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.

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The fate of genius.

How do geniuses fare in life? Is their success inevitable? I ask this for a reason. Today, someone from Washingtonville, New York, arrived on my blog with the provocative search terms: "Why do geniuses often fail in life?"

Well, one wonders, firstly: do they? It is difficult to answer this question, for there are no stats to bring to bear on the matter, that I know of. However, it is easy to source anecdotes which suggest that many people, of great talent, live lives beneath their potential. We all, in fact, know such people: people whose intelligence sparkles, in conversation, but whose lives look a little dull by comparison - something is missing, something never happened.

So, let us assume that the assumption of my blog searcher from Washingtonville, is correct. Let us take it that geniuses do often fail in life. Yet, is that the right question? I think we should rather be asking why does life fail geniuses?

You see, the life of a genius is not the easy picture everyone seems to think. There is the basic assumption, of all, that the greatest of intellectual gifts mean that the possessor is blessed with an "easy life" and that, in some way, one should be envious of them. This is, I think, a misplaced envy. Genius is not an easy burden: it is to carry the weight of expectations of a humanity unwilling to help. Everyone expects great things of the "genius" - but they expect them begrudgingly, not really wanting the genius to accomplish them, for how "bad" it would make the ordinary person look by comparison. Thus, the achievement is both expected and resented beforehand. It is a strange circumstance, for the genius is resented for things not yet done: a jealousy permeates the air, for achievements not yet made and which may never be made. It is most bizarre. It is as if the whole of the rest of humanity, imagines the genius' "fated" future life and begrudges them for its lustre - then sits back and hopes desperately that it doesn't happen - or does, more to the point, everything they can to frustrate all progress.

No-one, on Earth, is more hated than a genius, in their early years. Their self-evident gift is a spur to every darker emotion in people: hate and envy gleam in every eye - and for what? Because those others, see, they know that the genius is "better" than they are - and they loathe them for it.

To be a genius is thus to be barred from acceptance by humanity. It is to be thrust out, by an essential difference, into a category of one's own. It is a great thing to be a genius - for, Humanity is only ever united in the presence of one: united in envy of the "Great One".

It is a truth, that all of significant talent, come to observe - that the only admired genius, is a dead genius. It is, you see, impossible to be envious of the dead. Thus, only when a genius is safely interred, will the envy slough away, and the admiration come to the fore. Geniuses have the bizarre distinction of being universally hated in life, and universally loved in death. Most people would rather choose the opposite condition - but it is not for the genius to choose: they were born the way they are and cannot trade it for the alternative. So long as they rise far above the common herd of man, that herd, that sheep-like mass, will despise them for it. That leads us to why so many geniuses "fail".

The only course of action, for a genius who wishes to have a happy life, is to give up being who they are. A genius who "fails" is an ordinary man, once more. A genius who "fails" may be accepted, finally. A genius who "fails" is one who succeeds, in life. For, it is clear, that if a genius fails, they come to be seen to be human again. They can, for the very first time, be embraced as "one of us" - and so, at last, at long, long, last, be befriended by the bulk of Man. A genius who "fails" is a genius who learns how to be loved in life - and forgotten in death.

So, the dilemma of a genius is a difficult one. They must choose either to succeed in becoming who they should be, in expressing what only they can see, and, therefore, step so far outside the limits of the common Man, that there could never be anything in common with that Man. Or they can choose to hide their essence, to leave their thoughts unexpressed and undeveloped, to muffle their inner longings to create and become a semblance of what others are. They can choose to be "normal" or, at least, seem normal in every functional way, by not functioning outside of the norm. If they make this choice, they lose the happiness and sense of fulfilment that attends the highest creative activity - but they gain, in return, acceptance by the wider world; they may be embraced by the community, loved as every "ordinary joe" is loved - in that diffuse kind of way, that comes from thinking that "you" are "one of us".

