Location: Texas USA Posts: 6102 Joined: 2008-05-25
10/3/10
I watched this 30 minute documentary today on TV. It's done as a 'cartoon', so I was amazed that I got engrossed in watching it. But with every scene, I knew that it would be something that other forum members would like to see.
The little 5-year-old Chinese girl is smart, but she doesn't speak English. The American schoolteacher uses another Chinese girl as an 'interpreter'. But the 'interpreter' speaks Mandarin while the 'new' girl speaks Cantonese. So, they don't understand each other. Eventually the teacher meets with the girl's parents, trying to get authorization to have the girl tested for a 'learning problem'. Besides not understanding English, the girl has bad memories of being hit on her hands by a previous teacher with a stick. The mother argues that the girl is smart, and she doesn't want her to be tested.
I don't think that everyone will be able to 'view' this documentary right away, but I wanted to tell you about it so that you can be on the watchout for it. I'll put the links here.
"The Film
A bright and happy child, five-year-old Mai is newly arrived from China and placed in a kindergarten classroom in a small, Midwestern town. Beautifully rendered in 3-D animation, Paper Words follows Mai as she engages her imagination to keep her company in a strange new world.
The Filmmaker is Joyce LeeProducer/Director"
You'll all recognize that the old confusion over what constitutes having a 'learning disability' still persists in this documentary.
In the (fictional, cartoon) documentary, the little girl begins making lovely paper airplanes and other folded paper creatures. When she does this, the teacher and her classmates become impressed with the little girl's intelligence and accept her. Though not expressed in words, the idea is that they all decide that she does belong in their classroom. I find this rather amusing as, I could have done the same marvels of 'paper folding', and yet I still have a learning disability. - jus'
Edited by justfoundout on October 03 2010 08:27 PM
