Schools that stifle the life of a child.

Children should be filled with abundant energy. They should have a need to create, to do, to move, to speak, to be. A child is not, and should not ever be, something akin to a mannequin – yet that is precisely what some schools seem to want from them.

Recently, a family friend who is endeavouring to get her child into an international school in Malaysia, found out something rather peculiar concerning the British International School in Kuala Lumpur. She learnt that this school penalizes children who fidget or move about, in any way, during the entrance exam into the first year of the Primary school. The British International School actually MARKS DOWN little kids who don’t sit still enough, during exams. I found this revelation to be profoundly disturbing for what it says about the school’s attitude towards children and its seemingly rather poor understanding of them.

It seems that many modern schools want children not to be children. They want them, instead, to be statues, that sit in silence, and imbibe knowledge passively and correctly and regurgitate it, on command, in exams, to bring praises on the school, for their wonderful performance.

Many children learn by doing, not by listening passively. They need to DO things, to move and interact with the world. Such children will not do well in a school that requires immobility from them.

To my mind, a school that wants stillness from children, is a school that does not want to deal with how children really are. It is a school that wants children to behave in a compliant manner for its own convenience. To me, such a school seems too like a prison for comfort.

Just reflect on what the British International School is doing. It is penalizing students for a desire to move. Thus, a bright, but undesirably mobile child, will find themselves marked down. It is possible therefore that a less bright, but compulsively still, unmoving child will end up with “higher” marks. Thus, it is that the brighter pupil might not get a place and the duller pupil would be offered one. The overall tendency would be for the school to be filled with obedient, still, even inactive children, who conform to the required social behaviours. I don’t know about you, but to me, such unmoving, compliant conformity fills me with a kind of psychological horror that is very difficult to shake off. I certainly would not wish any of my children to attend a school which places such importance on the controllability and immobility of children.

Now, I don’t know what the exam policy is for other international schools in Malaysia, or elsewhere. It may be that the British International School is not alone in this strangely stifling policy. If you know of anywhere else that implements such penalties for a child’s movement, please let me know, below. Thank you.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The silence of the gifted.

The gifted are, in my view, a remarkably silent bunch. By this, I mean, that they don’t seem to speak out, enough, to seek what they need from society. Nor do they speak enough of how they view and experience the world and what the issues might be that they face. In general, it seems, the gifted suffer in silence. They do little to help themselves compared to what they could be doing to help themselves. At least, that is how it looks in Asia, to me.

Yet, as I look around on the internet, I get the feeling that the gifted, everywhere, are a rather subdued bunch. By this I mean, they don’t seem to be as vocal or as visible as most minorities are. There, I have said it, I have called the gifted a “minority” group…and that is just what they are. What surprises me is that all other minority groups seem to have a greater presence in society, a greater voice. The gifted just seem to disappear. It is as if they are hiding in a corner, somewhere.

Now, there is a very clear reason for this. The reason is very clear to me, because I have experienced it quite a bit, on this blog. If a gifted person ever speaks out, and I mean EVER speaks out, they will note something that might surprise them, at first. There are people out there, who will try to shout them down. There are people who will write highly offensive, even profoundly deranged, letters, that are so over-written, that they seem to scream abuse. There are, quite simply, a lot of people who seem to wish that the “gifted” just didn’t exist at all. So, to speak out as a gifted person, or on gifted issues, is to open oneself up to attacks from those who seem to oppose the gifted.

This makes life difficult for the parents of any gifted child. Parents who are aware of the way some people react to the gifted, must, therefore, try to proceed, very discretely, to seek help for their child (or children). They proceed, almost invisibly, to reach out to education providers. They try not to draw attention to themselves. They try to achieve their aims, without anyone really noticing. This is, of course, all very well. The problem, however, is that, if one is invisible, the very same education providers may easily choose to ignore the parents and their gifted children. It is easy to get stonewalled. The alternative, is, however, even more perilous. If one steps out into the open, as a parent of a gifted child, to try to seek an appropriate education for them, it can be rather hellish. There are people out there who will, essentially, hurl abuse at the parents of the gifted child – and sometimes even at the gifted child themselves, as if offended by their very existence. Others, not so violently, but equally damaging, will decry the “special treatment” of the gifted child and call for nothing to be done, for it would not be “fair” to do anything for the child. Thus it is, that stepping out into the open, may not, in fact, improve the child’s educational chances, but will court negative reactions, from all sorts of quarters.

Gifted parents seem to know this. If you read forums on giftedness and message boards, you will note something very strange. The parents, there, usually use pseudonyms for themselves and codenames for their children, or simple letters. They never identify themselves. They obscure personal details. They try to communicate to other parents of gifted children, without ever letting themselves be known. They proceed, in some ways, like spies: ever secret, ever cloaked, ever mysterious. To my mind, they behave like a hunted minority. It is rather saddening to observe, actually. All one has to do, is to watch not what they say, but the way they say it. They are ever disguised. You would think you were reading the words of a persecuted minority – perhaps the Jews in Nazi Germany, for instance. No-one ever seems to step out into the open. Those who do are rather brave, in this context because, clearly, the others seem to think there is something to fear, something to be avoided, in such openness. Though, I must point out, I have never seen anyone openly identify themselves or their family, on such boards. It is only the occasional one who appears in the media, who is identified. The rest of the gifted world proceeds in total anonymity.

This behaviour of the gifted community cannot have emerged without reason. The fact that they behave as if they must hide themselves and their nature, from general view, does show that the gifted are not entirely understood, or accepted, or perhaps, even welcome. Perhaps they face envy or incomprehension in their own communities. Perhaps they don’t want their children to be known as gifted, in case it makes them outsiders, or makes them victims of jealousy. Perhaps they act as they do because they have experienced genuinely unpleasant situations in their own lives, because of their giftedness. One, or several of these reasons must apply, for it is strange that a whole community should behave like this. They would not do so without concrete reason.

The silence of the gifted is a symptom that the gifted are not universally welcome, tolerated or accepted. It is not evidence, as some might argue, that nothing is wrong – it is proof that something is not right. If the gifted felt secure in their position in society, many would feel comfortable to identify themselves on forums and message boards. That none do, is a worrying sign. The gifted clearly feel marginalized or insecure, in some ways. This is not how it should be. Now, the irony of this situation is quite clear – for there is only one way that the gifted can ever truly be accepted, by all and take their fullest place in society: that is if some among them, speak out, consistently, over time, so as to educate the public that there are such people in their community, that they are different, but that these differences are good, acceptable and helpful for the society around them. The gifted are able to contribute significantly to their communities. However, not all of them shall, if they grow up feeling a need to hide themselves away. Some gifted people never contribute in the way that they could, because they learn that they should “dumb down” to “fit in”. No-one should have to do that, just to be accepted. Everyone should feel free to be themselves, without risk of censure. Sadly, many gifted people don’t feel free to be themselves, openly, in public. They fear what people will think and how they will react to them. So, they learn to appear dumber and more ordinary than they really are. They pretend not to know when they do. They live lives false to themselves, just so that others will like them. They fear that to show their true thoughts and feelings, would be to lose them all these “friends” they have won by their pretence. What they fail to realize, though, is that no-one can live a life of fulfillment, if it means that one’s true self must be hidden and denied. These people will only be truly happy if they are honest and open about themselves. Should this cost them “friends”, then so be it. The friends that remain will truly be friends and that is what counts. The others are just a waste of time.

Many people have written to me, since I started blogging. Many of them are very pleasant, interesting and interested. Their words have been, at times, comforting, enlightening, refreshing. I have, in turn, tried to help them, with my own advice, in whatever ways I can. Sometimes, however, I receive comments from people whose very sanity I could not vouch for. Their words are harsh, aggressive, offensive, cruel, frequently paranoid, and consistently incomprehending. They simply don’t “get” my blog. They don’t understand why I write it. They don’t see the value in it. Sometimes, they don’t even believe a word of it. They seem to think I am making it up. They cannot accept that there are people in the world like the ones I write of. Not only that, but they are angry that I should write of such things and such people – as if, their existence, would somehow be threatening to them, or personally offensive. Some of these comments are so unpleasant, that they put me off writing for days on end. They are sickening to read. Yet, through receiving them, I understand why the gifted are often so secretive on the internet – and why they are relatively silent in society. They have reason to be. To step out into the open, is to discover that the world is filled with madmen, whose agenda appears to be to deny the existence of the gifted – or, at least, to taunt them, decry them and frustrate them in any way that they can.

All of this behaviour calls to mind how geniuses have so often been treated in history. Most people recall the names of history’s geniuses, but few people know the details of their lives. Too often, these lives were filled with much conflict, much hostility, little welcome and much incomprehension. These geniuses often spent their lives battling against those who opposed their every thought. Their lives must have been far from comfortable, or even pleasant at times. It is that kind of life, perhaps, that the gifted are seeking to avoid, by adopting their habitual secrecy and discretion, and living lives of relative silence.

Yet, such secrecy, discretion and silence prevent the fullest expression of a gifted person’s gifts. None of history’s geniuses won out by being as they are. So, the gifted must choose a quiet, but not entirely fulfilled life, though a safe one, or a more open, potentially more fulfilled one, with all the risks attendant on being out in the public. That is a choice that each individual must make. Only those of a particular type of personality are likely to be suited to the more public life. All others would find it uncomfortable. I am not about to advise which one should choose – for that is up to each individual, or gifted family. However, everyone should be aware of the consequence of those choices and act knowing, beforehand, what might happen as a result. At least, then, one’s decisions can be informed by knowledge.

I intend to continue to speak out on all issues related to giftedness – even if this is uncomfortable at times. I have made my choice – and I feel it is a necessary choice. It is also one which can be helpful to many people, whether they realize it or not.

Do you know what is particularly ironic about this situation, however? Some of the gifted have written against me and my open approach, on the internet. They think I should be like them, and just keep quiet. That is truly sad. They just don’t understand how valuable it can be to have someone speak out, and raise awareness and understanding of the issues facing the gifted. By providing one public example of the situation, many people come to be better informed of the needs of the gifted – and, therefore, more likely to meet those needs. I have, whether they know it or not, done my detractors a service, by speaking out (or writing out, in fact!) as I have. Perhaps, on a more reflective future day, they might come to understand that.

There is a need for me to write, until such time, as the gifted forums, are filled not with people in hiding, but people in the open, people who feel safe enough to identify themselves, people who feel comfortable living open lives, fully revealing of themselves, in a world that accepts them, as they are – and welcomes them for it. Until that day, I shall write on. After that day, perhaps there will no longer be a need.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html
and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Cambridge University and the Twenty Year Delay.

Cambridge University is famous the world over. It has inspired an untold number of books and films set in its idyllic surroundings – yet, is it an inspiration to actually go there, study there and be there for three years? Does Cambridge University have a positive effect on a life?

I am moved to write of this now, because of a thought that is never too far from my mind: life is brief and sudden and the one thing none of us know about it, is its length. If I did not write of this, it might forever go unwritten and never be known. That is something I cannot let happen. So, today, I have decided to write of Cambridge University’s effect on my life path – well, one of those effects. I write knowing that very few people will read of it, here, and it will still largely go unknown, even so – however, it shall serve the purpose of making a record of these thoughts, so that they are to be found, in the world, should anyone choose to look for them.

I went up to Cambridge with such high expectation – and perhaps, in fact, that was part of the problem. I expected to be surrounded by enlightened, intelligent, lively minds with humane outlooks and understanding personalities, informed by premature wisdom. I thought they would be the best of the best. Sadly, they weren’t like that at all. There was relatively little of any of these characteristics present – or at least not to the degree I sought. They were not as bright as I had hoped and many tended to be rather conformist and intolerant of difference. In fact, they exhibited an exaggeration of the negative characteristics I had observed in colleagues at school: a narrowness of mind, that liked to exclude anything or anyone that didn’t match their rather limited range of expectations. Yet, I am not here to write of the students, even though many of them were disappointing, in some ways. I am here to write of the institution itself, and its staff.

Firstly, there is the legend that Cambridge has good teachers. I don’t know how this impression ever took hold, because very few of the lecturers I had, were decent teachers. Some of them were truly appalling. One, in particular, has never been forgotten. He “taught” Physical Chemistry, using blueprint style preprinted overheads, which he would flash up before a lecture hall filled with hundreds of people and point at a dense mass of mathematical equations and say: “As you can see, this implies that”, as he pointed to the top and bottom line, without explanation or introduction of what, actually any of it was about. He never gave any indication of what any of the symbols represented or what, in fact, was being communicated by the equations. At times like this, I would look around the lecture hall and see what I expected to see: a sea of incomprehending faces. If any of these people were to work out what was being discussed they would have to do all the work themselves. The lecturer was not going to be of any help at all.

I remember another occasion, years later, in a Philosophy of Science lecture when a very earnest and intelligent young man came to me after the lecture and asked: “Did you understand any of that?”

“Yes.”, I said, because I had.

He looked most discomfited, because it was clear that he hadn’t – even though I knew from conversations with him, that he was very intelligent.

What perhaps, I should have said, is that I approached his lectures with a very open mind and let all his words fall upon my mind. There they would link up and form meaning, or be pieced together as one great puzzle, until all became clear. The only reason I understood that lecturer's work was because of my own peculiar approach to listening, not because of any communicative skill on the part of the lecturer. Then again, of course, I may have been seeing my own meanings in his work and not the ones he had intended.

The truth was, of course, that the lecturer was extremely opaque and he did not talk in a way designed to convey understanding. He spoke as if in a private language, of immense complexity. Looking back, it is possible he had some innate disorder that affected his ability to communicate – because he was inherently very bad at it.

At Cambridge, bad lecturers were much more common than good ones – at least in the sciences. They were bad in two primary ways: they did not know how to communicate well – and they were very dull to listen to.

Those failings, however, are minor compared to the ones that bothered me more deeply about Cambridge.

There were two other aspects that troubled me. Firstly, whenever I showed creativity or enthusiasm, in my written work, I invariably was greeted with great hostility, by the academic staff. It appeared that creativity deeply offended them, perhaps by sparking some envy of some kind. I found it most unnerving to be welcomed so, each and every time I showed a creative response to an assignment. So unpleasant were the reactions I received, which varied from being reported, by “Dr Robert Lee Kilpatrick” for writing an essay of “inappropriate length” (for which I had to see a disciplinary committee!), to my essay being screwed up into a ball, by Dr. Barbara Politynska, who didn’t like its thesis. These were deeply scarring experiences. They made me understand that to express my inner thoughts, on any subject, would only be to court a hostile reaction. The effect on me was stark: I didn’t really want to be there anymore. This was a place that loathed creativity. It was a suffocating feeling, actually – for I could not, thereafter fully express what I thought, without knowing that it would be unwelcome. Cambridge, I learned, was a place for intellectual conformists – at least, at the undergraduate level, in the subjects I studied. Anyone with the merest spark of creativity, was definitely unwelcome.

Then there was another side: the plagiarists. Cambridge had those, too – both among the staff and among the students. One staff member, some of whose work was derived from something I said to him, was Nick J Mackintosh, a Psychology Professor, at Cambridge. He wrote an entire book based on something I said to him – of course, he didn’t acknowledge his original source, at all. I will tell that tale, in another post, to give it, its due. Another person who plagiarized some of my thoughts, appears to be Marc Quinn, the British “artist” – for some of his most striking works are simply embodiments of things I said to the editor of a magazine at Robinson College Cambridge (the Bin Brook), about my own work, in the presence of several other students who had not been introduced. Marc Quinn was a student at Robinson College (my college). Again, I will give the full tale another day, to give it fair space.

Anyway, the weight of all these experiences was truly disheartening. It did something I could never have expected it to do: it put me off pursuing a career in science, altogether. So, even though I had been a physicist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middx, before going up to Cambridge, after Cambridge, I wanted nothing more to do with science. So, for twenty years, I did just that: I avoided science and did other things.

Slowly, my feelings on the matter of science, healed. What really accelerated the healing was Ainan. Working with my son on his passion for science, reawakened my own and reminded me what I had so enjoyed before Cambridge put me off. So, after a twenty year delay, I returned to science and started doing research into Psychology. I am now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at HELP University, Kuala Lumpur, focusing on research.

I know this: had I never gone to Cambridge, it is likely that I would never have been put off working in science. It is likely that there would never have been a twenty year delay before returning to science. Thus, going to Cambridge, far from “advancing my career”, as I had expected, cost me twenty years work as a scientist.

My experience at Cambridge, really colours my view, now, as to what is a suitable place for Ainan to study at. There is no way I would subject him to Cambridge, for instance. I look, now, not for brand names, in Universities – but for a friendly welcoming culture and good teaching. I see no attraction in any institution whose culture resembles the Cambridge I knew. In a way, this is a blessing, for guided by what I went through, I am now seeking to ensure that Ainan never has to suffer similarly. So, some good can come of it, at least, that is my hope.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Problem parents.

Sometimes, parents are the problem, not the child. I see this quite regularly, in the kinds of searches people make. Sometimes, the searches indicate that the parent is the problem, in the parent-child relationship.

One particular recent case comes to mind. Someone from Bangkok - presumably a parent - arrived on my site with the following search terms: "Baby problem too talkative".

I thought those words were so sad. You see, there is no such thing as a baby that is "too talkative" - only parents who are too ungiving, of their time, their effort, their patience. A baby talks because it wants to communicate. If it talks a lot it means two things: it is thinking a lot and it wants to communicate much of it. This is not a bad thing - and it flabbergasts me that there are parents who think it is. If the baby wants to talk and is able to talk, it is a sign that much that is good is going on in the baby's mind.

It seems that that particular parent in Bangkok, wanted a child that required no effort on their part. They wanted a child to be a silent, undemanding object. They were perturbed that their child, in fact, was talkative and wished to engage with them. How sad it is that the parent didn't wish to return the engagement and seemed to find it a burden - a burden big enough to go searching for relief from it, on the internet.

I have seen, before, parents whose searches seem to imply that they want their children to conform. They want their children to be "easy to look after" - even if it means that the child cannot be a child. These are parents, whom I feel should never have become parents at all. They seem to want to deny the essence and reality of the child and have, in their place, a convenient accessory, that gives them the status of parents, without any of the bother, responsibility or effort.

Perhaps such parents should, instead, be seeking adoption agencies, for it is quite certain that they are unprepared for, and unable, to look after their child in the way one would hope. Indeed, perhaps such "parents" should have thought ahead, and adopted out their children at birth. There are many childless couples out there who would just love to have a "too talkative" baby to fill their days, with fresh thoughts on everything and anything - as such children are wont to do.

