Singapore's experience of the gifted

I came across a strange criticism on the internet, recently, regarding Singapore that I wish to comment on. This commenter - who generally came across as more than a little rabid - said that Singapore had little experience of the gifted - because it had only 4 million people...so basically what would they know?

I thought this comment very interesting for what it revealed about the limited understanding of giftedness of the commenter. Even profound gift at its theoretical prevalance of one in a million would be present in a population of four million. Yet, profound gift is actually more common than its theoretical prevalence - several times more common, at least. Therefore gifts of all dimensions would be present in a population of "only 4 million". Then again there is the fact that Singapore's IQ curve is not centred on 98 like the US (it was an American commenting owing to cultural references made by him or her), or 100 like the UK - but on 104. This is significant. It means that the gifted will, if the curve is otherwise as the IQ curves of other countries are, be much more common, because of the shift to the right of the curve. This means that Singapore will have proportionately MORE gifted people in its "only 4 million" population, than expected.

That, however, is just the beginning of the issue. For not only will more gifted people be present in the Singaporean population - but, culturally, more is done to meet their needs and become aware of those needs. You see, Singapore has a dedicated branch of the Ministry of Education catering solely to gifted children: The Gifted Education Branch. Their sole purpose is to understand and enable gifted children to become what they may. This is a government that has decided to open doors for gifted children - at least, that is the stated purpose of the organization and we are only just beginning to experience the reality of what they can actually achieve - a matter on which we keep an open mind. We will see how effective it really is - but that is another issue. The fact remains that there is a Department dedicated to the gifted - dedicated to understanding them and dedicated to enabling them. Can the USA say that? No. Can the UK say that? No. In fact, off the top of my head I know of no other country which can say that they have a dedicated branch of government devoted to the gifted. That says something. Does it say this country has "Little or no experience of the gifted"...err, no. On the contrary, it says that this country has more experience of the gifted than is usual - much more.

In a country that ignores its gifted and their needs - which appears to be the case at a central government level in not only the US and the UK but probably most, if not all, developed economies - that country will have little knowledge and experience of the gifted - for they are not looking at them as a constituency that needs individual attention; they are not thinking of their nature or their needs - and so they will not know of them. In short, they will be blind to the gifted within them, for they have never looked to see them. That, in fact, is a country which has "little or no experience of the gifted". Oddly, that situation pertains to the very country in which the commenter resides - and not the one that he criticizes.

His argument was basically that a country like Singapore, that had so few people, could not possibly know what a gifted child was - because they didn't have enough people to have any. Statistically, that is nonsense, of course - since four million is more than enough to encompass the variety of human types there are - and to do so amply if the IQ curve is actually centred on a higher than usual point, which it is, at 104.

That Singapore will have fewer gifted children, numerically, than a country almost two orders of magnitude greater in size is obvious - but that it would lack experience of the gifted simply because the other had more of them, is lacking in sense.

Singapore is a country without natural resources. Its only resource is its people. It is this background against which one can understand its wish to understand and cater for the gifted within: for those children are the greatest resource they have.

Singapore knows this; none of the other countries I have mentioned does. So who, then, has "little or no experience of the gifted."?

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and four months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, fourteen 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, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)

Singapore's IQ distribution and giftedness

I have just re-read my post on Ainan going to Raffles Institution, yesterday and, on doing so, I realized that I had made an error in my analysis. I have underestimated the number of gifted students who would be at Raffles.

How have I done this? Well, I realize, now, that I had made the assumption, in my statement that 1 in 44 people will be moderately gifted (IQ 130 or more), that the distribution was a normal one about an IQ of 100: as is the standard model of IQ. So, this is right, right? Wrong.

You see, the mean IQ in Singapore is, according to IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002), 104, NOT 100. This means that the distribution of IQs in Singapore is significantly skewed towards the gifted range. Quite simply, there will be more gifted students in the Singaporean population, for its size, than there would be in many other populations of the same size. That is the number of gifted students, per head of population should be higher in Singapore, than many other countries. For instance, the mean IQ of the United Kingdom is 100; that of the United States is 98. Singapore will have notably more gifted students per head of population than these two nations - because a few IQ points shift - amounting to almost half a standard deviation, in relation to the US, will push many more students into the gifted range. This analysis assumes that the shape of the distribution is the same - a normal curve (though in fact it should be trimodal - but normal is the usual model) - about an IQ mean of 104.

(Of course, although Singapore will have more gifted students per head of population than many other nations - including the US and the UK - these nations will have many more gifted students in terms of actual numbers - because they are much larger populations.)

Applying this to Raffles Institution, without detailed analysis, gives me the sense that it is probable that ALL their students are gifted - for they are the top 3% of a population with mean IQ 104, not the top 3% of a population of mean IQ 100, as I had inadvertently assumed.

Not all nations have lower IQs than Singapore. Hong Kong, for instance, has a mean IQ of 107 - indicating that China may become real competition for the West in the future - but that is another story.