The Jewish Assumption for the Gifted.

The Jews are well known to be gifted. Well, actually, this is not strictly accurate - for it is a mere splinter of the Jewish race, the Ashkenazi Jews, who are actually more gifted than usual. The remainder of the Jews (the ones in Israel, for instance), are pretty average, in every way.

In terms of IQ, the Jews have a reputation for being more gifted than others. Yet, again, this is a simplified story. American Jews were estimated to have an average IQ of 112.6 by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994 (which would make them the most gifted group on Earth); but Israeli Ashkenazi Jews were only estimated to have an IQ of 103.5, on average, by Lynn in 2006. This is very similar to European averages and does not justify their illustrious reputation. Thus, the story is a mixed one. So, too, is it more complex. Jews tend to be high on verbal and mathematical skills and as equally retarded, on visual skills, as they are gifted on verbal/mathematical. Thus, they have unequally distributed abilities.

Now, I have written of the background of the Jews, for a very particular reason. If you search on Yahoo with the terms "Ainan Cawley", one of the associated terms it will suggest to you, is "Jews"...another, quite unaccountably, is "The Dead Sea". I find this bizarre. To me, this means that there must be sufficient numbers of people, in the world, assuming that a) because Ainan is gifted and b) because Jews are supposedly more gifted than others that c) Ainan must be a Jew. Well, sorry to disappoint any Jewish readers, but Ainan is not a Jew. Nor does he have a single Jewish gene in him (except for the genes shared by all humanity etc.). Ainan is not a Jew and none of his relatives are, either.

This is not the first time that the Jewish Assumption, as I call it, has been made about our family. Many years ago, in New York, shortly after I had been on CNN, for my Lord Valentine the Misplaced character invention, I was called a "Yid", by an American who had once been married to a Ford heiress. I had never heard the term and had to ask others what he meant. They said: "Yiddish...a Jew."

I was rather stunned into silence and didn't say anything in response to his accusation. I understood, then, as I understand, now, that this man was making a fundamental error of thinking: that I was "intelligent", that Jews are "intelligent", so I must be a Jew. This is really, really, quite silly. Just because the Jewish average IQ is somewhat above normal, and so there will be more highly intelligent Jews than is typical of a racial grouping, this does NOT mean that other races do not have equally (or even more intelligent), members. They do. Intelligent people are to be found in all races, though with differing prevalences. It is both an unsafe and a ridiculous assumption to make, to think that Jews have the monopoly on intelligence. Indeed, in some areas of intelligence, such as the visual (mean IQ 91.3, according to Backman), or oddly, memory (IQ 95.1 according to Backman), Jews are deficient compared to other races, on average. So, the Jewish "we are intelligent", story, is actually a mixed one: they are good, on average at some things - namely school type skills - but bad in other areas.

There is a danger in the kind of thinking which attributes to Jews, all intelligence. If it is taken on and believed (and I wonder to what extent it is believed in America, given the American's view of me, above?), then it will lead to people overlooking intelligence and gift from other racial groupings. There will be the view that others cannot be as intelligent as Jews...and so certain children might go unrecognized and unsupported for their gifts.

There are many highly intelligent and highly creative people in this world who are not Jewish. In fact, most such people are not Jewish. So it is time to shelve the assumption that a highly gifted person must be a Jew. The assumption is real - for I have encountered it at different times of my life, across two decades. It is time to recognize that gift, intelligence and creativity, may arise in a person of any race - and I mean any race - so do not assume that a person of a particular race cannot possess these characteristics - or that a person who does possess them is necessarily a Jew. More often, than not, they will not be Jewish at all.

It should be noted that this is not an anti-Jewish posting. I have nothing against Jews, or any other race, for that matter. It is a posting that seeks a better understanding of the situation and one that seeks to dispel a common misperception about the most gifted of people among us.

