Where are all the world class writers?

This post is an addendum to the one before. It asks a simple question: if, as has been claimed by MM Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporeans have been educated in English to the highest of world class standards, where are all the great Singaporean writers? With a command of English, at the highest level, often comes a propensity, need and ability to write. This frequently manifests in novels, plays, poems, or other creative forms. The question is: given the highest world class education in English, where are all the Singaporean writers of global standing?

The fact is, there are no Singaporean writers of global reputation: not even one. Catherine Lim is the writer who comes closest to having an international reputation - but even she really just has a local reputation with a smidgeon of regional awareness thrown in. She is not truly international.

If Singaporeans really were being equipped with the highest level of English, Singapore would have many famed writers. It doesn't. The only conclusion is that these "highest world class English speakers" don't really exist.

Often it is said to excuse this situation that Singapore is "too small" to have any such writers. Well, let us look at the issue of size. Singapore has a population of around 4.6 to 4.7 million people according to recent newspaper articles. Ireland has a population of 4.1 million - so it is a comparable but smaller country, in terms of population. Does Ireland suffer from the same problem of not producing any writers of international standing?

No. In fact, Ireland has the opposite problem. It produces so many writers of international standing that you would be hard-pressed to read their output in a lifetime. Let us list a few of them to give you an idea: Samuel Beckett (Nobel Prize Winner and Dramatist); Brendan Behan (playwright and novelist); Eoin Colfer (writer of a popular children's book series); Roddy Doyle (novelist); Brian Friel (playwright); F. Scott Fitzgerald (Irish American and writer of the Great Gatsby); Oliver Goldsmith (novelist and playwright); Lady Augusta Gregory (playwright and founder of the Abbey Theatre), Seamus Heaney (Nobel Prize Winner); Neil Jordan (author, film director); James Joyce (novelist); Frank McCourt (writer and teacher); Edna O'Brien (novelist); George Bernard Shaw (playwright and novelist); Richard Brinsley Sheridan (playwright); Laurence Sterne (novelist, author of Tristram Shandy); Bram Stoker (author of Dracula); John Millington Synge (dramatist); Dylan Thomas (poet); William Trevor (novelist); Oscar Wilde (novelist, poet, satirist); William Butler Yeats (poet and Nobel Prize Winner).

Now that list is not exhaustive: it is barely a beginning of the great writers that have come out of little Ireland. Note that there are three Nobel Prize Winners amongst these ones, alone. Singapore has never had a Nobel Prize Winner in any category. Thus, it is clear that whatever class of English is truly being taught in Singapore, it is not world class - for, if it was, one would expect a similar number of authors of renown from Singapore, as Ireland (a SMALLER country in terms of population) actually produces. Yet, Singapore doesn't have even one of similar standing.

Singapore has the people. It has the financial resources. It lacks however the self-knowledge to see that certain areas need improving. Should it begin to see itself as it actually is - and not as it pretends to itself to actually be - then steps could be taken to nurture any glimmers of creative ability in the population, in the hope of seeding writers of the future.

The same argument as above could be applied to any area of creative endeavour: Singapore is not really pulling its weight when compared to other developed countries of a similar population size. Where are the musicians? Where are the artists? Where are the research scientists (creative ones)? All are lacking. All could be there, if the right steps to nurture them were taken.

Singapore has done many things well in the past few decades - but it has done other things very poorly: nurturing creative people is one of those things that have been done poorly (and continue to be so).

Singapore will have truly come into to its own as a fully-fledged creative nation when it too can produce a long list of creative people of renown, in any field.

I look forward to it - but it won't happen without change of the education system, here.

(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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Tiarnan's ancestral instinct

A musical compilation CD was playing today, in the background while my wife, Tiarnan and myself were in the room. The songs came from different parts of the world and different traditions. Tiarnan listened as he played.

Suddenly, an Irish tune came on. I am unsure whether Tiarnan (who is half-Irish but has never been to Ireland), had ever heard any Irish music - certainly he has never heard it in my presence before. His reaction was electric. He stopped what he was doing at once and started jumping about, relatively rhythmically. It was as if he was trying to invent the jig, in response to the sound of one.

Throughout the song, he danced his "jig" which, since he had never seen a jig, was not actually one, but definitely the intent to dance was there. His excitement was beautiful to witness. His smile was broad, his movements fast and energized. Truly, the Irish music seemed to have him under its spell.

He danced on until the very last note - and then he stopped. Once the Irish tune ceased, so did his dancing - for the song that followed was not from Ireland. Sweetly, he stood still and clapped the recorded musicians, once they fell silent, applauding their efforts.

This made me wonder about why he danced to such music. It was as if there was in him some ancestral instinct, some recognition of where he had come from and who he was. At least, so the timing of his actions tell. It could, of course, just be that the Irish dance music is naturally energizing and exciting and he picked up on that. However, he did not dance to any non-Irish tune. Furthermore, it is rather poetic to think that he might instinctively recognize his origins in the music - that it might call to something deep within him. Anyone who had seen the way he had danced to it, would wonder too at his connection to the music and the land of Ireland.

