The flipside of reservation in the classroom.

There is a flipside to my previous post which I think I should explore.

Society can be most unkind to those it needs most. No-one is more necessary to the future progress of society than its most gifted members - yet, how are those gifted people, young and old, treated in the world's societies?

Well, many a gifted child finds out, quite quickly, through harsh social feedback that, in many societies, being gifted is about as acceptable as being a leper. The more outstanding a child, the more they tend to find that they are not accepted. Of course, there will be exceptions. There will be schools and perhaps even societies that are more welcoming but, in general, this is a global truism.

Ainan has learnt discretion. He has learnt to keep quiet with his thoughts, his observations, his knowledge, in a social setting. He has, it seems, absorbed the lesson that, to stand out, is to be excluded.

This is not as it should be. No gifted child should fear to be themselves and show themselves in public - yet, in so many parts of the world, they are. Giftedness is often something to be masked, to be hidden, to be denied, so that the gifted child might blend in and be accepted. Of course, in doing that, the gifted child is dying, day by day: they are denying themselves and, in so doing, are also destroying themselves. In time, they may forget who they once were. By submerging their gifts, over time, they may lose ready access to them. A child who doesn't express their gifts, is a child who is not developing them, either. The day may come when they truly do blend in - and what kind of victory is that? Their acceptance has been at the price of their true self.

No child, anywhere in the world, should have to hide who they are. I understand that that is an ideal statement that has little hope of being met by the reality of the world we live in, as it is today but, in time, the world may change. One day, the gifted children might be accepted as they are, in all classes, of all schools, in all aspects of life, in all nations, everywhere. I would like to see that world - but I may not live long enough to do so. Such deep change is slow to take hold in the world.

I coined a word, long ago, on this blog: "Giftism". I would say that Giftism is the last prejudice that still seems to be socially acceptable. It is time that it was no longer accepted.

Every gifted child should be free to be themselves, everywhere. They should not need to consider what is socially discrete - nor what is likely to win friends or lose them. They should just simply be allowed to be, free of any social encumbrance, hindrance or penalty.

Wouldn't that be a better world, than the one my son is adjusting to, in his ever-so-discrete way?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eleven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and four months, and Tiarnan, twenty-one 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.)

When "education" becomes abusive.

Very few people understand gifted children. Most teachers don't. Most school authorities don't. Most adults don't. Why is this? Simple: because they weren't gifted themselves. Only the gifted can understand, truly, what it means to be gifted.

This notion of how understanding is circumscribed by likeness of the self to other, also applies to the gradations of giftedness. It takes a moderately gifted person, to understand a moderately gifted other - a highly gifted person to understand a highly gifted other - and so on, all the way through exceptional gift and profound giftedness. Only someone truly of a particular level can truly understand the other, of the same kind.

Why do I say this? Well, I think that the perspective, and experiences of a gifted child have to be felt personally to be truly understood. The difference between living it and reading it is rather like the difference between reading The Lord of the Rings - and actually being Frodo Baggins in Middle Earth with a rather historic ring on your finger. It is impossible for us to truly understand what it is like to be Frodo Baggins - we can only see him as we imagine him to be, from the outside.

Thus is it with the gifted and the education they receive in schools. Those who educate them only know them from the outside - through reading and what they are told in their training. They do not truly know what it is like to be them.

So, it should be no surprise that education is often inappropriate for gifted children of all ilks. The more gifted the child, the more inappropriate it becomes. Yet, it is unlikely in the extreme that the education system will ever acknowledge the inappropriateness. Most education systems live under the delusion that they know best. I have actually heard a representative of our particular education system here, in Singapore, say, in essence, that she knew better than the parents how the child should be educated. Now, there is a delusion for you.

Education often proceeds by diktat: this is the way it is and all must accept it. It is rare for an education system to actually respond to the child's individual needs. Sometimes education systems talk about responding to a child's needs - while actually not doing so. Again, it is part of the incomprehension that comes with not being gifted - yet administering to the gifted.

