"Too many gifted students in the world".

A searcher reached my site today with the terms: "Are there too many gifted students because of pushy parents?". The surfer was from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. I thought their question, of the internet, eminently revealing of all too common attitudes that need to be countered.

Firstly, there is the idea that giftedness is somehow created by "pushy" parents. Personally, I think this is an impossibility. The idea that one could "push" an otherwise ordinary child into becoming gifted is quite extraordinary. It would be a bit like saying that if you dunk your child's head under water long enough they will be able to breathe it. It is really quite silly.

Gifted children are the way they are, largely because of their fortuitous inheritance. The correlation between the IQ of the parents and their children (when they become adults) has been established to be 0.8. This is a very high correlation. It is actually cruel to think that one could "push" a child without such a lucky inheritance into performing as a gifted child can. No measure of demands from the parents are going to raise the ordinary child's IQ above the magical 130 IQ threshold that commonly defines "giftedness".

Then there is another assumption in their search terms that I take issue with: the idea that there are "too many" gifted students. What does this mean? This person seems to think that the world is better off without intelligent children...they seem to hold the view that intelligence is something to be minimized and contained, not encouraged and expanded. To say that a society has "too many" gifted students is a bit like saying that it has "too much money"...for gifted people comprise the intellectual wealth of a nation.

The IQ threshold of 130 that defines the "moderately gifted" is met by one child in 44 in a society with an IQ mean of 100. This means that in a Singaporean class of about 40 students there will be, on average, one moderately gifted child. Is that too many? Would it be worse for the nation were there two such students, or five in the class? I cannot think of any way in which the nation would be worse off, were that so.

Obviously, higher levels of giftedness are much rarer. The profoundly gifted (IQs of 180 or more) are usually thought of as literally one in a million. Would the world be a worse place were they one in 100,000? I cannot believe so. Were they more common, the rate at which uncommonly difficult problems in science and other disciplines were solved, would only increase. Surely, that would be better for the world as a whole.

Giftedness is present in all societies of the world. Yet, it is odd to observe, that it is misunderstood in all of those societies, too. In some societies, it is marginalized, disapproved of, disparaged, in some quarters. This is most peculiar - for the gifted among us, have, historically as a group, built most of the culture, science and technology on which human civilization rests. Are such people to be disregarded or shunned?

Sometimes giftedness is disconcerting for the less well endowed. They feel comfortable in a world filled with people as ordinary as they are. Yet, what they fail to realize is that such a world would be a very much more limited world. Science would come to a halt. Technology would remain static. Doctors would not be sufficiently competent at their jobs to save lives. Books would not be written and libraries would go unfilled. In fact, all the civilized world that we know, would cease to be. Perhaps, were this situation so, people would appreciate what the gifted among them have contributed. Perhaps, only then, would they welcome them (though too late, for they will have gone).

The welcome or otherwise, of the gifted, should not be determined by the ordinary among us, with a "democratic" agenda, of all having to be alike. The welcome should be determined by the gifted themselves. The prevailing culture should be one that affords opportunity to all who are gifted, to fully become what they may be and contribute what they may do. Such a culture does not include the idea of "too many gifted" people - nor the idea of the "pushy parents created them". Such a culture accepts gifted people for what they are - and is happy to have them.

The question is: which cultures are such cultures? My surfer suggests that Australia may not be one of them. How are gifted people welcomed (or otherwise) in your culture? What are the prevailing attitudes to them? Are they seen as "geeks" or "nerds"? Are they marginalized? Are they shunned? Or are they welcomed and valued? I would welcome your comments, views and observations from wherever you are in the world. Thank you.

(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 Amazing Bouncing Apple iPod.

This evening, I saw an Apple iPod, bouncing along the ground. It was being dragged by a young Indian man to whom it was attached. The Apple iPod bounced its way in front of a crowd at a bus-stop near a shopping mall - and an entire row of heads duly turned and tracked the bouncing Apple iPod as it passed them. Tellingly, not a one made a single move to tell the Indian owner of the Apple iPod about his strange tail.

The Apple iPod owner was on the phone, completely oblivious to the rattle of his electronic equipment, as it skipped across the surface of the pavement.

Seeing that none of the perhaps fifty witnesses was going to act, I decided to give chase to the man and tell him of his Apple iPod's imminent destruction.