It looks like I will have to play him some more Irish dance music. I think we have ourselves a little leprachaun in the house - or half of one, anyway.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, 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, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The origins of the Irish people

My post on “Irish roots go deep into History” attracted one very intense response from a man who argued against it. I am not going to post his remark, because it is so misleading. He had the temerity to tell me which paper I had supposedly taken the data from – a completely different paper, by different authors, that completely omitted the evidence that the authors of the paper I had referred to, had uncovered. He seemed to think I was either misreading what I had supposedly read, or misrepresenting it: not so, to both.

The paper I referenced in my article is called: Y-Chromosome Variation and Irish Origins, published in Nature, by Dr. Emmeline W. Hill, Dr. Mark A. Jobling and Dr. Daniel G. Bradley. The work was done at Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland, by the Department of Genetics, there.

The commenter stated that the Irish were of Medieval origins. This is, in fact, an old misconception that was formed without knowledge of the Haplogroup 1 distributions and what they imply. His view cannot explain why there is a gradient of Haplogroup 1 across Europe. It cannot explain why this most ancient of DNA is so dominant in Western Ireland. The only conclusion is that the Irish are descended of the pre-Neolithic hunters who lived in Europe before the farmers came from the South-East. Were this not so, there would be no way to explain why Irish people bear the pre-Neolithic DNA, Haplogroup 1, in such a high proportion (up to 98.3 % of them in Western Ireland).

So, my post, "Irish roots go deep into history." stands uncorrected. Every statement made in it is justified by the study of Dr. Emmeline Hill and colleagues, above.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Irish roots go deep into History

How old are the Irish? By this I do not mean how old an individual Irish man or woman is, but how old the race is.

From time, to time, I have wondered about the origin of the Irish: what makes them distinct from other Europeans - indeed, are they distinct from them?

To look at, an Irishman is very easily picked out, if you know what to look for. The fact that there is a particular typical appearance suggests a unique set of genes which distinguish them from the other nationalities and races of the world. I have always thought this, by observation alone.

I have also opined, to others that, as an Irishman, I was of an older race than the Europeans to whom I spoke. I don't know why I felt this, I just did. They, of course, shrugged off, or laughed off the suggestion, depending on personality - and one, in particular, argued vehemently against it for a good twenty minutes, as if personally offended by the idea that the Irish might be of more antique stock than other Europeans.

The funny thing is, I was right and all those who laughed, scoffed, shrugged off or argued against me, were wrong. The Irish are the oldest race in Europe according to recent genetic research.

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin completed a genetic map of 200 Irish people and compared the Irish samples to over 8,000 other samples from around Europe. What they found stunned them and overturned all the ideas people had had about the Irish (except for me and mine I might add). The genetic testing proved that Irish people with Gaelic surnames (like my family, for Cawley is a rewrite of a Gaelic name), from the West of Ireland (where we are from) are NOT descended from the same group of people who populated the rest of Europe. In fact, the genetic testing proves that these Irish people - true Irish, if you like - are descendants of a far older race - of the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers before the farmers came from the South-East of Europe. The Irish are, indeed, an ancient race - the oldest in the Caucasian world. The Irish are a remnant of the pre-Neolithic hunters that existed before the agricultural revolution swept the world bringing new ways, and new genes with it. The thinking is that the invasion of large numbers of agricultural people from the South East pushed the original hunters (who for economic reasons are necessarily much smaller in numbers) to the margins of the world. They found shelter in the chilly, unwelcoming West of Ireland, where they lived in genetic isolation from the rest of the world for the next ten thousand years. You see an Irishman of today, from the West of Ireland, which had little or no contact with the rest of the world (and if you ever go there you would see the same forces at work today), is an inheritor of an ancient genetic lineage. His (or her) genes are not the ones found in the rest of the farmer descended Europeans, but are those of Ancient man. They have the genetic makeup of Stone Age Hunters. At the very latest these would have been Early Mesolithic hunters - but the work suggests an origin of "over 10,000 years ago" - which is outside the Mesolithic and would, I suppose, put it into the Upper Paleolithic (the period of 30,000 B.C to 10,000 BC)

The marker used in the study is quite distinct and this research is not in the least controversial. The researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, looked for Haplogroup 1, which is a genetic marker present in the oldest group of humans to ever enter Europe. Their genetic map was telling. They discovered a gradient of Haplogroup 1 throughout Europe, the lowest prevalence being in Turkey, at only 1.8 %, showing that the Turks have very little genetic influence from the most ancient of men. The highest prevalence of Haplogroup 1 is found in the West of Ireland with prevalences reaching as high as 98.3 % of all Irish men carrying the gene, in Connaught. This means that these true Irish men are derived almost entirely from Stone Age stock, with almost no admixture of more recent genetic lineages from other races/areas of mankind. This result could only have happened under conditions of extreme and persistent genetic isolation over a ten thousand year period. It is astonishing, really, when you think about it - but that is what happened to the Irish: isolated from the rest of the world, for ten millenia (at least in the West of Ireland). The results, however, are very interesting - for it means that the Irish have preserved, in their blood, the genetic inheritance of the Stone Age (Middle and Old Stone Age) hunters.