Ainan is presently not receiving what he needs, educationally, from the system in Singapore. I very much doubt that he ever will be. This arises in the manner described above: those who can never understand, because they have never been like Ainan, make decisions about his needs, which they think should suffice. In our case, they refuse to listen to feedback that their intervention is insufficient: they think they know better.

What is the result? Lack of challenge, boredom, restlessness in the classroom, disenchantment with school, a loss of interest in learning - and general disengagement will all result, to varying degrees, if the child's true needs are not being met. In this situation, the result can only be described as abusive. It is abusive to keep a child in an unstimulating environment. It is abusive to deny a child true opportunities for growth. It is abusive to hold back a child's development all in the name of "we know better". Why do they "know better"? Because they are not bright enough to realize that they don't.

All over the world, hundreds of thousands of gifted children are being abused in this way, by the standardized classroom situation - by the undemanding education designed for those of average ability. As a result, most of the gifted children of the world end up as under-achievers - end-up as much less than they could be. Who is to blame for this? The educational system itself, for not recognizing that a gifted child has very different needs from an average child - and the more gifted they are, the more their needs will differ.

So, when is education abusive? Whenever a gifted child is involved and the individual child's particular academic needs are not met. In every case in which this occurs, the education received is a form of suffering. The education system is abusing the child. That is what education systems do to the best minds in their care. They abuse them with boredom, lack of challenge, frustration of their desires, and denial of opportunity.

In case you are the sort who doesn't care about an issue unless it affects you personally, consider this: if the growth of many gifted children is being stifled, in this way, all over the world, what do you think it does to the future intellectual health of human society? What does it do to the pace of technological and scientific change, to medical advances and cultural complexity and diversity? All these areas are hindered when the growth of those who become their human constituents are themselves hindered in their development. This issue of the abuse of our gifted children by inappropriate eduation affects us all: it is a universal problem that impacts the lives of all who presently live and are yet to live.

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

Where love is banned.

Travel affords one many unexpected opportunities. In particular, living in a part of the world different from one's formative years, can teach us much more than one might suppose.

Singapore, where I live, has a fairly broad contact with mainland China. There are many mainland Chinese here - living, working and studying. Recently I had a peculiar conversation with a group of Chinese mainland students. The subject of social expectation had come up. On this matter, one girl remarked:

"In China, no-one is allowed to fall in love, in school."

I was shocked at this and so was initially silent. Into this silence, she continued: "Not in middle school or high school - but in University, it is OK."

This young woman, of University age, evidently found my surprise, surprising.

"That is really strange." I couldn't help but remark.

"It is normal.", she shrugged, accepting it.

"So, what happens if a student falls in love in high school?"

"Then they are a bad student." Her words were said with meaning: clearly she had imbibed the viewpoint of her society and made it her own. To her, indeed, such a student would be a wrongdoer and a "bad" student.

"Their teacher will be very angry..." she continued, "and will call their parents. Then their parents will be very angry, too."

I was beginning to feel a little horrified at this point, at the nature of the society she was painting. A society in which young love is greeted with anger; in which the natural feelings of bonding that arise between people in their mid to late teens, should be looked upon as "wrong" and "bad", made me really uncomfortable - queasy even.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up in a society so set against love. Every thought and understanding that came to me was accompanied by the conviction that such a world would be very damaging to human development.

I had never met a truly passionate character from mainland China. By this I mean fired with emotion, driven by it, propelled by it. Such people are very capable of great things. Perhaps, the suppression of emotion which all their young have to undergo is responsible for that lack of fire, as adults. Something suppressed for too long, may very well shrivel up from disuse.

This conversation raises a very important issue. Which is more important: academic success or healthy emotional development? Chinese society has, as I am informed, made the decision that academic success stands above all things - and not even love may stand in the way. In choosing this stance, they have, probably without realizing it, chosen to stunt the emotional development of an entire nation. Yes, they may not be distracted from their studies - for as she further explained: "When you are in love, you cannot study well." - but they will also not experience the natural development of their emotional self. That side will be blocked - for many years. By the time they are allowed to express that side, it will have become muted, through both time and disuse. A dispassionate people will be the result.

