Of memory power and interest.

There are some people who think that the gift of a child like Ainan consists of nothing more than "memory power" and "interest". They think that to be a prodigious child and achieve at an adult level before the primary years are over, that nothing more is needed than a good memory and a liking for a subject. Clearly, such people are unfamiliar with the requirements of the subject Ainan is dealing with.

To be a chemist, one needs to be competent in spatial skills (the spatial arrangement of molecules is important); verbal skills (lots of complicated words and naming systems); mathematical skills (there are numerical problems to solve); memory skills (yes, there is a lot to know); logical skills (for the problem solving, some types of problem can be quite tricky); conceptual skills (understanding the physical concepts involved in Chemistry). Now, to be competent in Chemistry, a child needs to be good at ALL those areas. Memory, note, is just one of those areas. Of course, an interest in Chemistry is necessary too...but without a good level of native skill in all the areas, the child will not succeed in Chemistry, no matter how "interested" they are, or how good their "memory power" is.

I wonder, sometimes, at the lack of reasoning powers of some people that I have encountered on the internet. They think that the sum total of gifts required to be a young scientist is a good memory and an interest in science. I can tell you now that those two attributes alone will not get anyone very far at all in science. Primarily, science is not about memory, but about REASONING. Without highly developed powers of reason, no child, or adult, can expect to do well in science. Of all possible disciplines, the scientific ones tax reason above all other attributes. It is possible to be a savant, and know everything about a science - but such a person would most probably fail any and all exams that they are asked to do, because savants usually lack the ability to apply their knowledge with reason. Thus, knowledge alone (that is, memory alone) is not the answer. Memory alone, in science, is, in fact, nothing at all. It is basically a textbook - for a book is pure memory - but when is the last time a book passed an exam?

The other thing I observe in some of the comments I receive is that people are no longer familiar with the O level exam. It used to be taken by the upper 20% of students in the UK and all around the world. About twenty years ago, the UK dropped it, in favour of a much easier exam - the GCSE. Now, Ainan took his O level Chemistry when other children were still learning to read. This is not the product of "memory power" and "interest"...for those two characteristics do not satisfy the demands of the O level. Only a comparatively few of the marks go to knowledge alone, most of them go to what would be categorized as REASON. Almost all the children who now take GCSE would fare very badly in O level. Most of them would, in fact, fail. This is because it demands both more knowledge and more reasoning power, than the newer exam.

Since April last year, Ainan has been studying tertiary level Chemistry at Singapore Polytechnic. Again, those who characterize this as "memory power" and "interest" are being rather ignorant. Memory and interest will not even allow a student to grasp what is going on in the classroom. There is a good deal of reason and insight required just to have the faintest idea of what it is all about. Knowledge alone, will not allow anyone to cope with the demands of the situation. This should be obvious to anyone who knows what science is like at a tertiary level.

The real question behind all of this, however, is: why do some people try to characterize the gifts of children like Ainan as nothing more than "memory power" and "interest"?

The answer is probably that they feel threatened by such children and seek to diminish them. They seek to recast them not as gifted and intelligent, but as some variety of automatic recording machine devoid of intelligence. To my mind, that indicates either that the person who so characterizes them is jealous - or that they, themselves, genuinely have no understanding of what the demands of a scientific subject are. So, we are left to conclude that they are either jealous, or ignorant...perhaps both.

It is important to speak out against this characterization of gifted children as little more than pocket tape recorders, because this view of them, diminishes them to such an extent that they are no longer worthy of support or consideration. If such views are allowed sway, then more gifted children will go unsupported and will not receive the resources they need to blossom.

Ainan does have a good memory, but he has a better imagination, a better intuition, a better intelligence, than all the powers of his memory can muster.

Memory is not the answer to genius or giftedness of any kind - but it is a tool that the gifted use. Nikola Tesla was a great genius - but he also had a great visual memory, able to capture things in the finest detail. Mozart was famously able to recall long pieces of music at a single hearing and write them down. Charles Dickens when working as a young journalist, took notes only in his head (if I remember rightly). These three men were all geniuses - and they all had good memories. However, it would be entirely wrong to characterize them as a product of nothing but memory. A good memory was the LEAST of their gifts. It was their REASON and CREATIVITY that made them geniuses. Their memories were just tools to enable the other two faculties to have something to work on.

So, it is with certain gifted children. They have able memories, but these are just tools to allow their other gifts to have something to work with. If you want to know their true gifts - look to their capacities to reason and be creative.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight 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.

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