"Excuse me!", I called, from several metres behind him.

He didn't hear me, but yabbered on in some uninterpretable language on the phone.

"Excuse me!", I called again, to his oblivousness.

He didn't notice.

"EXCUSE ME!", I said, rather more loudly, on the verge of a shout, from about two metres behind him.

He didn't hear a word.

This went on for three more cries.

Finally he turned, rather oddly, to the right and all the way around. This was odd because I was standing to his left - and surely he must have heard that. It was clear that he could only coordinate his body in one direction.

"Yes?", he asked, while pressing his phone still firmly to his ear.

"Do you really want to drag your Apple iPod like that?", I asked, pointing to his electronic tail some metre and a half behind him.

"Oh!", he looked quite startled and then, unexpectedly, in this country of no appreciation for kindnesses done, he said, with some enthusiasm: "Thank you! Thank you!"

He picked up his Apple iPod and walked off ahead of me.

A minute or so later, he turned around again and stared up at me.

"Thank you, sir, thank you!"

Apparently, his thanks was of the lasting kind and he felt the need to repeat himself, the first thanks not being enough.

I found the whole incident rather instructive. You see, this young man with the Apple iPod, managed to drag it past an entire crowded bus-stop full of people...and all they did was stare to their own amusement. Not a one did anything to inform the man of his misfortune. The question that bothers me is: why? Why did no-one - out of perhaps fifty people - actually just tell him what was happening? It would have cost them nothing to do so - but would spare him the cost of a smashed Apple iPod.

I feel that Singapore is one of those countries in which people have not yet learnt to care for one another. If everyone looked out for everyone else and if everyone reached out to help when they had the power to do so, Singapore would be so much a better place than it is. Everyone would be happier and everyone would feel more attached to this nation - it is even likely that EMIGRATION would decline. Yet, it is not so. Singapore is a country in which everyone just sits back and watches another's misfortune without anyone even thinking of intervening to help. It is, therefore, a nation in which entirely preventable unhappiness is allowed to unfold without intervention.

I witnessed this particular incident with the Apple iPod, however, I only read of another incident that it reminds me of. There was a report in the newspapers recently of a young girl who was molested in public. She cried out for help...but despite there being many, many people nearby (as there always is, in ever so crowded Singapore) not a single person stepped forward to help: they all just watched, instead. To my mind this means that those who watched and did nothing, were as much molesters as the person who molested her. You see, in not intervening, they were, to my thinking, complicit in the act: they ALLOWED it to happen. They all, individually, had the power to prevent and bring to an end the molestation - or, at the very least, catch her attacker. All they had to do was step forward and act...but none chose to do so.

Now, I find this collective cowardice and indifference very strange. You see, in Singapore, there is no threat of the molester being armed, as there is in some other countries. In Singapore, there really are no weapons around. The attacker, therefore, is almost certain not to have a weapon of any kind - so what, therefore, is the personal risk to those who intervene? There is none. Yet, despite the fact that there is no risk to the onlookers, they chose just to carry on looking, instead of helping the girl.

Perhaps, matters would improve if the law permitted ALL the onlookers to be charged with complicity in the molestation, for not doing anything about it. Perhaps, then, people would act to help others, when someone was under attack or in distress. Given the way Singaporeans are (ie. indifferent to the fate, lives and safety of all others but themselves) this is the only way to ensure that Singaporeans would ever help each other. It should become a crime not to help another if you have the power to help them. That would solve the problem overnight - it would also provoke a sharp decline in the crime that remains in Singapore (for though crime is low, it is present).

I find it odd that Singaporeans don't understand this simple idea: that we are all in this life, together. We all live and die, together. Therefore, we should all look after each other and make this life as good as can be. We should not live our lives as if no-one else matters and ignore the plight of all around. If we ignore others, they will ignore us - and that is bad for everyone. Today, I did something simple to help another. It cost me nothing but two minutes of my time, which I would have spent anyway, since he and I were walking in the same direction. In other words, it cost me no additional time...all that it cost me was the effort of speaking. Yet, it saved him from a broken Apple iPod, for if he had dragged that around much longer assuredly it would have come to harm.

