1,000th Blog post and counting.

This is my 1,000th blog post, on this blog, and counting. To me, that seems like quite a significant number to have written and posted in two years and four months.

The blog has become quite varied, over time, and now encompasses issues as far afield as the social situation in Singapore, gifted education, the state of the world we live in, and our prospects for the future. It also, of course, has anecdotes from the life of my children.

Thank you, to all my readers who have been reading these many posts. I intend to keep it up. Let us see if I can reach my 2,000th post in due course.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Science is harder than the Arts.

A recent study has proven what has long seemed obvious to anyone who has ever observed pupils in school: Sciences are harder than the Arts.

The study, at Durham University examined the examination results of over a million students and was commissioned by the Institute of Physics and SCORE (Science Community Representing Education).

Students of similar ability, but different subject choice were compared to extract the relative hardness of subjects. The core finding was that science subjects at A level were a grade harder than Arts subjects, in general. This means that a student will score lower on a Science subject, than an Arts subject, although be of the same intellectual standard. Indeed, those behind the study commented that: "A student who gets a C in Biology is going to be generally more able than a student who gets a B in Sociology."

Differences were noted within the Arts subjects, too, with some being demonstrably easier than others. A student studying film studies instead of History can expect more than a grade improvement in his or her results. A student picking media studies instead of English, improves by half a grade.

Students seem to be aware of this. There is a long-term decline in the number of students studying the harder science subjects - and a long-term rise in the number of students picking soft subjects. Since the mid-90s, the proportion of students taking media, film and tv studies has risen by over 250 per cent; while the proportion taking Physical Education and Psychology has doubled. Meanwhile, such subjects as Physics and Chemistry have slipped.

Now, I find this very strange. It seems that examining boards are not standardizing the grading across subjects. All that is necessary to correct for this is to ensure that a student of known ability would perform at the same grade across all subjects, assuming equal effort in each. An A grade in Film Studies, should be just as hard to get as an A grade in Physics. If it isn't, then more credit should be given to students who study harder subjects. Either the exam grading systems must change to reflect these inherent differences in ease of subject - or the way exams are regarded by Universities should change.

Indeed, there are signs that Universities are making moves in the right direction. Both Cambridge University and the London School of Economics have published a list of subjects that they consider too easy = and indicated that they will not accept anyone who studies more than one of them, out of their subject offering.

If it is indeed so, that a Biologist with a C is better than a Sociologist with a B, then Universities should begin to decline Sociologists with a B in preference for Biologists with a C. Perhaps then their student body will begin to reflect the best of the applicants, rather than the most adept at choosing cushy subjects.

I don't know if it was just my school, or not, but this phenomenon was easily observable among the students there. The pupils of exclusively Arts subjects were generally less bright than the students of Science subjects. It didn't take a large study to see this: it was immediately evident.

My question is: is this a global phenomenon? Is it just UK exams that reflect this bias, with Science exams being inherently tougher than Arts exams? How about your country? Do you think Arts students seem less bright than Science students? Are Arts exams easier?

Comments please.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The Gifted Education Programme is a failure.

The Gifted Education Programme, of Singapore, is a failure. I shall explain and detail why, in this post, although I have addressed the issues piecemeal in other posts over the years.

The Gifted Education Programme, or GEP, as it is known, for short, in Singapore, is a government programme supposedly intended to support the education of gifted students. I say, "supposedly" because our experience of them, and that of others we know, is that they don't seem to know what support actually means.

We became involved with the Gifted Education Programme (GEP), shortly after Ainan passed his O level Chemistry at an unprecedented seven years and one month old. This world record was enough to get their attention. Interestingly, when we had tried to approach his school about his special educational needs, prior to his O level exam, they essentially snubbed us, not taking our word for it. Their attitude soon changed once we had a piece of paper to prove it: how Singaporean.

Anyway, the Gifted Education Programme/GEP spoke a lot about what they could do for Ainan. Their first interest was to assess him. This turned out to be a long and rather involved process, putting him through a series of interviews with scientists, a psychologist and various tests. It took months to satisfy them - despite his O level - that there was a need to intervene.

When, finally, they were satisfied that a need was revealed, their offerings were remarkably slight. The only thing we asked for was laboratory access so that he could gain practical experience of Chemistry. However, this was the one thing that they seemed reluctant to provide in any meaningful way. They arranged for five sessions at Raffles Junior College and Raffles Institution. That was a help and a good start, however, at the end of it, they told us that this was "Resource intensive" and that they were not prepared to support ongoing laboratory work for him, because there were "No funds available."

