Efficient School Administration: an unmet need.

There is a tendency, in many cultures, to pay little for the work of a receptionist. Being of a lower salary, the receptionist is, in turn, frequently of lower ability. I think this is a mistake. Just because the job does not, in theory, require much intelligence, this does not mean that intelligence, in such a role, is without its utility. In fact, it seems from my experience, that greater intelligence is required in such staff, than is usually present.

Today, we needed to make arrangements for our son to come home at an unusual time. I wanted to leave a message for his teacher that he should be allowed to leave the class to go down to a bus that could take him home. There was only one opportunity to catch this bus.

I called the school office, around lunchtime. Someone picked the phone up - and immediately put it back down again.

I was somewhat surprised.

Then they picked it up again and started to dial out.

I said: "Hello!". Whether or not they heard me, they put the receiver down again.

Then they picked it up again. I said: "Hello!"

They said: "Hello?"

I repeated myself: "Hello."

They put the phone down.

Then they picked it up again and tried dialling out again.

I gave up and replaced the receiver. Clearly, whoever was on the reception at lunchtime was unfamiliar with how to use a phone. Such people still exist in the early twenty-first century. They were also unfamiliar with what you must do when you find someone on the other end of the phone: speak to them.

I decided to call back a bit later in the hope that someone with a functioning central nervous system might pick up the phone instead.

Sometime after 2 pm, I called back.

The conversation seemed quite straightforward. I explained that my son was to leave at a particular time and needed to catch the bus. I asked for a message to be delivered to his teacher to allow this to happen. She assured me that all would work out just fine. My son would catch the bus home.

Later this evening, I got home and discovered that Ainan, who should have been home about two and a half hours before, was still not home.

I called the school and began: "Where is my son?" without introducing myself, precisely because I rather suspected that the person I would be speaking to would be the person to whom I had entrusted my message.

"The boy, ahh?" she replied, eloquently.

"Ainan: my son."

"Ahh...here, ahh. In the office."

"Why did he not take the bus home?"

"Mum get him...or something." she said, with meaning, but without regard for the conventions of language.

I couldn't speak to her anymore, I was too irked - and let my wife handle the rest of the conversation.

In brief, she denied being the person who had taken the message - and denied knowing who might have taken the message. It must be an awfully big reception.

When I finally got to the office to collect Ainan, who had been waiting for three hours to be collected, rather than taking the bus home, the receptionist was on the phone. She didn't even look at me in the several minutes I stood in front of her. It was as if I didn't exist.

I didn't bother to interrupt her call: she would only have denied being on duty earlier, anyway.

From this experience I have come to understand that it is important to ensure the quality and ability of staff in all roles - even those that seem to require little in the way of real intelligence. At my son's school, the reception is unable to answer the phone - and unable to relay a message. Failing in these two functions means that the reception is failing entirely in its role. The proper response to this is either to retrain the staff (I know it seems incredible but some people need training on how to take a message) - or sack them.

I didn't need the surprise of finding my son not at home in the evening when I got home. My first thought was that something might have happened to him. Such worry is unnecessary and was created purely by the incompetence of the school administrative staff.

I worry, further, now. You see, if a school system cannot even do simple things like answer the phone and take messages - how can they handle the vastly more complex challenge of educating a child? The clear answer is that they can't.

I suppose I have been warned. So have you.

(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.)

School uniforms: a toddler's view.

Today, Tiarnan, twenty-three months, accompanied his mother to Ainan's school. While there, they looked around.

Now, Tiarnan has only ever seen Ainan wearing his school uniform, five days a week. He is accustomed to seeing Ainan returning home wearing it. Until this week, this meant returning in the evening, after school. Now, it means returning in the early afternoon, since school now begins early in the morning (too early).

What Tiarnan saw at Ainan's school astonished him. Everywhere he looked there were people who, from a distance, looked just like his eldest brother, (Abang), Ainan. They were all wearing the same distinctive uniform.

Tiarnan turned his head from one school boy to another, saying: "Abang! Abang! Abang!" as he fixed his stare on each one. It was very clear that he thought this identity of uniform most peculiar. Everyone was a "clone" of his eldest brother.

This was Tiarnan's first experience of uniformity of dress. It was clear that he thought it very strange. There was something unnatural about it.

The funny thing is, that adults are accustomed to think of uniforms as "normal" and normalizing. Yet, clearly, the instinctive reaction of toddler Tiarnan was to think of it as odd. Everyone was naturally different - but here they were, all dressed like his Abang.

I rather feel that Tiarnan's reaction is more authentic and more informative. He is telling us that it shouldn't be normal for all children (or adults) to appear the same. Uniqueness has value. Until that moment, in Tiarnan's young life, all people had dressed as individuals. Everyone had been unique. Today, everyone was the same. I think it was a matter of some startlement for him.

So should it be for all of us. Let us be ourselves. Let us be unique.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

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.)