A scholarship should be unconditional.

A scholarship should be unconditional. By this, I mean, that no requirements should be attached to it, after the award is made. There are very good reasons for this.

Today, we learnt that NTU withdrew the ASEAN Undergraduate Scholarship of David Hartanto Widjaja, the attempted murder-successful suicide of a student at NTU, Singapore. It seems clear that this would have been a primary contributory factor into his fatal decision. He was under so much pressure - and once the scholarship that enabled him to be here at all was withdrawn, he snapped. One life was lost, another harmed. It need not have been. The awarding of a scholarship should not be dependent on performance thereafter. The student was considered good enough at the moment of award, let them be free thereafter to breathe a little and do their work in peace. Then, such tragedies would not happen.

Has no-one given thought to want a scholarship with conditions of performance attached means? It means constant, unrelenting pressure for the students. Such a scholarship is a kind of prison from which there is no escape. The student must always perform, never slacken, never fail, never make a mistake. Such pressure is harmful to any student, too much for some.

I understand that such scholarships have an informal condition that no grade can ever be less than a B (Straits Times source). That seems unnecessary. Students will have good subjects and bad subjects, subjects they like and subjects they don't. In particular, foreign students, as David Widjaja was, may have trouble with English, which would lower their grades unnaturally. They would then be penalized not for lack of subject competence, but for their standard of English. It seems rather harsh.

A scholar is a scholar. Once good enough to secure a scholarship, they should be free to work in their own way. Genuine scholars will pursue their subjects with passion...there is no need to further harrass them over grades. Let them be. Let them live. Otherwise, they might just do what David Hartanto Widjaja did...and throw his life away because NTU thought that he didn't deserve the scholarship they had awarded him.

Think of the situation he was in. He was late in his degree. If withdrawal of his scholarship meant that he could not complete it, all his effort would have been in vain. (I speak of all and anyone in his situation, not knowing his particular circumstances.) He would have had to leave the University without a degree. All would have been lost. Clearly, he thought that all had been and that life was not worth living. In a very, very real way, those who withdrew his scholarship put him in that situation and in that frame of mind. It could be said that they killed him and nearly killed Professor Chan Kap Luk.

Let all future scholarships be unconditional. Let scholars be scholars and have the academic freedom to pursue their interests in their own way without the ever-present demand for grades.

(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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When is a hand big enough?

There was a story, some time ago, distributed by a news agency, based in America, about Ainan. They put together this story without checking any of the facts with us - and so it came out, rather distorted.

The story was a simple one. They said that "boy genius" Ainan was too small for the labs at Nanyang Technological University, and that his hands were not large enough to hold beakers and the like.

Well, it is true that NTU have expressed reservations on Ainan with regards to his size, in their labs. The benches, for instance, are rather tall. Yet, simple measures could be taken to obviate this. A simple platform, for instance.

That, however, is not my concern in this post. My interest is in just how big or small my son's hands are, in relation to what they need to be, for NTU's labs (or any other lab).

Today, quite spontaneously, Ainan measured his hand span. He then set about measuring everyone else's. He asked me what the average span for his age was...and that gave me an idea. How, indeed, did Ainan's hand compare to other children's?

Ainan's handspan measured at 18.5 cm. Now, is this too small for a lab? I checked out a website that detailed the mean size of Canadian students. The data was taken from 2004/5. In this survey the mean span of a TWELVE year old CAUCASIAN boy's hand was 18.52 cm. Thus Ainan's hands, far from being small, as declared in the American article (which didn't check with us), are actually very large for his age. He has the hand size of a Canadian twelve year old boy.

Readers should note that Ainan is not Caucasian - he is Eurasian - so the norms for hand size would be correspondingly smaller. In a Singaporean context, therefore, Ainan's hands are even larger than a twelve year old's would be. He has a teenager's hands.

How do Ainan's hands compare to those of an adult? Well, 19 year old male students in Canada had an average hand span of 20.22 cm. Thus an adult span, as typified by a Canadian, is just 1.7 cm greater than Ainan's.

I found that rather revealing. We have been consistently denied access to labs by certain institutions - on the basis that Ainan would be "too small". Yet, this is an assumption. None of these places actually checked his size. None of them actually measured him against the requirements of the labs in question. They just looked at his age and assumed.

Assumption is not a substitute for thinking - but in many places, it does seem to be used as such.

Ainan's hands are more than large enough to handle the physical requirements of experimental work. They are the hands of an Asian teenager - or a small adult. They are not diminutive hands in the least.

This observation is supported by experience. Ainan has had no trouble manipulating his experimental environment on the eight occasions that he has managed to gain access to labs. He has been able to carry out all experiments without any physical problems at all. He may be smaller than an adult - but he is not so small as to be unable to accomplish all tasks required.