The saddest part of this particular incident with the parent in Bangkok is the long-term effect on the child. Now, the baby is "too talkative". However, if the parent persists in not engaging them, in snubbing their communicativeness - as one assumes they are doing, if they find the baby's efforts "too" much - then, over time, the baby will come to learn that talkativeness gains no response. They will come to learn that silence is required. In time, therefore, this wonderfully communicative baby, may fall silent and fall inward and become a child with much to say, but who never says it. They become the silent, watchful type who looks on the world with wise little eyes, but an unmoving tongue. Is that a happy outcome? Is it right to encase such an expressive child in entrained silence?

I don't think so. However, I fear that that is the likely future for that particular "too talkative" baby. Until, that is, they get much older, and find themselves in more accepting circumstances. Perhaps then, their silent tongue might free itself and grow active once more. Of course, it might be too late by then. Silence might have become an unbreakable habit and a once unusually communicative being, might have become an unusually uncommunicative one. I believe that such a change is possible: all that it takes is for their present toxic, ungiving social environment to persist long enough to train the child in a new way of communicating: that of relative quietness, in the face of the explict demands of the parents that he, or she, be so.

If you are the parent of a talkative baby, or a child; if their tongue never ceases to frame new thoughts, new observations, new questions, don't ever let yourself become impatient with the incessant stream - for that stream is destined to become a river of thought that the child will communicate to the world, when they grow up. Don't shut them off, now, so that they might never speak what is on their minds. Who knows, perhaps, in their ever-flowing words, there lies a future writer, or actor, or politician - or any other kind of verbally gifted adult. It would be such a pity to snuff out that future, by being impatient in the present.

So, never let yourself think that a child is "too" talkative. There is no such thing. There are only adults who are too unwilling to listen. Don't be one of them.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, 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, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
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This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Singaporean schools are destroying our children.

It doesn't take much observation of Singaporean children, trying to be creative, to realize that they just can't do it. Now, the question is: whose fault is it? I would say the schools themselves.

I have had the privilege of conducting drama classes, at times, with Singaporean children. I say "privilege" because these opportunities have afforded me a chance to learn what is going on inside the minds of young Singaporeans. What I have found there has been disappointing.

Drama is about freedom of the spirit; freedom to express the self and tell the tale of an inner life. Therefore, those who are most free, are most adept at it. Those who know themselves best, are most capable of deep performances. Those most familiar with finding answers within themselves usually have the most to show, dramatically. Yet, in Singaporean schools, I find not freedom, but entrapment. These children are trapped within a prison we cannot see: one made of structures and rules, requirements and regulations. They live in a prison that demands silence and subservience, submissiveness and self-denial. When given the chance to speak, these children have nothing to say.

Teaching drama in Singapore is a painful exercise. The children have no familiarity with their imaginations. They don't know how to summon the imagination to their aid. They don't even, perhaps, know what an imagination is. They give hollow expressions of emotion, that have no feeling. They make pathetic gestures at self-expression. In a class of twenty students, there might be one who is able to focus on their own inner thoughts and do something of modest interest. The others are, almost entirely, incapable of expressing themselves. It is as if they have NO SELF TO EXPRESS. Perhaps there is truth in that, perhaps these children have no selves or are not familiar with themselves. When asked to do something simple, like pretend they have hurt their knee, none of them show any pain; none of them show any discomfort even, they just moan without conviction - it is really quite a pathetic spectacle. When asked to show an emotion, such as sadness, or happiness, they are unable to seem to feel it, they give comic book characterizations, filled with exaggerations. They seem not to be able to reach their feelings. When asked to act out a simple scene, they seem to be unable to become involved in it, unable to consider it real, unable to behave in a way consonant with the situation they have been given. Their actions are half-hearted, and stereotyped, their words are mumbled and unclear and devoid of emotion or conviction and, they don't work together very well - they don't share the imagined space as if each of them occupies it. In short, they do none of the things an actor would normally do to express the inner life of a character, or its outwardly expressed form. Nor do they do any of the things that would normally be required to tell a story.

With work, time and effort, they do improve. Yet, what is clear is that the whole area of using their imagination is foreign to them. The children I have worked with are in their teens - yet it is clear that, despite being relatively mature, they are not acquainted with their own imagination and its powers. They are empty of inspiration. They have no experience in self-expression. It is as if they have lived their whole lives in a cell with no-one to talk to, or share their lives with, so impoverished are their communication skills and sense of how to convey an emotion, a story, an idea. It is, in fact, saddening to witness.

I enjoy, however, trying to open them up, trying to show them how to access their imaginations and make something of it. Some of them respond...others are frozen, unable to go beyond limp, ineffective efforts at stereotyped shells of emotional and ideational portrayal.

What is very, very obvious on seeing the way Singaporean children are, is how impoverished their imaginative skills are compared to children I have seen in other countries. It is just not normal to see so little imagination in teenagers. At least, it is not normal in my experience of life and teaching.

Singaporean schools leave no space for the child to be. There are too many academic demands on them, too many rules, too many regulations, too many fixed behaviour patterns to follow. There is too much emphasis on conformity and there is no permission to be individual or creative. The result is clear: Singapore is producing children whose minds have been amputated. The parts of them labelled "individuality", "creativity" and "imagination" have been cut off, leaving half a child behind.

The political masters, in Singapore, call for more creativity for one reason only: they see money in it. However, what they fail to see is that the educational system they have implemented GUARANTEES that Singaporean children will NOT be creative, will NOT be imaginative and will NOT have much a sense of self.

The only way to make Singapore a more creative place is to throw out the present education system entirely and replace it with a more humane, open, less competitive, more tolerant, welcoming system that is not consumed with rules, regulations and codes of conduct and behaviour. Singapore needs a system that allows children to breathe and be themselves. Then, and only then, will Singapore begin to nurture creative children.

It would be a better world, were this so, for such children would be happier and, ultimately, Singapore would be richer for it - for new things only come from creative children. The rigidified robots presently being produced by Singapore's education system will never, ever do anything in life apart from take orders from someone. Perhaps that is all that the system really wants: components in the economic system, unable to think for themselves or, preferably, think at all.

I would like to see a different system. I would like to see children who live and whose minds come alive when given the chance to express themselves. Perhaps an early sign of success would be drama classes that have some drama in them.

(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.)

The Mass Psychosis of Modern Life.

Singapore is a mad place...according to a leading academic. However, it is not just Singapore, for he would consider many places in the world, utterly bonkers.

In 1985, Dr. Burkhardt wrote a paper (the original of which I have yet to find), in which he observed that modern life is possessed of a "mass psychosis" that requires "uniformity and sameness from everyone". He said that this went against the basic human right (as he termed it) of allowing all people to be "unique individuals".