So, it is not geniuses who fail in life. It is life that fails geniuses. Life fails geniuses by not allowing them the space to be. A genius must choose either a life within the community - or a life outside of it, in a very real sense. You see, if your work, the products of your mind and, indeed, the fullness of your inner thought, are beyond the understanding of the common man, then you, truly, have nothing in common with that man. There is no means to find genuine mutual understanding. It is to be a natural outsider - and, as you probably know, most people never reach out to the outsiders of this world - in fact, they enjoy debarring them, from the shared discourse of all. They feel unified by their act of exclusion.

Geniuses fail, because no-one wants them to succeed - or at least, no-one wants a living genius to succeed. They are quite happy to note that a dead genius, did, since there is nothing threatening about the mental powers of a corpse. Indeed, most living people have the mental powers of a corpse - so they probably feel quite well-disposed to one just like themselves, once the genius has died.

Geniuses discover that there is nothing more adept at working together, than the whole of Man, against the genius, if they are so foolish, as to reveal themselves. Thus, the socially skilled genius (no doubt there are some), notes this and chooses dissemblance - and the most effective means of disguising genius is to do nothing with it, at all. There. Done. "Happy"...but unfulfilled.

Indeed, it seems to me that the only geniuses who would not choose to make this choice are the socially inept geniuses. These would not, perhaps, understand the problem, would not act appropriately upon it, and persist in - oh the cheek of it! - being true to themselves and continue to create their works that so offend Man, whilst they live, but shall so delight them, once they die.

Thus, it is not that geniuses lack social skills - it is just that the only geniuses that we come to acknowledge as geniuses (usually after they are safely decomposed) - are the ones who lacked the social skill to work out how to "fit in" and be socially accepted.

So, there is one thing that a genius may never do, in public, and be accepted - and that is: create! As long as the genius persists in being incapable of being a genius, then they will find themselves quite capable of being loved by all.

So, if you are a genius - what choice have you made: to be loved in life, and forgotten in death...or loathed in life, and loved forevermore, once you are no longer able to feel it?

It is not much of a choice, is it?

Well, there is a solution. Any society which welcomed genius, would suddenly find that it had more of them. Thus, the answer is in all your hands: accept geniuses for what they are, love them for what they do - and don't for a minute feel a twinge of envy. If you can manage this, if the whole of Mankind can manage this, life for all would improve at an immense rate, as all the world's dissembling, self-defeating, "fitting-in" geniuses suddenly get to work, without fear of being loathed for it.

Overnight, there would be a revolution in the fortunes of Man - and all you have to do is stop hating and start loving. Now.

(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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China and Tibet: a conspiracy of silence.

What do mainland Chinese know about the unrest and subsequent brutal crackdown in Tibet?

Not a lot, in many cases.

In Singapore, there are many PRC (Peoples' Republic of China) students here. I will explain more about their situation in another post. I would, however, like to note something which I have become aware of. These students are in the habit of calling home, to their parents in China, on a regular basis. All of them have had a strange experience, recently. In their calls home, they have tried to discuss the Tibetan situation - which they have seen in the Singaporean and international media, here in Singapore - with their parents. Do you know what they discovered?

None of their Chinese mainland parents knew about it.

It seems that the media in China has been far from dedicated to carrying this story, for in a random sampling of mainland Chinese, performed by the PRC students here in Singapore, none of them were aware of the unrest and crackdown, in Tibet.

This reminded me of another time when I had taught PRC students. There was a boy in my class who was of very certain views about the wonders of China. It turned out that his father was an important man in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of China. This was many years ago and somehow the subject of Tiananmen Square came up. This boy barked out: "No-one died at Tiananmen Square".

"Who told you that?" I asked him, rather surprised.

"My father."

I felt sad for him. Even his own father lied to him, to protect the image of the motherland from the Truth.

I pointed out that I had seen the terrible events for myself on CNN and that the whole world had watched what happened at Tiananmen Square - the whole world except China.

He was silent. He didn't know how to defend his father's lying tongue.

