Speed Learning Practical Chemistry

Ainan is now studying practical chemistry at Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College. Regular readers will know this. What you won't know, however, is the nature of the course he is undertaking.

Ainan is doing an A level practical course, condensed into six sessions. You read right: six sessions. In six lessons he is to acquire the fundamentals of A level practical skills. This thought gives me pause. I would like to see him free to experiment, over the long term, in practical matters, exploring his deep interests in Chemistry. Yet, the present need and opportunity are for him to acquire the essence of A level Chemistry skills in only a few lessons. You may be wondering how he can do this - so perhaps I should give you a perspective.

Ainan is familiar with the theory of all that he does in the lab. Thus his experiences in the lab are no more than a physical embodiment of what he has already come to understand in theory. In addition to this, he is very physically capable, being a very hands-on kind of boy. He has always been one to build things and create structures and experiments with his hands, at home: thus the demands of practical chemistry, come naturally to him.

I would, however, like to see a long-term opportunity for him to continue to develop his practical lab experience, allowing him to explore the full measure of chemical techniques and develop the deepest expertise. After this initial course is over, we will see what arrangements can be made and might prove necessary.

For those who are not familiar with the A level: it is of an American college level standard (that is the standard typically reached in an American first degree at University).

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and five months, and his gifted brothers, Fintan, three and Tiarnan, fifteen 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. Thanks.)

Ainan's experimental flair: a practical scientist

Yesterday, Ainan took something out of the freezer, and said: "This is super-cooled water, Daddy."

Now, until Ainan first mentioned it to me, a few months ago, I had never heard of super-cooled water. As is becoming increasingly the case, it is Ainan who introduces me to things scientific.

I looked at the water. It was just liquid, like any other water. There didn't appear to be anything special about it. I went about making a cup of tea.

Then Ainan did something magical. He swirled the water in the vessel - and all at once, it turned to ice, as if some Wizard of old had cast a spell.

I had never seen that before in my life. If I had not been scientifically trained, and I had seen that in a time before science, I would have thought it magic, at work. The liquid crystallized as ice, in an instant. Uncanny.

What I found revealing about this, is that Ainan has good experimental control. He is able to get the world to do things, experimentally, which, frankly, I would have thought unlikely. He has, to use an old word, the "knack" for experimental design and interaction with the world.

Don't ask me how he got the water to do that - but he did. What a curious boy.

Practical and Gifted

There is the stereotype, propagated by most educational systems, that there is a strict division between being practical and being gifted. I will speak of Singapore's division of these two types of people.

In Singapore, there is an academic stream and a "normal technical" stream. In common parlance, the academic stream is understood to be more "intelligent" than the "normal technical" stream. Indeed, there is a national stigma attached to the "normal technical" stream. These children are viewed as being somehow impaired, of not being competent in dealing with mentally challenging tasks. The distinction is almost a class distinction: the "normal technical" being somehow a lower class of being than the academic streams. I am uncomfortable with this idea and this perception.

The academic stream is further subdivided into two: the classes almost everyone attends and then the "gifted education" programmes for the top 1 % or so. There is a further division of perception to go along with this, with those in the gifted programme (which doesn't begin until the age of 10 or so, and is not anywhere near as comprehensive as it needs to be to address the issue, despite its name), being seen as an elite.

Children in the normal technical stream are required to learn practical skills. Their subject matter suit them to being technicians, in the main, given the technological bias of this culture, but the same concept applied in other cultures would apply to all those whose education is more "hands-on" with the intention to enter some practical trade.

The division continues into the tertiary sphere, with a split between practical Polytechnics and theoretical Universities. In general, the highest positions in the working world, are taken by University graduates - and so this division permeates the whole of society.

Yet, is there wisdom in this division? Does it correspond to a true split in human nature? Are the practically inclined, and the theoretically inclined (some of whom would be "gifted") forever to be apart? Can one person be both?

In short, yes. You see it is clear to me that Ainan, my scientific child prodigy son, is as practically gifted as he is theoretically gifted. He is not only able to understand the most difficult of scientific concepts, able to learn the most detailed and difficult of scientific material, able to invent, predict, intuit and infer but he is also able to make very complex objects, to design experiments, to engage with the world in practical terms. If you just saw Ainan doing things, hands-on, as he does everyday, you would conclude that he was one of the practical, hands-on types of children. You would be unsurprised to hear that he wished to do something practical with his life - something which involved making things. Yet, another person, who had seen him in a more theoretical mode, posing scientific questions, solving problems, predicting outcomes and the like, would conclude that he would only be suited for the most abstract of scientific pursuits and a University education. Both observers would be right - and both observers would be wrong. Ainan is a synthesis of the practical and the theoretical and it is this union of disparate modes of thinking and doing which could hold the greatest promise for him, in terms of a scientific career. For what does this natural division correspond to between the practical and the theoretical? It is between the scientific experimenter and the scientific theorist. Ainan straddles these two worlds, uniting both in one mind.

I would be unsurprised to see him active in both experimentation and theorizing, in times to come - for that would just be an adult development of the child I see today.

It is artificial, therefore, to divide children into the practical and the theoretical (or "gifted") for some children, at least, if Ainan is any guide, will be both. It would be wrong, therefore, to force them to choose between these dispositions by dividing the education system into the practical and theoretical streams. There must be a way for some children to inhabit both. Such children promise to contribute, in an interesting, perhap unique, fashion to the society that enables them to flourish.

(If you would like to read more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and two months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, or Tiarnan, twelve months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, baby genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children, in general. Thanks.)