Singapore's stressful education system.

I saw a sign today, of Singapore's stressful education system. It was a head of grey hair. Perhaps you don't think that is anything particularly unusual - but this head of grey hair was on a sixteen year old schoolboy.

That gave me pause. What could have prompted a sixteen year old to have more grey hair than many men in their fifties? One word came to mind: stress.

Singapore's education system is famous for two things: the extreme emphasis on "results" at all costs - and the attendant stress that goes with securing them. What effect could this have on children? This boy's head of hair gave me a clue.

He was a Chinese boy, who should, at his age, have a head of black hair - instead of which he had a mixture of black and grey. The grey was plentiful. Now, I am decades older than him, and I don't have any grey hair, yet, so seeing him with so much, was a surprise to me.

I did a little research to see if there is any justification in the belief that stress causes hair to grey - and it seems that there is. A retrospective study among patients at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore showed that those who had endured stress for two to three years went grey faster than those who had not.

I have never seen a person in their mid-teens with as much grey hair as this boy had, today. That he is a student in the Singapore system provides a possible explanation. At the very least I would think that it is a contributory factor in his early greyness.

His grey hair was not all that I noticed. He looked tired too. He had the sunken eyed look of too many late nights and early mornings. His skin looked unhealthy, as well - somewhat thickened and not as elastic as I would expect for someone of his age. In short, here is a boy who is aging fast: stress does that.

Education is meant, in most countries, to be a preparation for life. It should not, I feel, be at the expense of life - or health, for that matter.

Countries with less stressful education systems do not seem to be less successful than Singapore (the UK, Ireland, Australia etc...): so perhaps it would be of benefit to have a somewhat more relaxed system, here. Grades are great - but not if they cost your child their health. What they need, instead, is a warm environment, friendly people around them, and a good night's sleep: every night.

Now, that is the recipe for a happy nation.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind)