Hollywood from a child's perspective.

Fintan likes his cartoons, but that does not mean he accepts them unthinkingly.

On the 29th June, Fintan came to me with a plastic "Kung Fu" panda in his hands. He had recently seen the film and rather enjoyed it. However, something was puzzling him.

"Daddy..."

"uhuh."

"What do pandas eat?"

"Bamboo."

"Then why does Kung Fu panda eat noodles?"

He had caught me at a moment when a ready answer wouldn't come to my lips. So, I am not sure I gave him a satisfactory answer to the question. However, it does show me that though he had seen the film when he was four, he didn't just accept that it could be, without questioning its premises. Clearly, it had niggled at him that the panda should eat food he had doubted a panda would eat.

This leads to broader matters, of course: children learn about the world from the films they see - but what exactly are they learning? Much of what they see in films relates in no way at all to the real world. Is this a beneficial thing? Is it harmful that children gain inaccurate understandings of the world from Hollywood? Fintan, at least, is thinking about what Hollywood is telling him - and doubting it. Yet, I would think most kids of his age wouldn't do that - they would just accept Hollywood's version of reality as in some way real, some where else that they haven't been to.

Of course, one may say that there is a lot of time for them to grow up and come to a truer understanding of the world - but some of the things that Hollywood "teaches" through its films are never outgrown - they inform even adults' view of the world. This can only be harmful. Indeed, the Mythbusters are making a good living out of debunking the myths - or lies, in fact - that Hollywood perpetrates. The world view it represents does not correspond to the real world in so many ways that we might overlook.

In a way, I am happy that Fintan is not accepting Hollywood's version of reality without question. There is the sign that he is thinking for himself and checking the facts of the situation with external reality. That can only be healthy - for it means that the model of the world that he builds for himself, over the years, is likely to be much more accurate - and therefore useful, than that built by a child who is in the habit of accepting whatever is told to them, without question. I only hopes he keeps it up.

I have to add, of course, that even though he doubted the film's premises in certain respects, that didn't stop him from enjoying it. He was able to view it from two perspectives: that of enjoying the tale as it unfolded, but also that of examining it for veracity and consistency with what he knew of the world.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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Reality and fiction in the modern world.

You may recall the post I wrote a while back about Britons not knowing Winston Churchill was a real historical figure. That post came to mind on viewing the search terms people used to get to my site, in recent days.

Believe it or not, many people, primarily based in America, have arrived on my site with the terms: "August Rush, true story". That stilled me. It is an exact parallel to the UK situation of tv viewers not being able to distinguish fact from fiction. Clearly, the phenomenon is not restricted to the UK but is, at the very least, echoed in the United States, as well.

It is sobering to realize that there are people who cannot spot a fictional story when they see or hear of one. August Rush is fictional in the most obvious of manners: it is a cliche ridden, coincidence filled, compilation of other people's films and books. The plot is so unlikely that I doubt whether even the author was able to suspend disbelief while writing it. Yet, despite this, almost all of the searches that used the term "August Rush" also used "True story", to get to my page on the film.

So, Britons can now relax. No longer need they feel embarrassed at being unable to distinguish fiction from reality: for Americans can't do it, either.

(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.)

Was Winston Churchill real?

You might think this a funny question. However, it was a question that was asked of 3,000 Britons recently in a survey by UKTV Gold, of their tv viewers.

In the survey, the viewers were asked to judge whether various people were real or fictional. You might think this a simple enough task - but it proved to be rather more difficult than you might expect.

23% of the respondents thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. You read that correctly - almost a quarter of Britons don't believe Winston Churchill actually existed. They think someone made him up.

Even more intriguingly, 58% of them thought that Sherlock Holmes, the fictional, pipe-smoking, superhuman detective of Arthur Conan Doyle, was a real, formerly living, detective.

I found this profoundly odd. It means that Britons today are more prepared to believe that a work of fiction was real, than that the wartime Prime Minister of Britain, ever existed. It means that, for them, television (through which they no doubt encountered Sherlock Holmes) was greater proof of existence, than a permanent place in the history books.

There is more. 47% of them thought that Richard the Lionheart - the 12th Century crusading King - was a fictional monarch. Even more curiously, 65% of them thought that King Arthur (for whom there is basically no tangible evidence) was a real man who led a round table of Knights at Camelot.

Thus to have been a great King, is less likely to win believers in one's existence, than to have been a great story.

Florence Nightingale never existed, according to 27% of Britons. That is some thanks for all her nursing efforts in the Crimean War.

However, music is so powerful that it has conjured Eleanor Rigby into existence for the 47% of respondents who believe in her reality. She was, of course, a creation of the Beatles to make a musical point.

3% thought that the famed author Charles Dickens was himself a work of fiction. However, 33% of the very same people thought that Biggles, the fictional pilot of W.E Johns, really flew.

The top ten list of generally held fictions, that were actually believed to be real is as follows:

1) King Arthur.
2) Sherlock Holmes.
3) Robin Hood.
4) Eleanor Rigby.
5) Mona Lisa.
6) Dick Turpin.
7) Biggles.
8) The Three Musketeers.
9) Lady Godiva.
10) Robinson Crusoe.

The top ten list of real people who were thought to be fictional creations is:

1) Richard the Lionheart
2) Winston Churchill
3) Florence Nightingale
4) Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
5) Queen Boadicea
6) Sir Walter Raleigh
7) Duke of Wellington
8) Cleopatra
9) Mahatma Gandhi
10) Charles Dickens

Education is not what it should be in many parts of the world (perhaps all). Clearly, in Britain today - and for some time - education is not fulfilling its purpose of giving people an understanding of the world. Britons today, as this survey shows, quite often cannot tell fiction from reality. They don't know what the real world is - or has been. How, then, can they make realistic decisions in this world, when they don't even know what is real and what is not?

Looking at the fictional characters that they thought were real, I am struck by how unlikely it seems that they could have thought them real. There is something impossible about most of them. Yet, they were believed to be real.

Of course, there are a couple of questionable entries in the "fiction" list which blurs matters somewhat. Someone really did sit for Leonardo da Vinci, to be painted - and her name was Lisa, so perhaps we can discount that one. (Even if the painting wasn't true to her - we will never know). Also, there really was a "Dick Turpin". Unfortunately, he wasn't the one who did what was attributed to him - so in that sense it was fictional. These exceptions aside, however, it is all rather worrying.

Most of the viewers will be young people. What kind of world will they create when they become the backbone of their society? Clearly, they are poorly educated - and perhaps even not very bright as well.

It doesn't forbode well for the UK. However, other nations were not surveyed: would they similarly come off poorly? Is this a global problem for our poorly educated global youth? I rather hope it is not. I would like to think that, in most countries, the young people could tell the difference between a book (ie. Great Expectations) and its author (Charles Dickens). At the very least they should know which one speaks of people who really existed.

(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.)