Yet, it should not have been me, who stepped forward to help him. For many, many people must have seen him dragging his Apple iPod behind him, before I did. He walked past a bus-stop, in front of me, as I got off a bus...so I was among the LAST to see him, at that time. Yet, I was the only one to act.

If Singapore were as I hope it will one day be, there would be many voices telling such a man of his predicament; there would be many people giving chase to the molester - and some giving aid to the girl. Presently, though, Singapore is a country in which it is almost certain that no-one will come forward to help anyone else, under any circumstances. As one poster once observed to me, on this blog: "They will only help someone if there is money in it for them." In other words, this is presently a nation in which you would have to PAY a bystander to help you.

I hope to see an improvement in this kind of behaviour. People must realize that if they give to another, of their time, their support or their kindness, they are also giving an example to many witnesses of a better way to be. The next time, those witnesses may, in turn, give to others...and so a virtuous circle begins and soon the behaviour of helping others is commonplace.

Try it, the next time you see that someone needs help. Reach out and help them. Usually, it will cost you nothing, but it will mean everything to them.

(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.)

Service standards in Singapore's hospitals.

Nursing is all about service: service to one's patients. So, too, is the art of medicine (I use "art" deliberately, because medicine is often surprisingly unscientific): it is about doing what can be done for the patient. The focus should ever be the patient and not what the doctor/nurse wants to do for themselves in that particular moment.

Singapore prides itself on its hospitals. I suppose it does so because it is comparing them to those of its relatively impoverished neighbours. I think this a funny comparison to make, since it tells us nothing about how good, in absolute terms, Singapore's hospitals are.

In the past few days, I have been visiting a Singaporean hospital to attend to someone close to me, who is not well. In doing so, I couldn't help but notice certain tendencies in the way the staff...both doctors and nurses...attended to their patients.

I watched, with some amazement, as the nurses were asked repeatedly for a cup, to pour water into, over the space of several hours. The conversations went a bit like this:

"Could we have a cup please?"

"I'll be back."

Three quarters of an hour passed by...and she didn't come back.

So, we asked two others who were probably nurses, since they were dressed in blue.

"Could we have a cup please?"

"We are doing our rounds.", was the unclear answer.

It wasn't clear what that meant, so we sat and waited for the better part of an hour until it became clear what "we are doing our rounds" meant: it meant "We are not going to get it for you, because we just can't be bothered."

They didn't come back.

This kind of conversation and response went on for some time, more, until, finally, I approached a senior nurse and asked for a cup and explained that no-one had got one, despite being repeatedly asked. She looked away, perhaps ashamed and walked off to a room marked "Pantry" to get one. What I was rather stunned to note was that this Pantry was less than 20 metres from the bed where we had been sat. Thus, in all those hours, not one staff member had been bothered to walk 20 metres to get a cup. Had I known it was there, I would have got it myself.

I learnt my lesson, however. When it came time to find some hot water, I didn't ask any of the staff there for assistance: I went to the pantry myself.

This kind of poor service response carried across to ALL requests to the staff, whatever its nature. "Could we have the results of such and such tests?" Ages would pass - and no results would come, unless reminded. "When is the Doctor coming down?" "Soon", would be the answer. An hour or two would pass and still the Doctor would not have come down. "Is there a room in the hospital to do exercise?" "I will get back to you." A day later, she has not.

Another notable tactic of the staff at this hospital is to pass responsibility: "Oh, I will ask such and such..."; "Such and such does that...". It never occurs to any of them that they, themselves, could complete the task requested immediately, without delay, by simply doing it. Instead, however, they prefer to delegate it to someone else - someone who is not around and by the time they are around, they will have forgotten the request.

After a while, one got the distinct impression that the hospital had a special policy of hiring morons only, for its staff positions. It seemed that simply NO-ONE wanted to do something upon being asked - but would always find a reason to delay doing it, that moment, until, of course, they had forgotten the request - deliberately or otherwise.

Singapore's hospitals are great buildings, but they don't have great staff, is my inevitable conclusion. As always, Singapore is strong on hardware and poor on software - or strong on infrastructure and poor on people. At least, that is the way it seems, if one watches how Singapore works.

The poor service I have observed in a Singaporean hospital is completely unnecessary. It just comes from people being LAZY. They are just too lazy to immediately attend to all matters requested - too lazy to do jobs themselves without delegation. It is time for an inviolable rule to be introduced, into all Singaporean hospitals, to improve service standards: any and all staff members should immediately attend to patient requests, without delegation and without delay, if it is within their power to fulfil that particular request. Were this simple rule implemented being sick in Singapore would become a whole lot better an experience.

The odd thing about all this is that Singaporean hospitals are not even free, as many hospitals in many developed countries are. Yet, the free hospitals I have experience of, offered much better service, than Singaporean hospitals do.

Why is an expensive Singaporean hospital offering poorer service than FREE foreign hospitals?

Perhaps the Minister for Health would like to explain this conundrum. Or perhaps readers have their own views on the situation.

(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 mortality and immortality of authors.

A few weeks ago, I was in the library, in Singapore. Now, for those who have never set foot in one of Singapore's many libraries, I have to point out that it is, typically, a pleasure to do so: Singapore has very good public libraries. They have a wide variety of books and a pleasant environment. It seems to me that quite a lot is invested in public libraries.

I roamed around the library largely at random, noting with the delight of recognition, some of the authors of my childhood reading: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Roald Dahl, Michael Crichton, Frank Herbert...the names danced before me, and brought to mind days on which I had either read their works, or seen films adapted from their works. Then something struck me: they were all dead.

Authors are not typical people in many ways. They live their lives in thought. Some live almost entirely in imagined worlds which they seek to record. Others write of the world as it is, as they lived it. Whichever type of author they are, they share two things in common: firstly, they are all mortal; secondly they are all immortal. By this, I mean that one day they will cease to breathe, to think, to write, but beyond that day, their works will remain to be breathed, thought and read by others. The author dies, the author's work lives on.

All my childhood authors are dead. I don't think that even one of them still lives. Many of the authors I used to read in my twenties are also dead. Those that aren't may no longer be well. Terry Pratchett, for instance, is in the early stages of a type of Alzheimer's disease. It is sobering to realize this. Authors seem, somehow, so alive: in spending time with their thoughts, on the page, it never occurs to one, that they are as fragile as all other humans and will one day pass away.

It is true to say that having children makes one more aware of the way life passes by - people mature and grow old and this happens at quite a fearful pace. Yet, I cannot help but think that the wholesale death of the authors of one's childhood is, in some ways, a stronger reminder of mortality. All those who created the culture of my childhood are dead. Even though their works live on and can still be enjoyed by contemporary readers that doesn't change the fact that there will be no more books written by these people. They are, now, forever silent. Yet, their silence is a strange silence, for it is still possible to revisit the old "conversations" one had with them, by re-reading an old book.

Authors die, but in another sense, they never do. They still populate the libraries of the world and all those that I once read, can still be found in Singapore's libraries. Somehow, that connects my childhood to the adult world I now live in, half a world away from my European origins. The same childhood culture is available here, in Singapore, to be read. Thus it is that, though Singapore could not, in many ways, be more different from the places of my youth, Singapore's children may very well enjoy some of the very same cultural experiences that populated my childhood. Their youthful memories may contain many of the same experiences as my own. Thus, not only do the works of authors of linger on, beyond their lives, but those works tend to diffuse across the world and reach places the authors themselves never visited and never knew.

I don't have the time to read, that I did, as a child. Too many responsibilities intrude on the time that I once had for such things. Yet, it feels comforting to know that parts of my childhood are only a book away. I could, if I wished, re-experience what once I felt, by re-reading some of the authors of my youth. I could sit down, again, with those antique thoughts, and recreate those literary experiences again. At the turning of a page, the decades would fall away, and I would be, once more, an enchanted child, entering a strange imagined world. However, of course, I have changed, and I would read the book differently from the way in which it was first read. I would think the work less polished, for instance. I would see flaws in its construction. I would, perhaps, argue with the way it was written. Yet, if I could set aside that awareness of words, and just read, I may, again, feel as once I felt.

I wonder what those dead authors would feel to know that others still read them, many years after they are gone. Does it warm them to know, that though they die, as all humans do, that their thoughts live on, to be spoken, again, at the reading of their words? Perhaps, they draw comfort in that, when their time comes. Perhaps they understand that part of them will never truly die. Perhaps, in fact, that is why some of them write books in the first place.

(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.)