Privately, we arranged access to some Chemistry workshops with RJC. When the GEP heard about it, they seemed to put a stop to it, for after the Gifted Education Programme had contacted them, Raffles Junior College told us that they were no longer able to help. They declined to give a reason, despite the fact that they had made the offer of help, themselves.

This was our first concrete indication that, far from actually helping Ainan, that the GEP may actually be interfering with his opportunities.

Interestingly, when we discussed our experience with the mother of another gifted child, she said she had had very similar experiences. Every time she let them know what she was doing to nurture her child's gift, the Gifted Education Programme tried to discourage her, or interfere in some way. So, our experience was not unique. Incidentally, she eventually left Singapore, in frustration, at the Gifted Education Programme, and is now living in another country, with her gifted son. No doubt that is beneficial to Singapore's long term potential.

The Gifted Education Programme, after much prodding, arranged for Ainan to attend NUS (National University of Singapore) High School for Maths and Science, at the age of 7. Again, the process of admission was a long one, which seemed to take forever. Eventually, however, they offered him ONE HOUR a week, at NUS High. We were rather shocked at this, since it seemed too little to actually feed his interest. However, we kept an open mind and brought him along for the first couple of weeks.

It was a great disappointment. They had assigned him to a class and a level that he had already studied. In his first two weeks there he told me that there was ONLY ONE fact that he didn't already know. That is one single piece of information encapsulated in a few words. We quickly came to the conclusion that this was a waste of time and money. It wasn't worth the taxi fare there and back again.

We explained our observations to the Gifted Education Programme. They were not very understanding. The GEP Officer said: "Oh, it is not about what he can learn, it is all about the other things." It turned out that she was referring to the social side. It seems that the GEP considers that the greatest need for a gifted child is a social club. He wasn't supposed to be there to learn anything. He was supposed to be there to make friends and get used to being around older people.

Now, that is all very well...but hang on a minute, isn't it supposed to be a Gifted EDUCATION Programme? Ainan had a need to learn, and this wasn't being met.

We asked for various things, all of which were denied us. We asked for him to go on a broad spectrum O level programme (at 7) covering all the other subjects that he hadn't yet studied, in combination with an A level in Chemistry. They denied this, saying: "He hasn't proven himself in the other subjects."

I thought this was very silly. Basically, they were saying: "We don't believe he can get an O level in the other subjects, until he has already got an O level in them. At that moment, we will believe it, then he can have an O level course, which he will no longer need."

Ainan was already the youngest O level holder in the world. If he could do that, he could do the other subjects too. It seemed a "no-brainer" - but not to the GEP no-brains, it seems.

We then asked if he could attend a broad range of courses at NUS High, to get a feel for them and see which he would like.

They wouldn't allow it.

I suggested he could just sit on the courses and audit them.

They wouldn't allow it.

I asked if he could have a Chemistry practical class at NUS High, for that was his real need.

They wouldn't allow it. Not only that but the GEP Officer, Yogini Yogarajah, said: "Why don't you find a private school and pay for it yourself."

We had already researched that, and had quotes of 600 dollars per session. Clearly, the private option was out of the question.

In our final meeting with the GEP/Gifted Education Programme, we tried to explain to the Gifted Branch Officers present that Ainan had a very practical learning style and that he needed to actually DO Chemistry, to learn it properly.

Yogini Yogarajah said: "Oh, we at the Gifted Branch think learning style is very important."

"Well, can we have practical classes, for Ainan, then, because I have just told you he has a very practical learning style."

"Oh, that's not good enough for us.", she said, with the utmost dismissiveness.

That was too much for me. She was dismissing the input from the parents - who, of course, know Ainan about a hundred thousand times better than the Gifted Education Programme ever could. Apparently, such inside knowledge, from people who really know a child, is "Not good enough for us."

I rose, said: "We will never speak again." and left.

I kept my word. We have never spoken to the GEP since, nor do we intend to. They are not what they purport to be. They are extremely slow in responding. They refuse to make funds available to support a gifted child's special needs. They attempt to block initiatives that would help the child. They refuse to take on board the views of the parents. They offer provision which is so abstemious that it makes no difference at all to the growth of the child. That which is most essential to the child is that which they precisely deny the child.

