During a long time, we have been observing an absence of a possibility to determine causes of problems in education of certain pupils in schools and professional diagnostic centres.
At school the new children using a different mother tongue seem to have insufficient knowledge of Czech. As teachers, child counsellors and psychologists do not know the cultural background of pupils well, and do not master using standardised international tests so well, they are often unable to assess properly:
- the actual level of the Czech language knowledge of the pupil having a different mother tongue so necessary for study of a particular subject in the lower secondary school (junior high school), and in the first school (elementary school) the scope of vocabulary or word stock of the pupil and his/her orientation in the actual society and its culture.
- reasons for poor Czech which can be the reflection of insufficient language learning, low potential for learning Czech, low language competence, personality traits or negative social influences…
In the course of primary diagnostics in the Czech Republic, there is a testing of the different mother tongue language level missing. That would provide for assessing whether and how much pronunciation, vocabulary, phrase structure and style of the Czech language of a particular child is comparable with the mother tongue of the child.
In discussions between the parents of children using different mother tongue and teachers, but unfortunately also in interactions with Czech specialists, so called "migration query" is missing in case history forms, i.e. there is no analysis of the number of living environment changes in the child´s life, no analysis of Czech language learning history, no analysis of time spent with parents, which reduces the possibility of coming to effective conclusions concerning methods for improving the situation of the child. Based on our experience, all that can lead even to potential serious damage to the health of the child as the mentioned deficiencies influence also communication between parents and medical practitioners, but also hospital doctors.
As regards the adult patients, more efficient psychiatric and psychological methods are often missing, as local specialists are sometimes refusing to work with patients through interpreters, or their communication is ineffective due to lack of knowledge of their cultural background. That is why we have established co-operation with a Vietnamese psychiatrist who will focus on basic language diagnostics for children and basic psychological-and psychiatric diagnostics for adults. Such consultancy will be varied out on-line. In the period of pilot project verification, a large screen having a diagonal of 150 cm was bought in order the client has at least a bit of feeling of being in the presence of the specialist. There will be a camera for recording of certain diagnostic processes bought, too.
All this may contribute to the process of inclusion very much thanks to better setting of procedures aiming at solution to problems of clients, as well as to better psychiatric diagnostics of adults.