The next time someone questions his suitability based on size, I rather think I will point their way to the Canadian handspan chart. Hopefully, that will make the point.

No longer will I let anyone make the "handy" excuse, that Ainan's hands are too small. They are not.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two 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.)

A quiet trip to NTU, Singapore

Today Ainan enjoyed a quiet trip to the Nanyang Technological University. This is a more relaxed sequel to his first visit, which was a little time-strapped. Our gracious and helpful host was the Head of the Division of Material Sciences, Associate Professor Tim White - a genial man with a flare for communicating science with interest and clarity.

We saw a synthetic chemistry lab - which immediately struck Ainan, with his very sensitive nose, as a most smelly place: he kept clutching his hand to his face. Interestingly, he was able to identify certain types of molecule by their smell.

Tim showed him some of the basic equipment of a synthetic lab, at work: a centrifuge (operating at 10,000 rpm - to which Ainan opined: "That is not fast...a circular saw is faster."; a fume cupboard - and a vacuum apparatus - to extract poisonous fumes. We also saw quite a few chemicals, many of them unpleasant if consumed. Luckily we weren't feeling hungry.

Ainan visited a Transmission Electron Microscope - through which he was able to view atoms in arrays. Yes, you read correctly, Ainan actually had a look at atoms today. The magnification was about six million times. Ainan listened intently as Professor White explained the operations of the device.

Ainan enjoyed making some complex structures of his own, drawing molecules, browsing through abstruse tomes and generally imbibing the nature of a chemical life. He had a great morning.

Our thanks to Associate Professor Tim White for his continued generosity. Ainan much appreciated the visit and the further opportunity it afforded him to come to a concrete understanding of a chemist's working life.

(If you would like to read more 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.)

Ainan visits Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Yesterday, Ainan, seven, was invited by Professor Freddy Boey, to visit the Material Sciences Lab of NTU (Nanyang Technological University), Singapore.

This was Ainan's first trip to a real lab and it gave him an insight into how they conduct their work. As you may know, Material Sciences have a strong relationship to Chemistry and are, in fact, one of Ainan's areas of interest.

Ainan was greeted with warmth from the moment we stepped onto the premises. One of the senior staff said: "I recognize you from the paper!" held out his hand and said: "Do come this way..." Then he led us through the maze of the N4 Material Sciences Lab to Professor Boey's Lab.

The Lab tour took in several - but not all - of the facilities. Ainan was first shown a computer presentation of the work of NTU in the Material Sciences, showing the diversity of their interests. He was asked several questions about what he saw and commented appropriately.

To NTU staff entering the room as Professor Boey spoke, he introduced Ainan, at one point: "Our future Post Doc!". Their curious eyes appraised his elfin, diminutive form with a welcoming smile.

Professor Boey presented Ainan with a welcoming gift from the lab: a silicon wafer, on which integrated circuits would normally have been etched, but on which the name of the lab, the University and its slogan had been etched, that very morning. Ainan accepted this with quiet curiosity - as he did the other gifts that came in a bag - such as customized pens and that essential item for those living in sweltering Singapore: a water bottle with the Material Sciences department inscribed on it. He is going to look quite the student when he returns to his primary school bearing these customized gifts.

Ainan was shown the Biomaterials lab, where biocompatible materials are made. One that struck him as particularly interesting was an image of carbon nanotubes that had been shaped into the logo of NTU. That surprised him. When asked later why, he said: "Because I thought they would be difficult to shape and cut." He was told that they had a method for doing so.

There he was introduced to biocompatible stents and other biomedical devices and shown revolutionary materials for use in replacing blood vessels.

He was shown a Clean Room where delicate work on materials is done. Then he was introduced to an Electron microscope, which he got the chance to use himself. He rather enjoyed scanning a gold coated ant, at 1 micrometre resolution - and viewing the stomata of a leaf, as giant perforations on the screen in front of him.

He was shown the gold thin-film deposition and was asked for a coin, which was promptly coated in gold.

He particularly liked it when Associate Professor Tim White, a mineralogist, showed him the structures he had in his office. Ainan has been interested in structure since he was about three years old and this was a chance to see many interesting crystalline structures in person. His favourite? A yellow model of an orthorhombic crystal.

Once home, I asked him how he rated the day out of 10: "100,000" he said. What had been his favourite part: "The electron microscope."

It was a lovely introduction for him, to the reality of the scientific world - at the kind invitation of Professor Boey. Thanks very much to all the staff at NTU who made us feel welcome and had prepared things for him to see.