Raising a child is not easy - and there are many choices that a parent - or an educator - must make - but from my point of view, no choice should be taken that leads to the diminishment of an individual. Nothing should be done to impair their growth in any way.

Yes, love may distract the students from study - but it would also make them happy in the face of great difficulty and perhaps more able to shoulder the burdens of academic demand which are placed upon them. Disallowing it and making it a forbidden emotion, on the other hand, can only ever have a negative and inhibitory effect on the development of their children. China will be much the worse for it, when these emotionally disabled teens become their future leaders of society.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and no months, or Tiarnan, seventeen 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.)

On disability and ability: society's obligation

It is taken as obvious that the mentally disabled should receive assistance in developing the skills and behaviours necessary to allow them to function in society. Yet, it is seen as controversial, in some countries, to make any special provision at the opposite end of the ability spectrum. Is this rational?

What does it mean to be disabled? It means one's abilities are different from the norm, in the sense of being lessened. What does it mean to be gifted? It means one's abilities are different from the norm, in the sense of being heightened.

You will note that the situations have a logical identity and a logical difference. It is the identity to which I wish to draw your initial attention. With both the disabled and the gifted, there is an essential difference from the norm. These people are not typical of humanity in general - and it is their lack of typicality that requires that they be given special attention. The general provision of society for its members is equally inappropriate for both classes of individual: the disabled and the gifted (or the enabled, as one might call them).

There is a view, often stated, though never intelligently held, that the gifted do not need special provision because they are MORE able than others. This view fails to understand the ways in which extreme ability can be a kind of disability, too. The truly gifted child will be set apart by their gifts, from those around them. They are likely to be isolated not only in being mentally different to those around them, but also in terms of being rejected, by them. They are unlikely to fit in. They may have communication difficulties. They may have difficulty in both being understood and in understanding those they meet in the everyday world. Think about my last four sentences. They could have been written about a mentally disabled person - and they would still hold true. The gifted and the disabled both a share a communication gap - they both share a social disability. To be in either state is to be divorced from society - and this is a burden whether it is at the lower or upper ends of the spectrum. The difference, in many societies, is that the burden of the disabled is recognized by all, but that that of the "enabled" or gifted, is recognized only by those who have experienced it for themselves, in most cases.

To both constituents, the gifted and the disabled, a humane society must make a special effort to reach out to and accommodate them and their needs. The key phrase is "humane society". So many voices on the internet seem to be espousing an inhumane, uncaring, cold society - well, I for one, would not vote for such a society.

Both kinds of people need special help in fully integrating into society: the disabled with basic functioning, the gifted with, if you like, "optimal function" - finding the niche that best expresses their abilities and least encumbers them.

A society that ignores either constituent is at the very least inhumane - but it is also something else: it is a society which will fail for obvious logical reasons. A society which does not enable the disabled to function, is one that will be burdened by them; a society which disables the enabled by not allowing them to function at their best - is one that will never enjoy the benefits of such people in their midst.

I will write more on this in future, for otherwise this post would become too long.

The Value of Child Prodigies

What is the value of child prodigies? I ask this, not because it is my question, but because it was someone else's.

A couple of days ago, someone arrived on my blog having searched "the value of child prodigies".

A child prodigy is a child who exhibits extreme precocity of intellectual development in at least one domain normally undertaken by an adult. Such a child will, by the age of about 11, show adult level capability in an adult domain. Clearly, this is highly unusual. But what does it signal?

It could mean many things - and how much "value" it has really depends, I would say, on the response of the society around the child prodigy. If the child prodigy is welcomed, rather than greeted with hostility, as may be the case, then good things may come of this situation. If the child prodigy is given opportunities to grow at their own pace, then good things may come of this situation. If the child prodigy has a pathway cleared ahead of them, then good things may come of this situation. That is three "ifs" - and for many societies, that is three "ifs" too many. Many societies do not necessarily react in the right way to a prodigy. They do not furnish the opportunities they need. They do not adjust educational regimes to meet their needs. They do not, in fact, do what is necessary to allow the prodigy to flourish. Furthermore, they do not seem to care that this is so.

