Are NUS/NTU graduates creative?

NUS and NTU are Singapore's leading Universities. Their graduates are locally very respected in Singapore. No doubt, they have studied long and hard. Yet, I have cause to wonder, are these graduates creative?

Recently, I had a conversation with an American who works in an American company working in a creative industry. It is a famous American company, so I shall have to leave clues out of this account, lest it be identified. Let it be said, however, that the work that this company does straddles a couple of major creative industries with global reach.

Now, this American was observing to me about hiring practices which puzzled him. You see, one of the senior managers in the local branch of this global company was a Singaporean graduate of NTU. It was part of this manager's job to choose whom to hire to do the creative jobs that they had vacant. What troubled my acquaintance was just who this Singaporean was hiring - and why. Every single time a creative job came up, this Singaporean NTU graduate manager would look through the pile of CVs he had in front of him and select the Singaporean NUS and NTU graduates who had the best academic records. He picked the ones whose grades glistened...whose resumes dripped with A grades. Now, if you are Singaporean you will probably be nodding at this point, thinking that this is the right thing to do and is only natural. However, my American's experience with the people that were hired in this way, says otherwise. You see, the problem with these NTU and NUS graduates is that THEY COULD NEVER DO THE JOBS.

If you are Singaporean, and conditioned to believe in grades as the be all and end all of education, you might be shocked at this. I shall explain for you. The problem was that these NTU and NUS graduates with the great grades were UNABLE TO BE CREATIVE. Their resumes looked wonderful. They had jumped successfully through every academic hoop along the way - but something was missing. They had learnt to pass exams and shine in that situation - but they had never learnt how to think creatively. They were, according to my American acquaintance, unable to do the job, in every single case. They were just not good employees of this creative company.

Interestingly, have a guess who WERE the most creative employees of this company? The Indonesians were. That is right, employees who had grown up and been educated in Indonesia were the best workers in creative jobs, at this American company. The second best were the Thais - my American contact remarked that they were creative and had a good work attitude, as well.

So, this problem with NTU and NUS graduates being uncreative, is not a problem that applies to all graduates, everywhere. It doesn't apply to the Indonesian graduates from overseas - nor to the Thais (or he noted the Vietnamese)...but it does apply to the Singaporean graduates of NTU and NUS.

This leads me to understand that the type of education being received by Singaporeans in Singapore is creating graduates who might be competent in an academic sense and able to handle known and familiar tasks, in structured environments (isn't the whole of Singapore one big structured environment?) - but they are not creative. At the end of their long and arduous education, there is little creativity left in them.

Now, this really didn't come as a surprise to me, having taught in the Singaporean system at all levels, and witnessed the dearth of creativity at close hand. What did surprise me, however, was that Indonesians (who are customarily looked down upon, by many Singaporeans, perhaps because their young women tend to be maids in Singaporean households), were the most creative of all the races (other than "Americans" was implicit in his observations) employed in this large, global American company.

Many Singaporeans clamour to get their child into NTU or NUS. Yet, do they understand what the results of such an education are? Do they really want those results? Do they want an academically competent, but creatively incompetent child? If so, NUS and NTU - and the whole Singaporean education system - are perfect. However, if you would like to have a creative child...perhaps it might be best to send them overseas to Indonesia or Thailand!

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals.If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

An elephant for breakfast.

Last week, I had an elephant for breakfast. That might sound a little greedy and anti-green...but I shall explain.

At breakfast time, in Chiangmai, Thailand, where we were staying, an elephant walked past the window, right outside our hotel bungalow. As you can imagine, this was rather a surreal sight. Now, not being one who has elephants walk past his window every morning, I rushed out with a camera and my son, Tiarnan, three, to see what this elephant was up to.

We found the elephant just outside the main hotel building. Rather oddly, he was twirling a hula-hoop with his trunk, which he seemed to enjoy. I should point out that this was a "baby" elephant, or at least a child, because it was not fully grown, yet. He enjoyed playing. Standing beside the elephant was a "mahout".