The Haplogroup 1 is present on the Y chromosome inherited by males from the father. The average prevalence of Haplogroup 1 across the whole of Ireland was 78.1% - but this diluted number includes those descended from the British, Scottish and Normans/Vikings - who are almost exclusively present in the East of Ireland. Those descended from Irish alone show the Stone Age marker at almost 100% prevalence.

It is funny that what I had always felt to be the case, turns out to be true. The Irish are truly a race apart - and older, more ancient than any other Caucasian group, you will ever meet.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

On the genetic inheritance of gift

My father was an enormously strong man, in his youth. His strength would have been legendary, had he lived in earlier days, that lauded such things. As it was, however, he found daily uses for his strength, in the way he went about tasks. He was a man who could lift furniture upstairs, on his own. He had no need of the help of another. He could move objects that would be unmovable, at all, to a typical man, with casual ease. Many a time, as a child, I would wonder at the strength he applied to his daily tasks, in the garden or about the house. Unseen by me, he would apply his strength too, in his business – but for privacy’s sake, I am not going to say what that business was. That his strength was an asset to him, even in modern life, is clear, and in some ways, had he not been strong, he would not have been the success he became (for reasons I will leave undescribed, for they would tell too much about his life – and that wouldn’t be fair).

Now he was an enormously strong man – and I inherited some of that from him, for I have always been a strong man – stronger than most men – yet, not as strong as him, I think. The strength has been handed down to me, somewhat diluted.

I look at my sons, now, in particular, Ainan, and no longer see the strength there, at all. You would never guess, looking at Ainan, that his grandfather was of great physical strength. Ainan does not possess the build that promises a large musculature to come: his is the slightness of the eternal academic, not the strength of a fearsome warrior of old, as, no doubt, our forebears in the old celtic world, were.

So, why do I discuss this? Well, looking at Ainan today, in relation to me, I felt our disparity in strength, and remembered my father’s greater strength before me. Is this, then, the destiny of all genetic gift? Is it to be lost little by little, generation by generation, until all is diluted to nothing? Looking at the decline in strength from grandfather, to father, to son, it might seem so, but all, as usual, is not what it seems.

If we look wider than a single line, we see a different story. I have three brothers, two of whom are stronger than me. I am the shortest male in my family, (though six foot tall) but not the lightest, though the two I estimate to be stronger than me, are both heavier and taller than I am.

My father’s genes have spread wide and each of his children carry half of them. He bore gifts of the mind and gifts of the body – for his mind is good, very good – and his body, in terms of strength, in particular, was most well equipped.

Looking at my brothers, I can see that my father’s qualities of mind appear in them in various admixtures – and so too his strength, in various proportions. I don’t know how many genes are involved in the gifts of the mind and the body – but we each have half of them. It seems, from observation, that there must, for strength, be more than one gene involved – for one can see a gradation across the sons: from quite strong, to strong to very strong to ferociously strong.

My father’s gift of strength lives on – and it is possible that one of his sons is stronger than him, in one way – for one son is six inches taller than his father, allowing him an advantage of scale, even if, for his size, he is weaker.

So, too, is it with my children. Ainan missed out on the gift of strength, it seems – but his brother Fintan did not. Fintan is thickset, well-muscled and, like all Cawleys, stronger than you would estimate. So my own gift of strength has not been lost – it is just not evenly distributed amongst my sons.

I do not know whether Fintan will be as strong as me, or whether, like one of my father’s sons, stronger than his father – but that he has inherited greater than common strength is clear. So, the gift goes on.

I would think it is like this with all genetic gifts. Looking both wide and deep, one will see that the gifts pass into one branch of the family, but miss others – and then further branch again, passing into some lines and not others and so on, forever. Nothing will be truly lost as long as one rule is adhered to: have several children – so that each may bear half the genes and so at least half of each gift, onwards.

I ponder this question because Ainan has certain mental gifts which were evident in my childhood and, no doubt, were anyone around to watch, in my father’s before him: how many more generations can this continue?

The answer is, I think, forever – as long as each generation has enough children so that some – well, at least one, - expresses the gift in question and may pass it on.

As it is in our family, so it is in yours. Whatever gifts you have in you, may be passed down – you just need to have a kid or three. Don’t worry that some have it and some don’t – (or some have more and others have less) because all bear some of it, onwards.

Now all I have to hope for is that I become a grandfather, one day – and watch the story begin to unfold again. There would be satisfaction in seeing that genetic continuity at work. I only hope my children want to have children when they grow up. We will see.

(I should add that even my father is not the strongest man in family legend – there were much larger and stronger men, still, in our background. Looked at physically, therefore, there is evidence of decline in strength over many generations, I would say. (In the direct line, there is decline…but the genes spread wide and are around somewhere). Once, it seems, my forebears had a use for such strength – otherwise they would not have evolved to be so strong, I would think. Looking at the history of the area and of the family, I would say a lot of that would have something to do with the war-torn history of the Land of Ireland, in times, before the gun, when strength was a man’s greatest defence – and offence, too, I might add.)

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three and Tiarnan, thirteen 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 adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)