The account above is a very brief one. It leaves out detail on occasions on which the GEP made difficulties for us, in our attempts to provide the right education for Ainan. However, it does give some idea of the ways in which the Gifted Education Programme is not truly functioning as an education programme.

There is one way in which it is functioning, however. At our final meeting with the GEP, Yogini Yogarajah had a very thick folder in her hands, which she would not let us see. Apparently, it contained reports on Ainan written by everyone in the education system who had had contact with him. It transpires that all who had contact with him were under instructions to write a report on their observations of him. I found this really spooky. The Gifted Education Programme does not provide a suitable education for the gifted. However, it does keep gifted children under close observation and writes reams of reports about them. You can come to your own conclusions about what this means. Personally, I found their emphasis on observation over educational provision to be really quite perturbing. It seemed that their true intentions were rather different from their expressed ones.

One of my questions to Yogini Yogarajah and her Gifted Branch colleagues that last day, was: "What is the Gifted Education Programme for?" Yogini tried to twist the meaning of my question and rephrase it to make it seem less critical of her and her people, but I reiterated my question unchanged. Our year or so with the Gifted Education Programme had left me genuinely puzzled about what it was actually for. I could no longer see it as an educational support initiative for the gifted, because it wasn't really performing as one. I was left with a big question mark in my mind about what was the actual, real purpose of the Gifted Education Programme. I was left to conclude that either it had another (unstated) purpose, which it may well be succeeding in, or that the Gifted Education Programme was failing in its (stated) purpose of supporting the educational needs of gifted children.

Ainan is just one scientifically gifted child. Singapore, through the Gifted Education Programme, had shown itself unable to cope with the needs of just one child. One of the repeated phrases we heard on Yogini's lips was: "If we do it for your child, they will all want it." The justification, for doing basically nothing, was that if Ainan was provided with the laboratory access he needed to continue to learn science, that it would create a stampede of parents also wanting the same for their children.

I can just see it now: Singapore is clearly overwhelmed with scientific prodigies. Clearly, in Yogini's mind, there are millions of them out there, just waiting to "all want it". I found her remarks absurd. Singapore has only one child like Ainan, gifted in this particular way. There would have been no stampede of other parents demanding the same for their child. All that was happening here, was that the Gifted Education Programme were finding reasons for doing nothing to help.

To my mind, that means that the Gifted Education Programme is NOT an education programme. It is something else. What else, I don't know, but they certainly don't do even the obvious things to help a child like Ainan.

If they really have no funds available, I could make a suggestion for making funds available. They should fire the Branch Officers assigned to us...because they were completely unable to listen to us. They shouldn't work for an education programme at all. The money saved through not paying their salaries would liberate resources for many gifted children.

Better still: why not sack the entire department, then there would be plenty of resources for Singapore's gifted. All that would be needed is one person to co-ordinate the activities.

So, my advice regarding the Gifted Education Programme is not to expect much from them. In fact, you might be a lot happier not to become involved with them at all in the first place. We could have done without the experience we went through with them. I expect you can too, if you have a gifted child.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

A yearning for snow.

My children have never seen snow. They have never known its white mystery falling in silence. They have never felt its surprising chill against the skin, what looks so soft, and welcoming, biting, hard.

When Ainan went to England, before Fintan was born, he said that he wanted to see snow. In all the time he was there, it never snowed once. He left England, as he had arrived: without seeing a single crystal of snow fall.

I am reminded of this, today, because, back in England, they are having the most extreme snowfall for the past 18 years. There are up to 12 inches of snowfall in parts of England, including the South-East, where it is usually less likely to fall. People are snowbound, unable to move from their homes. The roads are impassable. Only children would find it wonderful - but my children are, once more, not there to see it.

I stood before a world map, a couple of weeks ago, with Fintan, and asked him where in the world he would like to go. He looked at it, for the briefest time, quickly deciding what he wanted from the world and pointed at the map. His fingertip touched Greenland.

"It is very cold there, Fintan."

He said nothing, but looked further at the map.

Then he pointed again, this time his fingertip touched Antartica.

"I want to go there.", he said, with a sense of yearning in his eyes.

I didn't have the heart to tell him how difficult it was to visit such places, beautiful though they would be.

"One day, Fintan, one day..."

He continued to look at the map, for some while, his eyes switching between Greenland and Antartica, drinking in their whiteness (for the map had made it clear that they were lands of ice and snow).

