the hospital and they have to induce because her water broke but she isn't effaced or dilated at all. At this point, we are still determined to have a vaginal birth but 24 hours later... it is determined that she is not progressing fast enough and we opt for surgery. Less than an hour later, I met this guy.
Gibbons, L., Beliza, J., Lauer J., Betran A., Merialdi M., & Althabe F. (2010) The Global Number and Cost of Additionally Needed and Unnecessary Caesarean Sections Perfomed per Year: Overuse as a Barrier to Universal Coverage., World Health Organization. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/financing/healthreport/30C-sectioncosts.pdf
