The Egotist.

I once had the displeasure of teaching a student from China, whose ego outmatched all others I can recall meeting. It was not, note, that he had anything special to feel special about - but that he found it in himself to so highly rate his own thoughts and worth, that no-one else's bore consideration.

He had some contributing factors to his egotism: he was the only child of a rich Chinese family and had lived a spoiled life. Yet, I felt, that did not excuse the irksome behaviour he manifested.

Teaching him was an irritating experience. If, for instance, I had marked his essay and corrected it (which usually meant about three to four corrections per line of text because, like I said, his ego was not matched by any commensurate talent) and had gone on to work with another student, he would shout across the room, soon enough: "HEY, TEACHER!". He would then ask me a question about what I had written on his essay.

I would lift up my head and say: "I am busy right now."

He would look put out that I had dared not come running the moment he demanded it and would look at me stiffly.

He would let me finish with the student I was working with - but then, when I had moved onto another, he would shout again: "Hey, what about this? What does THIS mean?"

This process would go on and would not stop, until I dropped what I was doing, with another student, and came over to attend to his question. It was always something silly - something apparent and obvious if he had just paused to think about it, rather than just demand that his teacher come running.

Then there was another habit of his. If I had corrected something of his, that was wrong, he would quite often argue with me over it. He would try to force me to back down from my view that his understanding of grammar was incorrect and that mine was right. To understand quite how galling this was, you should recognize that he was from the People's Republic of China, and spoke English as a second language and that not well. I, however, am a native speaker of English and it is my first language - and I work with the language professionally. His ego was so inflated that he thought that he understood his second language (one which he was still yet learning) better than I understood my first.

The arguments over language points would go on until I insisted strongly enough that he was wrong and had explained carefully why...then he would fall silent in a resentful sort of way.

Finally, there was another ploy which he would get up to. When he was writing his essays, he would sometimes insert what he thought were mistakes, to see if I picked up on them. I remember one time in particular when he said: "Ah HAH! You didn't see that one! That's wrong!", of his own work.

I looked at it for a moment and then said, quietly, realizing that he had tried to make a deliberate error - and failed: "No, actually, it is right. You can say it that way."

That flummoxed him. He had been accidentally right - having intended to be wrong as a test of my competence. It was bizarre.

I can say, without any doubt at all, that this particular mainland Chinese student was the most annoying student I have ever taught.

(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 privileges of the old.

In Asian societies, traditionally, the old are looked up to - even when they are very short, if you know what I mean. However, do they always deserve this automatic respect? Two days ago, I encountered someone that made me think otherwise.

I was in the queue to get on the morning bus, there being three people in front of me and quite a few behind. Suddenly, someone elbowed me to the left, pushing me to one side, as they thrust forward. I turned to see who it was: to my surprise my eyes alighted on a very elderly woman of, I estimate somewhere between 85 and 95 years old. She looked very fit and spry - but there was something fierce and cold in her face. She didn't look to be a "nice old lady" at all.

I wasn't the only person she pushed out of the way. She pushed past all three people ahead of me, to the front of the queue. All who saw what she had done stared at her - but no-one spoke out. Perhaps they were all mentally making "allowances for her age". Well, I really don't think that any allowance should be made. It was a very simple matter of a rude, ill-mannered, uncouth person who just happened to be elderly.

In the whole incident, the old Chinese lady didn't say a word. She just held her fierce, dark expression on her face and kind of dared anyone to challenge her.

The event had rather an effect on me. Why, I wondered, should such behaviour be allowed, by all in the queue, simply because she was old? What she was doing broke all the social rules - and it wasn't as if she was frail, or anything: she was fit, aggressive and had physically pushed everyone out of the way. Here was an elderly person abusing her status as an old person. She was taking advantage of the Asian tendency to revere the old - to actually misbehave. I wasn't impressed. Her action made me reflect that, perhaps the elderly don't deserve the respect they are automatically given. They don't, necessarily, deserve any more respect than anyone else. They are, most definitely, not certain to be any better than anyone else - and therefore not deserving of a different attitude towards them.

Then again, I wondered, sometime later: what kind of life made this old lady so fierce, so aggressive and so unpleasant to her fellow man? Perhaps far from respecting her, we should pity her the kind of life that engenders the kind of attitude she showed. Surely, there was something wrong with her.

However, her age did save her from my rebuke. Had she been younger, I would have remonstrated with her for the elbow and insisted on her return to the back of the queue. The sight of her silver hair shocked me into silence. I was too busy being surprised to actually do anything about her rudeness.

The next time, however, I would probably speak up - and resist - for it wouldn't be a surprise anymore. It would just be one more rude elderly person who should know better.

(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 Art of Learning Patience.

Today, I was with my two younger sons in a food court. These are typically Singaporean food outlets at which a large range of different stalls offer various foods and drinks of several cuisines. They are usually laid out with the food stalls on the periphery - as this one was - with seating in the central area.

"What do you want?", I asked my three year old son, Tiarnan.

"Green tea.", he said, his little finger pointing out the canned drink in question. This is a popular drink in Singapore and consists of brewed green tea with sugar added.

Fintan also indicated the tea.

Finding a table was hard. The first table we went to was empty barring a single girl.

"Can we sit here?" I asked.

"Taken." she said, of the empty chairs.

I didn't believe her. You see, before she answered she took a long appraising look at my young children and seemed to decide that they wouldn't make good, proximate, company.

After some hunting, we found someone who agreed to let Tiarnan and Fintan (five) sit at their table.

I left them with the green teas, cups full of ice - on a mission to buy a local dessert.

The queue was quite long at the dessert stall. So it was about ten minutes before I was served. As I waited, I looked over regularly at my two boys, some twenty five metres away. They seemed quite happy. They spent most of the time facing each other, as if in conversation. Occasionally, I saw them toy with their cups. I thought them to be enjoying their drinks. It was notable that they did NOT run around, nor unsettle the people next to them.

After perhaps a dozen minutes I returned and sat down with the dessert in hand.

Fintan looked sidelong at me and picked up his can of green tea - and tilted it subtly towards me so that I might see its top.

It hadn't been opened. I looked across at Tiarnan's: neither had his. I had forgotten to open their cans for them!

I was at once struck with the maturity and control with which they had sat so long waiting for me to return, considering that neither of them had actually had a drink to nurse during that time. I felt a flash of unexpected parental pride. I was impressed. It was a little thing - but, given their ages: three and five, I really didn't expect them to have been able to sit so patiently, so long, without anything to drink or to do, other than to talk to each other. Clearly, they have found ways of conversing that fill the time more than adequately.

I opened the cans and let them enjoy them, as I smiled a little to myself. It is funny how, even at the most unexpected moments, one's children can be surprising - even if in ways that might be overlooked, if one wasn't attentive to them.

Thank you, Tiarnan and Fintan, for having learnt enough of the art of patience, to have waited for me so long.

(By the way, no one ever did sit down at the "taken" table I had first enquired at - at least not in the time we were there.)

(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.)