What loss does this mean to the society? It could mean they lose the music of a new Mozart, the art of a new Picasso, the industrial revolution of a new Karl Benz. The loss could be truly incalculable. You see a prodigy shows a massive "spike" in ability in at least one area. Such a spike is characteristic of adult geniuses who change a domain, forever. Huge focussed ability in an area is a minimum requirement for creative change in that area. Prodigies have this. However, they may not have the opportunity to express it, as a child or as an adult. Many child prodigies have become adult geniuses - but others have not. In many of these cases, one can read a less than ideal welcome for the child. Had the response been better, who knows what might have been the productive outcome.

It has been observed by psychologists that high general ability - such as measured by IQ - is useful for maintaining the status quo of a discipline - for mastering it and utilizing it. However, it is the mysterious presence of a domain specific special talent that signals the possibility of revolutionary change. This is so because the domain specific special talent can be so much more powerful than the endowment of even a high general intelligence can allow. A high IQ will not, in itself, allow a person to outperform someone with a specific talent in an area. The specific talent can be a towering thing indeed. It is these individuals who can, if supported and afforded opportunity, change the world.

Where do we first see such towering talents? Well, many are apparent in childhood and manifest as prodigiousness. Such children have the potential for greatness - but the path from childhood prodigiousness to adult greatness is a long and arduous one. Much support is needed along the way if these young minds are not to be thwarted in their various journeys. Some will become creative adult geniuses. It is for these some that we should help all, so that there might be as many as can be, in each generation. The growth of human culture depends on such efforts.

So to answer the searcher: the value of child prodigies is as much as you want it to be. It is up to the society to make that value as high as possible. The prodigy has the greatest of potential, of any child - but if that potential is ever to be fully realized so much needs to be done to allow them to grow to their fullest. Too many societies, throughout the world and history, have failed to do what is necessary - and continue to fail to do so. The resultant loss is a loss to us all.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and five months, or 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 children and gifted adults. Thanks.)

"Elitism" is a dangerous word

"Elitist" is a word used by people who want to destroy those better than themselves. Just think in what circumstances the word is used: it is used to describe actions that take note of someone of special attributes, that somehow acknowledge them, give them opportunities or "preference".

It is odd that people think it expresses "preference" to give opportunity to one with the capability to do something unusual.

Every developed society in the world has specialized educational programmes for those who are of limited intelligence. It is regarded as humane and necessary to design a special education for those of restricted understanding. However, many of these same societies do NOT have a special programme for those of greater than normal intelligence - many of them do nothing for the "gifted", among them. Why is this so? The reason often given is that it would be "elitist" to do so.

In that both groups - those of greater and lesser than normal intelligence are exceptions, they are logically equivalent: they both lie outside the norm. Yet, although it is regarded as self-evident that one group - the lesser - should receive special attention or "preference" - the other, the greater or gifted group, is often consciously neglected in the name of not being "elitist". Any society that discriminates in this way is a society that is slowly dying: for it is suffocating the growth of those who may grow furthest, given the opportunity to do so.

It is not "elitist" to give all members of a society an appropriate education - it is called being fair. Each child has different needs, but it is not impossible to categorize them broadly into types of need - and differentiate between those who need a typical, average education, those who need special, "remedial" education and those who need a "gifted" education. This seems obvious in its necessity - but surprisingly few societies make this educational provision for the three different groups: they stick generally with two educational types - "remedial" and "one size fits all". If you have a body size that is anyway unusual and you try "one size fits all" clothes you will see how inadequate the concept is. The same goes for human minds.

A truly forward-looking society might even differentiate between degrees and types of giftedness and provide educational experiences that address those very different needs - but perhaps that is being too idealistic and expecting too much of educational systems.

As a first step it would be a great advance if it were so that all developed societies had special education for the gifted as well as remedial classes. (It would be good if undeveloped societies had this as well - but they need to get a basic education system going first). Let us hope that we don't have to wait too long - and that those who cry "elitist" might just take a good look at the prejudices, narrow-mindedness and sheer envy that leads them to make that cry in the first place.

It is not and can never be "elitist" to educate all children according to their needs. That is what being civilized is all about - or should be.

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