I see in Fintan's yearning and Ainan's, too, a need to know the unknown, to experience the unexperienced. They both share this characteristic. Fintan didn't want to go anywhere "normal". He had known normal all his life. He had lived at the Equator and in Europe. He didn't want such places and such climates. He wanted a world of extremes, of brutal cold and devilish ice and the silence of eternally falling snow. That, for him, held magic.

I left him with the map, having learnt something. I thought it revealing that both brothers should share the same aspiration, though we had never spoken of the subject, together and I don't think they had either. They had independently come to the same view of what would make an interesting place to be.

One day, I hope to show them snow. One day, I hope to see them play in its white wonder and witness the silence of its fall.

I know one thing for sure: it won't happen if we stay in Singapore!

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The World's Cleverest Child and Me, Channel 4.

"The World's Cleverest Child and Me", on Channel 4, in the UK, is a British TV documentary featuring London-Irish presenter Mark Dolan. It is also a show in which Ainan appeared. (Adora Svitak and Adi Putra are also featured).

Now, documentary TV shows are funny things. They purport to capture the truth of their subjects but, what is not known to the general public, is that the tv crew have very little time in which to do this. In both the documentaries in which Ainan has appeared: "Superhuman Genius" on ITV1, in the UK (featuring Kim Peek and Akiane, as well as Ainan among others) and "The World's Cleverest Child and Me", the documentary team only had TWO days of filming to capture the essence of the story and their subject.

Think about that. The TV crew are supposed to be able to capture the essence of a life in just two days. In these two cases, they are also dealing with young children - which makes for another difficulty: that of getting their subjects to relax on camera in the short time that they have.

I haven't seen "The World's Cleverest Child and Me", yet. I don't have firsthand experience of how Mark Dolan, who is billed in other places as a comedian, has approached the matter. Have they shown respect? I don't know. Have they shown insight, into their subjects? I don't know. I will have to wait and see the film. I do know this, though: two days is too short a time to go anywhere near capturing the fullness of the life story of a gifted child of any kind. There is always a lot more to such children than a handful of hours with a tv crew can record. The viewing public doesn't know this, of course. So, I rather think that the impressions we get of documentary subjects are only thin slices of who they are. Most of the nature and character of such subjects will be missed. That is, of course, unless the documentary team have not had to travel far, and their budget can be used on time filming the subject rather than hotel bills and airplane fares (as was the case with Ainan, of course - and all the subjects in "The World's Cleverest Child and Me.")

People I know in England have seen the documentary, however. One of them remarked that, at one point Mark Dolan says that I sent him lots of emails. I find this a strange thing to say, considering that I don't even have an email address for him, at all. On parting, he referred us to his myspace page, which we haven't joined and so can't use to contact him. I will wait to see the documentary, however, before I comment further on the correspondence that never was.

Another comment, which I have actually seen, in an outtake, which I wish to counter, is Mark Dolan's statement that Ainan was rehearsing "for weeks" before they arrived in Singapore, to do the Pi memorization record. Again, this is a strange comment, since Ainan's total time to learn it consisted of brief sessions on most, but not all the days, in a two week period. When I say "brief", I mean that each session was measured in minutes, not hours - and not a lot of minutes at that. Mark Dolan's comment is puzzling because the production team have the video of Ainan's rehearsal period (which they requested that we make). So, he knows exactly how long it took to learn. There should be no need, therefore, to exaggerate the timescale, using an open-ended phrase like "for weeks".

Ainan very much enjoyed the filming, however, even though he is innately quite shy in such a situation. I do feel that more time would have been required, to get a fuller sense of him, though. Again, I will await the documentary to see the end result.

Should anyone wonder how such documentaries come about: well, we get asked to do them. We have had a lot of offers to do documentaries and other tv shows in the past couple of years. It might surprise you to learn that we have actually turned down about eight tv shows in the past twelve months or so. These are shows based all over the world and of various different kinds. We turned them down for many different reasons. I think a project has to seem like a good fit, for us, and for Ainan. So, despite what some people might think, by accepting only two projects out of ten offered, we are being rather moderate in our response to the situation. We are trying to be wise in what we accept - but we are still learning. Perhaps some that we turned down, would have been better than what we accepted. We cannot know. All we can do is make a judgement on whether to participate on the information available to us at the time. Sometimes, we might get it wrong...but we can only do our best.

"The World's Cleverest Child and Me." also featured Adora Svitak, now 11, who is a young writer of fictional stories, from Seattle, and Adi Putra, a mathematically gifted boy, now 10, from Malaysia.