In particular, I would like to dispel the notion (which is common enough to have been picked up by Yahoo), that Ainan Celeste Cawley is a Jew. He isn't - nor are any of his relatives. In fact, Ainan is half-Malay and half-Irish; a Eurasian...and not one bit Jewish at all. Thank you.

(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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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/

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The universality of intelligence

There is a person called Koko who is very special in a way that might surprise you.

Now Koko has a curious disability - being unable to speak, but can use 400 signs of American Sign Language. Koko has an interesting sense of humour and makes jokes and rhymes using these signs. Koko even uses metaphor, sometimes - all in Sign Language. So, although unable to speak, Koko can communicate.

Koko's IQ is not what you might call gifted - and so may not seem a suitable subject for this blog. Koko's IQ regularly tests at around 80. You might not think much of that - but I do. You see, Koko is a gorilla.

Did that surprise you? Koko is more intelligent than many humans - for an IQ of 80 is not actually all that low, when you consider that the average for the United States is 98 (and the average for France 94). There are even countries on Earth, populated with humans, whose IQs average in the 60s and 70s. Thus Koko is more intelligent than many humans. Yet, Koko is not free, in the sense, of being self-determining. Shouldn't Koko, whose IQ is well into the human range, have rights just like those other primates - the humans?

You should note that the IQ tests used on Koko are normal, human IQ tests for which no adjustment has been made for the differences between gorilla and human culture. Given this disadvantage, perhaps a culture fair test, that took account of what it means to be a gorilla, might actually produce a higher score. I would be surprised if this did not, in fact, occur.

Koko is a thinking being with a rich life of thought. Yet, most people would dismiss him (her?) as "just an ape". I think it is time to revisit our ideas of what is intelligent - and who - and think a little more clearly about how we treat our fellow "animals" on this planet. Koko would probably make a very interesting person to talk to - what with his (her?) different perspective, allied to fluency in a human language - American Sign Language.

Koko's abilities also lead us to ask: what is the role of education in the development of the human? Koko has been educated by Francine Patterson, since 1972 - and the results are incredible. If an educational programme can do this for a gorilla, what other animals, in our environment, could attain human level performance? In the light of this, are we humans fair, kind and reasonable in our conduct towards animals in general? These are uncomfortable questions but they have to be asked. If all that separates us and our near relatives is a decent education, then we have really, really, really, not been behaving well towards our kindred.

Perhaps it is not the place to point this out, but I think I should. A gorilla, if educated, can perform in the human intellectual range. Yet, gorillas are still considered FOOD for some people in this world. Now, that really is an awful thought.

By writing this post, today, perhaps I can enlarge people's respect for our fellow animals - and perhaps cause some of you to think about what it means to be human - and ask how we got that way in the first place. After all, a gorilla can go pretty far to becoming "human" by just being given the chance to grow, intellectually. There is a very profound lesson in that.

(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, adult genius, baby genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)

Singapore's experience of the gifted

I came across a strange criticism on the internet, recently, regarding Singapore that I wish to comment on. This commenter - who generally came across as more than a little rabid - said that Singapore had little experience of the gifted - because it had only 4 million people...so basically what would they know?

I thought this comment very interesting for what it revealed about the limited understanding of giftedness of the commenter. Even profound gift at its theoretical prevalance of one in a million would be present in a population of four million. Yet, profound gift is actually more common than its theoretical prevalence - several times more common, at least. Therefore gifts of all dimensions would be present in a population of "only 4 million". Then again there is the fact that Singapore's IQ curve is not centred on 98 like the US (it was an American commenting owing to cultural references made by him or her), or 100 like the UK - but on 104. This is significant. It means that the gifted will, if the curve is otherwise as the IQ curves of other countries are, be much more common, because of the shift to the right of the curve. This means that Singapore will have proportionately MORE gifted people in its "only 4 million" population, than expected.