Basically, Dr. Burkhardt is convinced that modern societies are completely mad - particularly those that go in for uniformity.

Now, I happen to be living in a society that goes in for uniformity and sameness in a big way. I can't say that I find myself disagreeing with Dr. Burkhardt's assessment. In fact, his words rang true the moment I read them. It IS mad to insist on uniformity and sameness from everyone. It is completely insane to build a society on conformity. People are unique, by nature...so they should be allowed to be unique in society. Any society that does not allow individuals to blossom and be individuals is, according to Dr. Burkhardt, utterly insane.

It is certain that Dr. Burkhardt would identify Singapore as one of his "mass psychotic" societies, were he to consider it. What, however, can we do about it, as individuals? Unfortunately, I fear that nothing can be done by any particular individual - given the strength of the insistence on sameness around here - apart from what a lot of people do, in fact, do: they emigrate to places more given to allowing individuals to be individual.

It would be interesting to learn what Singapore's leaders would think of learning that, by the standards of a respected academic, their society is mad. Would they take efforts to change the emphasis on uniformity if they knew? Or would they reject the thesis (as one, of course, being uniform in their response and nature), thinking that uniformity and sameness are the ideal by which their society should live by?

I would welcome comments, from around the world, about the extent to which your own society allows you to be an individual, allows you to be whatever and however you want to be. Or, conversely, perhaps you might like to comment about the extent to which your society wants you to be the same as everyone else.

Thanks.

(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.)

The generosity of Singaporean Education

Singapore boasts of its education system. It prides itself on having a "Number 1" education system. Yet, is this true? From close up one sees something rather different.

Here education is standardized to an absurd degree, such that it is impossible to get the right education for any particular person: what you get is the "standard response".

So far, Ainan has not got what he needs from the education system - what he needs comes from his parents, at home, with a pile of books. The "system" has been most reluctant to offer up its resources to him, as yet (with occasional exceptions that don't alter the general tone of the situation). For instance, rather stingily, a nation filled with chemistry labs, hasn't made one available to Ainan on a regular basis. They would rather the labs sat empty, unused, than have one scientifically passionate child at work in them. The ones that are available, are only so, if we are prepared to, and able to, pay exorbitant fees. Where is Singapore's "great wealth" when it is needed? They can't even afford the expense of one unusual student.

Today, I found evidence that our situation, with respect to Ainan, is not an isolated case. There are other children out there, striving to get the special education they need. One other example is a twelve year child with an interest in Physics, beyond his (or her...we don't know) years. The student in question needed lab space to acquire the skills necessary to take an exam (an exact parallel of our own situation with Ainan, at six, but in a different subject, at a different age.) The education system was making no accommodation for this particular gifted student: no-one and nowhere was prepared to offer them the resources needed. So, what did the parents do? They found a private school that was willing to take their child on and teach them practical physics skills appropriate to the exam - at a price.

Now, I would like you to guess what that price was, per hour, for a nation where many people earn about two or three thousand Singapore dollars per month. Have a long think about what a school, in all good conscience, could, would and should charge a young student in such a situation, for the opportunity to further their passion for physics?

This school charged the desperate parents of this twelve year old, who had nowhere else to go, since nowhere in Singapore was willing to offer them the necessary facilities, a sum that I had to check three times, with the person who told it to me (an administrator at the school concerned), so disbelieving was I, of my ears.

This Singaporean school and bastion of generosity charged the parents of this gifted physics student, SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS an HOUR!

Now, that is the size of the barrier that the parents of unusually gifted students face, here, in Singapore. Only the very, very rich, can afford to give their children a differentiated education. The rest must do with the rubber stamp process offered to everyone else.

I was really appalled. The percentage of parents of gifted children who could actually afford six hundred dollars an hour to give their child the education they need, is vanishingly small. Clearly, this particular gifted child had wealthy parents: most such children do not. Such children, instead, face endless frustration, as the "system" says "no!" to their every special request.

I will write more of the other examples of frustrated gifted children that we have encountered, in Singapore, in due course. In each case, the national education system has failed to accommodate them, in the way which was self-evidently appropriate.

Singapore has a lot to learn, if it is to be the supreme nation it intends to be. Perhaps one of the first lessons should be how to accommodate the exceptional, rather than deny them. The problem with that, of course, is that Singapore just doesn't like to make exceptions. What they don't understand, though, is that making exceptions would make them exceptional, in time to come. Singapore has, it seems, chosen another path: the one that leads to conformity, uniformity and second-rateness.

That is not the choice we are going to make: whatever the "system" says. Unfortunately, we don't have six hundred dollars an hour to buy our way out of the situation...but then, who does?

(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.)

Why does no-one speak out?

Today, I went to the post office and learnt something more of the nature of the Singaporean people.



The post office is just like Singaporean banks: prone to long queues and slow service. Today, however, the post office staff excelled themselves. They seemed to be competing with each other to do as little as possible to while away the hours - and get paid for their time. I only wish they were actually paid for what they do.



When I arrived at Killiney post office this afternoon at 4.40 pm, there were five post office staff present. That seems a reasonable number. Oddly, however, only one of them seemed to be attending to customers. The others had adopted various postures of idleness. There were two people sat behind the counter - one serving, the other hiding behind a sign that said their position was closed.



The queue wasn't a long one but it was a very, very slow one. There were only about four people ahead of me in the queue - but it was a full twenty to twenty five minutes before I got to the front of the queue. That is far too slow, for so few people waiting.



As I waited, gradually more stations were opened. First two, then finally three. (That still left two staff doing apparently nothing, of course).



However, this did not seem to speed matters up particularly. I waited at the front of the queue for a good five minutes before something both bizarre and unwelcome occurred.



A very large woman (larger than me) wearing bright yellow, one or two places from the back of the queue, gestured to one of the post office staff with two objects in her hands. He was the man at the "Speedpost" counter. (I know it is a funny name for such a slow postal service!) He had been serving general customers as well as "Speedpost" customers. He looked at what was in her hands and gestured that she should come over to him.



I was shocked. I had been waiting in the queue for far too long - and so had everyone else - yet this woman from the back of the queue was being gestured to come forward to be served immediately.



He attended to the objects she held. Then she presented him with a huge pile of bills that I had not previously seen. (Bills can be paid at Singaporean post offices). She proceeded to pay each bill, one at a time.



