Grand Prize Winner: Jun Kang
“What is the most challenging obstacle students with learning differences face today, and how can we help them overcome it?”
I still remember the time when our classmate named Jiho was told to stand at the back of class for disturbing the lesson over and over. This happened when I was in 3rd grade, 7 years ago. He was a very hyperactive kid with short hair, and we all knew him as the energetic kid moving around all the time, sometimes forgetting to bring textbooks and getting scolded by the teacher. He had Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, short for ADHD, but we never knew what it meant. What we knew was the fact that he was a bit “different” from us, and that he was often causing trouble both in and out of class. Some of us snickered as he got his time-out, and although I found it funny, I also remember being apologetic toward Jiho, and baffled at the situation. Why are we laughing at him? Why is he getting a time-out so frequently? Back then, the answers were unfathomable, as if they were blurry and out of focus. Now, as a 16-year old with a bit more knowledge and experience, I see the issues and answers that lie behind all the confusion and perplexity. Lack of understanding towards students with learning differences is the most challenging obstacle that they face today, because it leads to the lack of inclusivity in education, and the society’s stigmatization of people with learning difficulties. To tackle this grave issue and help them overcome this obstacle, we can start advocating for the change in the education system.
To begin with, lack of inclusivity is the first problem that is caused by the lack of understanding of people with learning differences. Ever since I graduated from elementary school, I was curious to know more about disabilities, a condition that 16% of the global population face. I volunteered to give a lecture on visual impairment to my class when I was in middle school, and studied college level psychology for half a year starting from 9th grade, to know more about our mental and physical selves. Acquiring more knowledge about the world and society through advanced education and self research, I can confidently say that we fear what we don’t know. Reflecting on my elementary school experience, lack of understanding leads to not knowing how to react and interact with someone. In this case, because we never learned about disabilities and impairments at a young age, we weren’t able to put our feet into Jiho’s shoes and feel empathy. We never feared Jiho, we never felt apprehension towards him. However, thinking that he was “weird”, and feeling this unease around him had caused a huge barrier to form between us. If understanding is about tearing down barriers and being inclusive, then what we were doing was the exact opposite; it was division, distancing ourselves from Jiho.
When we cannot understand something, not only do we lose inclusivity, but we also lose reputation towards something. We now see a lot of organizations working to promote inclusivity, but at the roots of society, we still see the stigmatization of people who are considered different, and this also applies to the students with learning differences. Roughly 129 million children and adolescents globally are said to have ADHD according to CHADD. Unfortunately, a lot of us continue to have this bad impression towards people with various disabilities and conditions, and this causes the stigma to perpetuate within society, causing people with differences to have financial, educational and social disadvantages.
However, I believe that this situation can be changed through ambitious students and people like us from all around the world. Lack of understanding is never a long-lasting condition, as long as we advocate and spread education and inclusivity, everyone will start understanding what it means to have learning differences, and how to help students with those conditions to spend a happier school life and a brighter future. One step at a time, but there’s always a solution. We just need to keep working to change the current situation.