Ainan is shown doing a Pi memorization recitation record. He achieves 518 digits on camera - though subsequently, off camera, when the crew had gone back to England, he did 1102 digits! Nevertheless, 518 digits of Pi is, according the Pi World Ranking List, a World Age Record for Pi recitation (no other child under 16 has achieved such a feat). It took him 4 minutes to recite them. Ainan is also shown, briefly, at work in the Chemistry lab at Singapore Polytechnic alongside young adults. There is also some more general footage of his life, here, in Singapore.

If you get to see any of the shows, feel free to let us know your thoughts. Did they manage to capture anything of Ainan? How did the rest of the family come across? Did you enjoy it?

Thanks in advance, for your comments, thoughts and feelings.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

On intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

It puzzles me how often the parents of gifted children are assailed with the accusation of being "pushy" parents. I marvel at the essential incomprehension of the gifted situation this reveals. To be brief, it is impossible to push a child to exceed their limits and achieve something that is not in them.

A gifted child is not pushed into being a gifted child. It is an innate condition, as inherent as the colour of their eyes. It is absurd to accuse the parents of somehow creating this situation by being demanding. Yet, so often, the parents of gifted children hear this assumption wielded in their general direction.

There is a failure to understand the need for intrinsic - and not extrinsic - motivation when it comes to a gifted child, particularly a prodigious one. It is absolutely impossible, in my opinion, to create a prodigious child from one who is not naturally given to be so. The mental qualities of such a child are either in the child or not. One particular quality that must be present, if anything worthwhile is to be achieved, is that of intrinsic motivation. By this, I mean that the child must be motivated, of their own accord, to seek understanding of the subject matter of their interest. The drive to learn must come from the child. I see no real possibility of a prodigious child coming out of an extrinsic learning situation, in which the motivation to learn comes from external factors. So, I think it impossible that a parent (the extrinsic factor) could ever drive a child to become prodigious. The child must already be becoming prodigious of their own accord, driven by their own intrinsic motivations and founded on their own inherent abilities.

It is clear that those who accuse the parents of prodigies of being pushy, actually know nothing about prodigies. If they did, they would understand that it is the child, in such a situation, who does the driving.

Ainan often bugs me to do something with him. It is not what you might imagine. It is not bugging me to get him a toy, or play a game with him. He bugs me to get me to sit down with him and teach him science. He nags me to provide him with scientific stimulation. Anyone who had ever witnessed this, would, at once, have a rather different view of the origin of prodigies and gifted children, than is commonly - and wrongly - supposed. The secret of a child's gift, is in the child themselves. Their gift emerges from their own innate nature. It is not imposed on them from without. They are not a "tabula rasa". They have certain gifts and predispositions at birth and these are fostered by the child themselves, if they are truly destined to become something special. The parent can only provide what the child makes clear, by their actions, nature and requests, that they need. The rest, largely, is up to the child themselves. They must have the ability within them, to excel, but they must also have the drive to do so. It must be something that they really want for themselves. It cannot be imposed on them from without.

Thus, the model many people have in their minds of a gifted child moulded by "pushy parents" into becoming something that they otherwise would never have been is utter nonsense. It is, in fact, an impossibility. If the child is not intrinsically motivated to tread the path that has been chosen, there is no way on earth that they are going to be able to do so. Extrinsic motivations are never going to be strong enough to create the kind of child we come to know as a prodigy. Nor, I would suggest, are they strong enough to engender a gifted child of any kind. There is a reason why a child is called "gifted" - and that is because it is as if a special quality has been bestowed on them, at conception. They are in possession of a gift. It is not something that can be imposed from without, by force of will. It is there, or it is not. The child has received a gift, at conception, or they have not.

Rather than continuing to misunderstand the parents of gifted children, society would do better to enquire what those parents need for their children, to give them what they most require, to take them where they should go and become what they should be.

All parents have a great responsibility to the future of our society. I would suggest that the parents of gifted children have a greater responsibility given the potential of their charges. It seems a pity to assail them with misunderstandings instead of trying to help them do the best they can to ensure that the potential of their children, becomes something actual - for the betterment of the child, and of society as a whole.

So, the next time you hear someone speak of pushy parents, remember my words and explain to them that, without intrinsic motivation, a child could never achieve anything worthwhile at all. So, if the child has achieved something, it is because it is in them to do so. It wasn't put there, from without.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)