I looked at this scene in amazement. Others too had seen her jump the queue and get served without having to wait like everyone else. However, I was particularly irked since she had taken what should have been my place.



What I was more amazed by was everyone else's reaction. Though what this large, yellow lady had done was unjust to all who had waited for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes in the queue, no-one, absolutely no-one said anything. They all accepted this injustice in silence.



I saw in their silence a more general tendency not to speak out. A nation of people who won't speak out on the little things, won't speak out on the big things, either. Here was a nation of people that anyone, absolutely anyone, with a bit of nerve, could treat unjustly - and no-one would say a word. They would accept the unjust circumstance, rather like they accept the rain - as if it is something about which they can do nothing.



As I watched their communal silence, and their evident communal awareness that someone wasn't playing fair, I grew ever more perturbed. There was something unnatural in the way they accepted her selfish action, without comment. The natural response of most people would be to complain to the woman or the staff member who had served her. Such a response would be prompted by emotions innate to all humans, everywhere. Yet, those emotional responses were either absent from, or not expressed by, these Singaporeans. I wondered, then, what had been done to these people to make them so suppress their natural response to injustice. It seemed as if they had deeply imbibed the lesson that silence must be maintained in the face of all that is wrong with the world. It was most odd.

Finally a counter became free and I was served. It took no more than 45 seconds to attend to my simple task - though I had waited at least half an hour to be attended to.

As I was leaving, I approached the staff member who was still busily serving the queue jumper.

"Why did you let her jump the queue?" I asked him, in a voice loud enough to be heard by all in the room, but not so loud as to be unrestrained.

He stared up at me in silence.

"Don't you know it is bad manners?", I continued.

His silence remained unbroken.

"It shouldn't be allowed. It is unfair on everyone else."

His grey hair framed his uncommunicative face, but he refrained from speech.

Interestingly, the woman who had queue jumped said nothing either. Surely, she knew that what she had done was wrong.

Somewhat depressingly, the whole queue of customers looked on, in silence. Not one person took the chance to join in, in support. Not one person joined me in voicing a complaint. What is the point of standing up for a people who will not stand up for themselves? It is a thankless task. These people didn't even speak up for themselves when someone else had stepped forward to do so (providing them an example) - not even that could prompt them to speak.

The funny thing is, from the way they maintained their silence when I spoke out, it was almost as if I, too, was breaking a social rule when I complained - the one that said: "Don't speak out, no matter what!"

I left Killiney post office with a much lower opinion of its staff - and a better understanding of the Singaporean people.

It is clear that something in the culture here denies the natural responses of all humans to react to injustice - on both an emotional and intellectual level. The natural emotional expressiveness common to all humans, is stifled here.

In the western countries I have lived in, I would have expected the customers in the queue to berate the woman for jumping the queue, at the very least. It is likely that an arguement would have ensued. In some countries, it is even possible that that arguement may have become physical. I would also have thought that the staff member would have scolded her and sent her back to the queue. This would have been a typical outcome for her attempt to jump a half hour queue, at the expense of everyone else. However, nothing happened apart from a sullen silence from all who were present.

I would welcome comments from Singaporeans themselves as to what urges them to silence in situations when people from virtually everywhere else in the world, would speak out. I am sure a lot of people would be interested to know.

(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.)

The right answer is no answer.

Different cultures vary in how much they stress uniformity of thought. Some cultures, like those in Asia, are rather keen on it.

It begins in the education system. Education, around the world, too often stresses the "right answer". Students are encouraged to yield to the authority of the teacher and the system, in the matter of what is "right" and, in so doing, give up any native drive to be creative. You see, if there is a "right answer", then the answer must already be known. If it is known, it is not new. If it is not new, it is not creative. So, a "right answer" culture, means a no creativity culture.

Singapore is very much a "right answer" culture. I have taught in its schools, and I was very surprised by the instruction I was given by the Head of the English Department that I then worked in (some years ago, now). I was told that I had to write model answers for all the essays that I set the students. I was then to mark their output against my model answer and grade them accordingly. I found this profoundly disturbing - for it meant, very clearly, that there was only one right answer, in that school, in that system. The education system had reduced a quintessentially creative and expressive subject, like English (and the General Paper, which I also taught and for which I was given the same instruction), to a subject in which only one "right answer" was possible. In so doing, the school was enforcing conformity of thought - for anyone who deviated from the "one right answer" - would be marked down. Anyone whose thought conformed to the model answer would be marked up - and rewarded for their conformity of thought. Such a practice can only lead to a student body lacking in creativity and intellectual initiative - and this is precisely what I observed in them. They were unable to think for themselves or to originate ideas. So often when I, against usual practice, set them tasks that actually required them to think I would hear: "But you haven't told us what to write." Sad, isn't it?

I have written a little on this topic before but I felt that it needed to be revisited, in more detail.

An education system may either be open to its students' thoughts and contributions - or it may close down those thoughts and contributions - by insisting that, for all questions, and for all situations, there is only one right answer. Singapore follows such a system in its public education. Many other Asian countries do - and to a lesser extent many countries around the world. Yet, having lived in Asia, I would say that the tendency is vastly stronger here than elsewhere. Wherever this tendency occurs, students are being ill-served by their education. Many years of such a classroom situation can only erase any native creativity there is in the students.

The only right answer is that there is no right answer - except in matters of maths and science - but even then, there is room for a new answer in science and a new method in maths. Education will only ever be educative, when the teachers and the system realize this.

(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, and 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 adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

On haircuts and conformity

What is so important about a haircut? I have been prompted to wonder this by my son Ainan's school's obsession with the issue.

You see Ainan's hair has a natural wave in it. This gives him a "Romantic" appearance, when his hair is left to its own devices, akin to the Byronic era (and his friend Shelley, for that matter - we mustn't forget him). As a general impression, Ainan's hair, for me, conveys character and distinguishes him from others. Why is this? Well, we are living in Singapore, The Land of the Straight Hairs (as a Red Indian might have put it). Almost everyone in Singapore has straight black hair which lies flat upon their head. It is unobtrusive, looks the same from person to person, and doesn't get in the way.

Ainan's hair is different (though not curly like Fintan's on which I have posted on another occasion). In Singapore different seems to mean "not good". I make this as an observation of a general trend. That which stands out tends to be criticized, subtly or otherwise - and it has long been this way. In this manner, people are encouraged to stay within narrow bounds - and in general they do. It leads to a conformist society.