That, however, is just the beginning of the issue. For not only will more gifted people be present in the Singaporean population - but, culturally, more is done to meet their needs and become aware of those needs. You see, Singapore has a dedicated branch of the Ministry of Education catering solely to gifted children: The Gifted Education Branch. Their sole purpose is to understand and enable gifted children to become what they may. This is a government that has decided to open doors for gifted children - at least, that is the stated purpose of the organization and we are only just beginning to experience the reality of what they can actually achieve - a matter on which we keep an open mind. We will see how effective it really is - but that is another issue. The fact remains that there is a Department dedicated to the gifted - dedicated to understanding them and dedicated to enabling them. Can the USA say that? No. Can the UK say that? No. In fact, off the top of my head I know of no other country which can say that they have a dedicated branch of government devoted to the gifted. That says something. Does it say this country has "Little or no experience of the gifted"...err, no. On the contrary, it says that this country has more experience of the gifted than is usual - much more.

In a country that ignores its gifted and their needs - which appears to be the case at a central government level in not only the US and the UK but probably most, if not all, developed economies - that country will have little knowledge and experience of the gifted - for they are not looking at them as a constituency that needs individual attention; they are not thinking of their nature or their needs - and so they will not know of them. In short, they will be blind to the gifted within them, for they have never looked to see them. That, in fact, is a country which has "little or no experience of the gifted". Oddly, that situation pertains to the very country in which the commenter resides - and not the one that he criticizes.

His argument was basically that a country like Singapore, that had so few people, could not possibly know what a gifted child was - because they didn't have enough people to have any. Statistically, that is nonsense, of course - since four million is more than enough to encompass the variety of human types there are - and to do so amply if the IQ curve is actually centred on a higher than usual point, which it is, at 104.

That Singapore will have fewer gifted children, numerically, than a country almost two orders of magnitude greater in size is obvious - but that it would lack experience of the gifted simply because the other had more of them, is lacking in sense.

Singapore is a country without natural resources. Its only resource is its people. It is this background against which one can understand its wish to understand and cater for the gifted within: for those children are the greatest resource they have.

Singapore knows this; none of the other countries I have mentioned does. So who, then, has "little or no experience of the gifted."?

(If you would like to read 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.)

Singapore's IQ distribution and giftedness

I have just re-read my post on Ainan going to Raffles Institution, yesterday and, on doing so, I realized that I had made an error in my analysis. I have underestimated the number of gifted students who would be at Raffles.

How have I done this? Well, I realize, now, that I had made the assumption, in my statement that 1 in 44 people will be moderately gifted (IQ 130 or more), that the distribution was a normal one about an IQ of 100: as is the standard model of IQ. So, this is right, right? Wrong.

You see, the mean IQ in Singapore is, according to IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002), 104, NOT 100. This means that the distribution of IQs in Singapore is significantly skewed towards the gifted range. Quite simply, there will be more gifted students in the Singaporean population, for its size, than there would be in many other populations of the same size. That is the number of gifted students, per head of population should be higher in Singapore, than many other countries. For instance, the mean IQ of the United Kingdom is 100; that of the United States is 98. Singapore will have notably more gifted students per head of population than these two nations - because a few IQ points shift - amounting to almost half a standard deviation, in relation to the US, will push many more students into the gifted range. This analysis assumes that the shape of the distribution is the same - a normal curve (though in fact it should be trimodal - but normal is the usual model) - about an IQ mean of 104.

(Of course, although Singapore will have more gifted students per head of population than many other nations - including the US and the UK - these nations will have many more gifted students in terms of actual numbers - because they are much larger populations.)

Applying this to Raffles Institution, without detailed analysis, gives me the sense that it is probable that ALL their students are gifted - for they are the top 3% of a population with mean IQ 104, not the top 3% of a population of mean IQ 100, as I had inadvertently assumed.

Not all nations have lower IQs than Singapore. Hong Kong, for instance, has a mean IQ of 107 - indicating that China may become real competition for the West in the future - but that is another story.