Ainan's latest favourite subject.

One of Ainan’s most evident characteristics is his capacity to surprise. He is always managing to find new ways to surprise me, even now that he is 12 years old and I have had 12 years of surprises. He still manages to find new ones.

One of his latest surprises was his reaction to this semester’s selection of courses on his American Degree Programme. Which course do you think is his favourite? I am not going to tell you which courses he is taking, because I want you to imagine out of all possible courses, which one Ainan might consider his favourite. Have a good think about it.

Well, his favourite course this semester is World Civilization. That is basically an ancient history course which he is taking to balance his more scientific interests (other courses this semester include a Chemistry course and a Calculus course, among others). I was surprised to learn that he liked this course so much and so I asked him why. “Because it is new.”, he said simply.

So, Ainan is discovering a liking for more humanistic pursuits than the scientific ones that have preoccupied him all these years. I am pleased at this discovery for it promises that he will end up much more balanced in his education. So far he has studied courses in the areas of Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Biology, Computer Programming, Economics, Computer Animation, English and, now, World Civilization. This is already quite a broad selection of subject areas, but it shall widen much more in the years to come. I hope to see him become broadly knowledgeable, as well as well equipped in his primary interests. That, I believe, would make for a much more effective person.

His World Civilization course is interesting in the way it invites Ainan to think about history and civilization. He is working with a group of his fellow students on designing a civilization, including its own mythologies. He will have to present this invented civilization to his fellow students in class. To my mind, this is a very good challenge to set the students, for it invokes creativity, imagination and the ability to have insights and understandings about the nature of civilizations and what makes them work. It is certainly a much more interesting way to teach students than a standard lecture format. What is most notable about it is the cooperation with other students that it involves. This is, I feel, a good skill for Ainan to develop, since he must learn to work with others, to a common goal. This is a situation which is not natural to many gifted children, accustomed as they are, to thinking alone and working in solitude.

I am happy to hear the occasional remark from Ainan about less familiar (to me) events in history and civilizations I know very little about. It is heartening that, it seems, he will end up with a more comprehensive view of the world than I managed to acquire in my own education. Certainly, if he continues to study broadly as well as deeply, that is a likely outcome. Of course, it is much to his advantage that he is studying an American degree rather than a British style one. In a British degree specialization is encouraged at the expense of breadth. Such an education leads to incomplete understandings of the world. That is not the likely fate of Ainan.

I will write more in future of his reaction to his course selections. It is revelatory to discover what he likes and what he doesn’t. I have learnt that this is not as predictable as one might have thought. Then again, I shouldn’t really have been surprised by that, should I?

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(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/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, 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.

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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/

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

They will never know.

Looking back on my past, an unavoidable thought comes to me: many of the people I remember, are no longer alive, or are very unlikely to be.

Today, I was reflecting on my prep school days. This was a brief, though seemingly long few years of my life, which provided, perhaps, the only island of acceptance, in my whole school career. I shall explain. In the years before I joined this particular prep school (Westbury House School, in New Malden, Surrey), I had been in the state school system. In those schools, I had not been accepted, in any real way, by the students around me. I had “stood out” too much, as someone different. The difference was clear: I was much brighter than the other students – and they were even aware of it, for the names some of them used for me, were pejorative ones, based around the idea of cleverness. There were a few children there, who were well disposed towards me, however, so it wasn’t utterly uncomfortable – yet it has to be said, that it probably would not have been good for me to have stayed there too much longer. For a start, I wasn’t really learning anything, because nothing challenging was being presented. The only lesson I would have learnt, had I stayed longer, was that being clever means being marginalized.

Westbury House School was much better. It was a small school, with small classes and a personal touch. It was actually, as it stated in the name, a house, that had been converted into a school. As a child, I thought it enormous. As an adult, when I saw it again, I saw nothing more than an adapted house, with a playground attached. Yet, it provided something I didn’t know, until I received it, that I had been lacking: acceptance. At Westbury House School, I was not only accepted, but was popular. It is funny, but the teachers and the Headmistress, had managed to cultivate a culture in which being a good student, was to be admired. All there aspired to do well, and did not resent those who did well. It was a good place for a bright young child to be, in social terms, at least. Academic success was not punished by exclusion, as it so often is – but rewarded by respect.

Today my thoughts turned to a particular teacher. I cannot now recall her name – but she was my form teacher in my final year, at Westbury House School. She taught me English, among other things. It is this fact that awoke my thoughts. I realized that her pedantry over words and their use – for she was very particular about them, in a positive sort of way – was one of the reasons why my own use of English, became, as it is to this day: accurate, in its grammar and word usage – at least without any obvious errors. She would explain the rules of English to us, with an absolutism that we did not find off-putting, but actually found reassuring in a way – for, at least, someone knew what the rules were. She also did so without recourse to unnecessary jargon.

She was an old lady then. She had brownish hair, but her face was lined, and her body thin, with the kind of slenderness that comes to some, with the passing of the years. She must have been about sixty, when she taught me. It seems impossible that she might still be alive, since the time I reflect on is about thirty three years ago. She looked severe, in her bodily form – severe and spare – but she was actually quite kindly. She had a policy towards teaching me that I actually found quite liberating. She had noted that I usually finished any task set, long before the other kids. So, she asked me to read a book, instead. This was quite easy to do since I sat at the back of the class, in the corner, with the only bookshelf directly behind me. I would thus, turn my head and browse until I found a book I liked, then I would read until the other kids had caught up.

I loved to read, as a child, so this made my time in her class much more congenial. It also personalized it for me – because the books I chose were always ones that I liked. This policy of hers applied to all classes that she took with me – and that included maths. I also finished first in maths too, so I had plenty of time to read whilst waiting for the other kids.