The matter of hair is just one on which conformism is enforced. In Singapore's government schools a standard short haircut is required. No-one's hair is allowed to deviate from this. There is no room for personality, or individuality of appearance: everyone must conform to the ideal of very short, sharply cut, tidy hair. Well, frankly, it looks ugly on many people - but that is the rule.

I came to know this rather abruptly when I was picking Ainan up from school. A teacher hovered about him waiting for someone. That someone turned out to be me. "Are you the father?" He began, sternly, without stating whom I was supposed to be the father of - which is odd considering how many children there were around. I guessed he meant Ainan, since they were quite near each other.

"Yes." I replied, unsure whether that was the best answer, true though it was.

"He has to get a haircut." He said this in a way that let you know that he was quite put out by the matter. It was a matter that provoked some irritation - anger, even, in him. He went further: "His hair is too long for this school."

I looked at Ainan's hair. It was not short, but neither was it long. It had what I call a "natural length" - it just seemed right - a middling sort of length that didn't get in his eyes, but gave his head some character, something distinctive about it - what with his wavy hair framing his face. I couldn't see anything wrong with it.

I felt his stern-ness of character as he stood in silence then. After a minute - or two - quite literally passed with nothing being said between us - because frankly I was unimpressed with his PR skills, so brusque did he seem, he said: "Well, are you going to get it cut?"

I just nodded minimally and grunted. I wasn't going to give him a word.

The funny thing was, he was basically stating that he thought Ainan's hair was somehow scruffy because it was too long. I busied myself throughout that silent two minutes pondering his appearance. He had a certain definite scruffiness himself. His hair was short - but his clothes hung sloppily on a frame that had definitely never been to a gym (though it was possible that he had swallowed a gym, and carried it around in his generous belly). It was funny that a man who projected sloppiness, should be so upset about a child whose hair was not cropped. I said nothing however, for he looked the sort who liked to argue - and I wasn't in the mood.

When I got home I learnt that he had made the same request of my wife, on another day - and yesterday he did so again, for Ainan's grandmother. So, he had stood beside Ainan on many different occasions, seeking to ambush relatives, who came to collect him, over the matter of his hair. It borders on the obsessive.

Yesterday, Ainan got a haircut.

When he came home and I first caught sight of him, my mouth opened in involuntary shock - and I clapped my hand to it. Ainan saw this reaction, but just looked on me impassively, not wishing to recognize my reaction.

Ainan looked very different indeed. Gone was the human quality of his hair, gone was the individual appearance it had given him, gone was the sense of the Romantic age - and what replaced it was a rather militaristic, very short haircut that let not a single wave run through his hair. His hair was neat in the sort of way someone with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) would make it neat. There was not a single hair venturing to stick up from his head. All was flat, tight and orderly. It looked, to my eyes, quite unsettling. It looked just like everyone else in Singapore's schools. Ainan's haircut now looked just as flat and straight - though not black - as everyone else's (owing to its shortness). All the personality of Ainan's appearance had been extracted - and he had become the Required Regulation Schoolboy.

I suppose I will get used to it - but I simply don't like it. I don't like a system which insists on a standardization of appearance of the schoolchildren - a system that doesn't like the kids' personality to come through. Perhaps they are not conscious of what they do - but when teachers make a big issue out of a haircut, as the teacher at Ainan's school did - they are repressing the individuality of their students. It is their individuality which is their most prized possession - if that is squashed, you will end up with a dull nation, filled with dull people who dare not express themselves - correction: filled with people who do not know HOW to express themselves.

There should be no regulation in the matter of appearance in school - or anywhere else. People should be allowed to be themselves and show themselves as they are. Only then can a lively, varied, interesting society be encouraged to grow. Too much emphasis on conformity of appearance (and behaviour - but that is another post) suffocates a nation. No such nation has a long term future in a world that demands creativity and innovation from each country - if those countries are to have a place in that world.

(If you would like to know more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven 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 in general. Thanks.)

More lessons from the classroom: morality

I wrote, recently, of the lack of imagination observable in many young people today. What implications are there for their functioning in the world?

Well, one implication came to light today in another brief conversation, I am aware of:

Teacher: "What would you do if you found a wallet in the street?"

Student, from mainland China (the same one as in the earlier posting):

"I have never found a wallet."

End of both thought and conversation.

This particular student has displayed a lack of imagination in many contexts, in the past, however, the implication that he was unable to consider a moral situation - because he lacked imagination - is a new observation. It is shocking to realize that the lack of imagination means he is not able to consider his own responses in situations he has never been in. Fundamentally, therefore, it means that he cannot know himself. Lack of imagination is, therefore, a kind of pervasive mental disability whose wide-ranging effects are little appreciated. We think of it in terms of not being creative - but it is much more than that. Without imagination a child is not fully human, and lacks the mental resources to understand themselves. Imagination is a key aspect of what it means to be a fully alive, thinking being.

Any education that imperils imagination, imperils the very future of Man. A world without imagination, is a world in which people cannot even understand themselves - never mind the world they live in.

Is this young man - for he is eighteen or nineteen years old - unable to imagine because of some native deficiency - or is it because of the way he was educated in mainland China? In some way, I hope that it is a deficiency, for if it is his education then the implication is clear: there may be over a billion like him, all having received such a debilitating education. I don't know which it is - but I can tell you this: I have seen this lack of imagination in many others of his origin. I do not know the cause - whether it be innate or environmental. The question may be essentially undecidable without doing an experiment that would, itself, be questionable.

I will keep you posted on more observations of this phenomenon, as and when they arise.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, thirteen 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 in general. Thanks.)

On being different in a conformist world

There are many things I could write about this topic, but today I will choose a single vignette which relates to the title. I may write other posts expanding this topic in future - indeed, I probably should.

We live in Singapore. In this city state, most people are Chinese - about 80 % roughly. About 14% are Malay and the rest are Indian with the merest sprinkling of Caucasian (rare enough so that in most circumstances I feel the odd one out). There are, of course, Eurasians, but not that many. My children come into this category.

Asians generally have straight black hair. Thus Singapore, being almost exclusively Asian, is dominated by an almost universal possession of straight black hair. This may seem like a minor matter, but visually, if you grew up in a culture with a more varied genetic heritage - such as London, where I did - you would find this uniformity strange. In my childhood, everyone seemed to have subtly different hair, across a wide range of possibilities. Here, in most cases, it is black and straight.