Tiarnan was fascinated. Here was a baby elephant who liked to play games. He stood beside me, in entranced silence, his gaze upon the elephant's every deed.

The elephant turned out to be quite a versatile animal, with many a "trick" at his command. At one point, he played a harmonica with the air blown through his trunk. Tiarnan laughed at this: a musical elephant. At another, he took the proffered Thai Baht note from my hand, which I was trying to tip the mahout/elephant with, by sucking on it, and passed it to his mahout. He picked up a straw hat, nearby and put it on peoples' heads, then took it off again and put it on someone else's head. All of this, was with his trunk, of course. When we asked for a photograph, the elephant came toward us, somewhat, then lifted up one leg and raised his trunk into the air, to pose for it, rather dramatically. He kept the pose until he had heard the last click of our cameras (my sister in law was taking photos, too), then he dropped his leg and trunk.

Promisingly, the mahout had an easel available, but the elephant didn't seem in the mood for that and so we never saw the elephant paint.

By the time the elephant sauntered off back down the lane, outside our bungalow, back to its waiting mother, both Tiarnan and I were most impressed by this elephant's intelligence. Watching it at play, I rather felt there was a happy, experimental, human child stuck inside its massive body. Indeed, looking at the size of its head, and the brain that was no doubt there, I did wonder at just how intelligent elephants really are. It seems such a pity that some people see fit to shoot elephants for sport or their tusks. They are magnificent and intelligent animals.

Where had the elephant come from? Well, much as a hotel might keep a fine dog, in some countries, in Thailand, this particular hotel kept a young elephant and its mother (both female, I think), on the property. They were there to entertain the children, but seemed well looked after. While we were there, Tiarnan visited the elephants every day. He seemed most interested in their doings and beings. He was a lot braver than he should have been, however, and sometimes wanted to get rather too close to them, while they rested. I would have to pull him back, since, though they seemed friendly and tame enough...I wasn't sure they might not step on my little boy without really noticing him.

One thing is for sure: I will never forget the day I had an elephant for breakfast.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Rapid drop in IQ of Thai children.

There is this idea that the world is getting smarter, due to the Flynn Effect. This was so, superficially, for several decades, as children simply got better at taking IQ tests. Yet, at the same time, there was evidence of dysgenic change - that is the increasing frequency of poorer genetic endowments, in comparison to better ones. Quite simply, average performance on tests was improving (perhaps due to more exposure to such tasks), but the underlying genetic quality was in decline. This has been so for a very long time...in the West since the 19th century, at the least.

The problem is that smarter people tend to have fewer kids, since they tend to be the ones focussed on careers and personal ambitions, delaying families and ultimately having smaller ones. This has long been so.

Recent studies are showing a very different trend in the intellectual function of today's children, than the legend of the Flynn Effect suggests. A King's College London study that I referred to in another post, proved a 25% drop in cognitive function (it wasn't an IQ test, as such), in children of the same age compared across 15 years. That was a very disturbing result. Is this a British problem, or a global problem?

Well, a 2002 study performed in Thailand indicates that the problem is not localized.

In 1997 the average IQ of Thai children was 96.5 in Bangkok, 92.3 in the central region, 87.9 in the North. Five years later, in 2002, the figures were 94.6 in Bangkok, 88.8 in the central region and 84.2 in the North.

The children in both groups were 6 to 12 years old. Clearly, this is a very marked change in so short a time.

Should this trend continue for long, it would deletriously affect the whole future of the Thai nation. It would only be a matter of decades before the country would completely lack the mental wherewithal to perform many important functions at all. Where will the doctors come from? The scientists? The engineers? A small shift in mean iq greatly reduces the numbers of the gifted and talented - much more so than is widely realized.

It is likely that other countries face the same problem: the decline in intelligence of their children. I will try to gather relevant figures.

From this data, and the King's College data, the futures of Britain and Thailand promise to be very different from their presents. It is a difference no-one would welcome.

The question is: is this a completely global decline?

I really hope not.

However, I worry that it is - because the social forces that lead to just such a decline are common to all countries.

The future may not be as bright (in every sense of the word) as many people think...

(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.)