I remember one book in particular, which concerned the finding by some children of “100,000 francs”, which, at the time, seemed an impossibly large sum and probably was, for when the book was written. What struck me about the book was the drawing the front of the children running. One of the children was me. Yes. It was most odd, but one of the faces of the kids, looked just like me. It was funny. I picked out the book because I liked the sound of the story and it just so happened that the picture looked like me. All the other kids thought so too. It was as if I had actually posed for the portrait myself. It seems the artist may have imagined a face, but that face had turned out to be not so imaginary after all. Either that, or I look like a French kid somewhere, long ago, since the book was set in France and may even have been written by a French writer, in English.

I felt welcome in that classroom, in that school. It was the first educational situation in which I could be myself without the hint of a social penalty. Of course, there was no use of the word “gifted” in those days. Nor was there any differentiated curriculum – at least not in that school. My “differentiated curriculum” was being assigned to read books, at the back, whilst others got the through the work I had already done. I wasn’t actually ever set harder work or different work to do. Yet, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t bored because I had books to read. The time wasn’t wasted and those days reading no doubt contributed to my ultimate familiarity with the written word. As a teacher, she was wise enough to make sure I had something interesting to do and did not leave me sitting BORED waiting for everyone else.

What gets me about this memory is that my teacher, whose name I am sorry I cannot recall, will never know what became of me. She doubtless has died already. Thus, she would never have found out the long term consequences of my presence in her classroom – consequences to which she would have made some contribution, in some way, even if it would be impossible to determine exactly what – other than, as I note, a particular attitude to the English language. She never knew that I became a writer. She has never read this blog. She cannot have read my books, because though written, I have yet to publish them. She never learnt of my scientific contributions – for those papers only began to be published in the last few years. She never learnt that I had acted, in plays, tv and the odd film. She never knew that I had fathered some gifted children and left the UK for South East Asia. She never learnt anything of my adult life. I left her classroom one day, to go to another school – and, from her point of view, I left her life, altogether, too.

It is a pity, in a way, that she never knew. It is a pity that I never got the chance to tell her what effect her bookish intervention had had on me – or how it had me feel so much more interested in my educational experience. I remember now, the feeling I felt as a young boy, being given permission to read at the back of the class: I felt it to be a privilege and an acknowledgement too, that I had done the work and needed something more to do. I felt a boyish pride in being so singled out. I suppose, in a way, that was a very important intervention, in terms of the growth of self-belief. It made me realize that I was special in some way and that that specialness had been recognized. However, it must be said, that there had been many prior occasions on which I had inferred that I was different in a special kind of way – but this was one of the first I can recall, in which another acknowledged that difference and responded positively to it. As such, it is, no doubt, important.

I would like the chance to speak to some of these figures of my childhood and to let them know what effect each had on my development. I would also like the chance to thank those who deserved thanks. Of course, there are those who deserve to be chastised for their conduct, but I don’t think I will trouble myself with them. However, it is, most likely not possible for many of these people, I still remember: most of them will be dead by now. Only I know, who was important and why. Only I know, who contributed positively to my early life – and who did not. They are gone now. They will never have known, the way they touched me. In a way, that is sad – but there is nothing to be done. It simply takes too much time to grow up and become, for those who were elderly at the beginning of the journey, to still be alive at its fruition.

So, I am left, here, to thank one who cannot read my words: thanks, to my nameless form teacher, for inviting me to read, at the back of the class, whilst others poured over problems I had already solved. It meant something to me, at the time, which I never got the chance to say. It means something more to me, now, that I have come to understand its long-term impact, on the person I became. 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.htmland 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, 5, 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 athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

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

What makes a favourite teacher

Everyone has a favourite teacher. Even if someone disliked all of their teachers, one would be the least disliked and this one, therefore, would be the "favourite".

I once asked a class of foreign students, whom I had taught for only a couple of weeks who their favourite teacher in life had been and why. I didn't expect any of them to point to me, in answer, given our short acquaintance - though the odd one did, in fact, do so.

That, however, was not what surprised or interested me. The peculiar answer of one Chinese mainland student did.

She named her favourite teacher as being an English teacher she had once had, long ago. He had been a Caucasian - but that wasn't why she had liked him. I was curious about her reasoning and so enquired further.

"Why is he your favourite?"

"Because he wore different coloured socks everyday.", she declared, seeming to be pleased to remember him and his strange habit.

I must have looked appropriately puzzled, for she fell silent, not knowing quite what to say next.

"Why did that make him your favourite teacher?", I prompted.

"Because he was fashionable.", she explained, as if it were the most obvious, and the most important reason in all the world.

I couldn't stop myself, but found my tongue echoing her reason to the whole class, just so that they could hear her softly spoken reply.

I left it at that. I didn't want to embarrass her. Yet, I confess I was flabbergasted that an inconsequential matter like the colour of one's socks, can make one the most memorable and appreciated teacher in a person's life.

This, of course, leads one to ask the necessary question: how is it possible to teach students who don't know how to measure the quality of what is being imparted? How is it possible to teach students whose values are so distorted that the colour of socks is held up as the measure of a teacher?

I wonder, now, how common such shallow views, as this young woman, ostensibly in her twenties, held, are in modern China? Is it a nation of superficial people unable to identify what is important in life?

I hope not. For soon the birthplace of this remarkable, sock worshipping, young woman, will be a financial superpower.

Of course, if it turns out that young women like her are common in modern China, you know how to cope with it: just wear differently coloured socks everyday. That is sure to impress 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.)