Fintan, three, however, is different. Being Eurasian, he has a mix of influences, and in his case, this mix has produced markedly curly hair. My hair has a slight wave. So does my wife's (unusually, for here). However, Fintan seems to have got a double dose of it - and has ended up distinctly curly.

How do the other children relate to this? Well, in one sense, not well. Fintan took to using a word about a year ago, that he had obviously heard at school. I didn't know what it referred to for a long time: but it seems it refers to his curly hair. He had clearly been called this. At first, he repeated the word, without any due gravity, but later it seemed to bother him. Curly hair is rather rare here and Fintan is probably the only child his school friends have encountered who has such hair. It might seem like a small matter - but it seems big in a country where everyone's hair looks the same - except Fintan's.

A month or two ago, I saw Fintan, after he had had a shower, patting his hair down. Clearly, once it is wet, the curly headedness abates until it is dry: it seems flat like everyone elses. I saw this and said: "Your hair is nice Fintan...it is different."

He shook his head.

"No. I don't want curly hair...I want to be handsome."

He is handsome, the poor boy. His mixed heritage has given him a rugged beauty few boys possess - and one day he will, no doubt, be a very handsome man.

I felt sad to see him so concerned about his hair. I cannot be with him, throughout his day, as he encounters people who have never seen such hair - but I can try to build up his view of himself so that he accepts his difference and, perhaps, one day, finds comfort in it.

Yet, each time he showers, he flattens his hair and is content with it for awhile - at least until it dries. Why can't people accept each other's differences instead of making an issue of them? Fintan wouldn't even be aware of his hair if other kids had not made it an issue. It is all quite sad.

(If you would like to read more of Fintan, three, or his gifted brothers, Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, or Tiarnan, thirteen 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 adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The problem of creativity: examinations

You would think that the creative child would be the most prized asset of any nation. You wouldn't think it from the way the education system is structured, in all countries of the world that I am aware of.

How does a state evaluate the merit of a child? They examine them in formal examinations. They sit the child down and ask standardized questions, intended to elicit a standardized response with which the child may be marked against a "standard" of predetermined, mark-yielding goals, to be achieved.

You might think that is fair and reasonable. All children are to be gauged against preset examination objectives, designed to elicit specific knowledge taught, universally, by their schools over a course. But is it? Is this a reasonable way to assess our children? For what does an examination actually determine? It determines whether your thoughts CONFORM to expectation. The real result of an exam is the degree to which your child gave the answers required. This is taken to be a measure of "intelligence" - since giving the "right" answer denotes you as having understood the question, understood the course material, and been able to calculate, elucidate, deduce, infer, remember or otherwise think the answer.

Yet, there is a problem. You see examinations always have preset expectations of what an answer should be. Some countries take this to a ludicrous extent. I have taught in Singapore (English Literature, and the General Paper, for a time). There I was expected to do something I thought truly bizarre. Whenever I set an essay paper - note I said essay - and not mathematics problem - I was expected, by the school, to write, beforehand, a model answer, to the question I set, against which I was to compare all the student answers, and mark them according to the degree to which they fit my model answer. I had a truly sick feeling on being asked to do this. For it told me something very clearly: conformity of thought was the intention of the whole process. There were to be NO marks for originality, for originality would mean that your answer would differ from expectation.

What did I do? I didn't write any model answers. I marked the essays on an individual basis against another standard: my internal one of quality of thought. This was fairer to the students and allowed them to do their own thing. Some of them blossomed under this regime: others were a little lost - for tellingly, they "didn't know what to write" because they "hadn't been told" what to write. I tried to introduce originality into the classroom - and it was clearly a strange experience for them. I may write more of that one day.

Examinations measure not intelligence, so much, as conformity to expectation allied with grasp of a standardized knowledge base. An intelligent person may do very well - but also an intelligent person may not do so well, in a misleading fashion. Here is why: if you can think for yourself, you may think in a way that is not expected by the examiner. This means that you will write original answers. You might think this would be greeted with great welcome and result in a stellar result. Not so. If your answer differs from the preset guidelines that the examiner expects, in most instances you would be marked down - for your answer may not be familiar to him or her.

I will give you an example from observation of Ainan Celeste Cawley, my scientific child prodigy son, who has just turned seven, a few days ago. Ainan is very knowledgeable in chemistry - but he displays more than knowledge. He shows, daily, the ability to apply his knowledge in new ways and invent new reactions for doing things or achieving the goals in hand. I was recently discussing some chemical analytical tests with him. These are standardized reactions used to prove the presence of a particular substance. They are answers that an examiner would expect to be stated precisely and without deviation. What did Ainan do when presented with a standard situation, which had a known, conventionalized approach to determine the answer? He made up his own solutions. He pointed out other ways in which you could test for these substances. He invented different reactions which could also prove the presence of the said substance, and told me what to expect in result if the substances were tested in this way. My reaction was mixed. I was impressed by his deftness of mind that allowed him to see a new way to achieve the end required. But I was also worried - for one day, if he is to achieve his ambition of being a scientific researcher - he will have to pass examinations. Would he sit down and give perfectly valid answers which were unfamiliar to the examiner - since they were new ones - and so be marked down, when, in fact, he was doing something few candidates could do: come up with a new answer that also worked?

I think so. I think Ainan would give original answers in a scientific examination. This presents multiple dangers, the first of which is that the examiner may not know enough science to be able to evaluate the alternative answer and determine that it is also correct. Or, the examiner might admire the answer enough, if it has practical or commercial utility, to acquire it for themselves, in an act of plagiarism.

Certainly, in science, they are no rewards for originality in examinations - and plenty potential penalties. It is only at the level of PhD that originality is supposedly rewarded by the system - and that is a long time to wait, to be properly appreciated.

If your child is gifted in creative ways and displays originality of thought, therefore, they may not be very happy in the school system, and their quality of mind might not be truly reflected in their examination results. For they may have thought thoughts no other candidate had ever thought, and write words no other candidate has ever written. Unless your child is fortunate enough to have a very intelligent and informed examiner, this may not produce the appropriate rewards. In some countries, it is almost guaranteed that your child's qualities of mind will not be appreciated, but overlooked by the system.

(If you would like to read about my scientific child prodigy son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, just turned seven, and his gifted brothers, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of child prodigy, child genius, savant, the creatively gifted, and gifted children in general.)