The situation with regards to Tibet is very similar. Part of the reason that China is so successful at repression, is because its people simply do not know what is happening. They do not know the darkness at the centre of their own society. The PRC students here, in Singapore, are all somewhat shocked to learn of the events in Tibet. Yet, there is something locked up inside them: they still can't allow themselves to see the truth of their own country. They take a view which would not disturb the Communist Party's line. They take the view that China is "right" to crackdown in Tibet. That Tibet "owes China". That Tibet "cannot survive without China's resources". That Tibet "cannot be allowed to be independent from China". Their view is that of the Communist Party.

Interestingly, a teacher I know who was teaching them, picked up on this line of thought and asked them to write what they thought about the situation in Tibet. What was really scarey about this exercise was what they handed in: the same essay in forty hands. All of the students thought in exactly the same way. All of them could have been writing press releases for the Communist Party of China. None of them were able, or willing, to think independently. It was quite sobering to see the sheer SAMENESS of their output. The thoughts I have excerpted above, in the previous paragraph, appeared in every single essay.

Why then does China fear the Truth so much when, even when exposed to it, their PRC youngsters maintain the Party line and speak with the Party tongue? I would say it points to an excessive desire to control their minds. Not only are they to think the Party way - but they are not to be exposed to thoughts contrary to it. There isn't even to be a chance that anyone might agree with an opposition view, because they never get to hear one and are never able to formulate one themselves. They are to be blind to the truth and to the world - and to know only what they are allowed to know. That appears to be the system, anyway.

Is China ever going to be a free nation? I really have my doubts. Even the internet is censored there. Without exposure to the truth of their nation, there is no way that the Chinese themselves are able to see it as it is. They just aren't allowed access to the information. Even when they receive it, as the PRCs studying here have - they don't internalize it, they maintain the Party line and continue to believe resolutely in the ways of the motherland. All of them have been strongly brainwashed, by any standard. None of them are capable of independent thought. China wants it that way - and will keep it that way - unless external forces are strong enough to change the way things are, inside China.

I don't see it happening. The rest of the world is now in what I would call a cowardly phase. They stand on the sidelines of the Tibetan situation and say: "Ho hum, that's not good". However, none of them DO anything about it. The Tibetans are unique. They are a gentle culture, unable to resist the oppressive might of China. Yet, it is easy to see that the international community will do nothing to intervene on their side, that is remotely effective. Will the international community wait until all ethnic Tibetans are dead, before acting?

The youth of China will not make a different China to the old. They will grow up to be the same as their fathers and forefathers. That is easy to see in the PRC students studying in Singapore. They think as their Party thinks. If China is ever to be a democratic state with respectable human rights, the outside world is going to have to show China the way. China just cannot do it itself. Why? It simply doesn't want to - and so it won't.

The Chinese need to know about China. Oddly, they don't. If the world had a moral conscience (I am not sure it does - or at least not an effective one) it should act to ensure that the Chinese people get access to wider information on their own nation. Perhaps then, things will begin to change, and the kind of action presently taking place in Tibet, would become unacceptable to the Chinese people. Right now, however, they think it is just, right and proper to act so. At least, the PRC students here seem to think so. It is interesting to see how their understanding of morality is so constrained that they can consider murder, repression and occupation, as just and justifiable acts.

They have a lot to learn. It is up to the rest of the world to teach them.

(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.)

Kenji Nagai, APF videojournalist in Burma.

Burma, sorry, Myanmar, is not so far from Singapore, where I live. I have even known a few Burmese people living in Singapore - and so recent events have drawn my attention.

I am not a fan of repression, wherever it occurs and so I have watched the recent confrontation of the military junta and the revered monks, of Burma/Myanmar, with some trepidation. It seemed likely that, at some point, the government would lash out, once more, at its own people.

That violent action has begun. People are dying in the streets and being rounded up to be taken away to God knows what fate. Many of these people are monks.

One figure though, in all these events of the past few days, stands out, for his reaction to his fate. Kenji Nagai, the Japanese APF videojournalist, covering the Burmese unrest, on the ground in Burma, was shot, apparently at point blank range as he lay on the ground (according to video footage taken by another journalist). The Myanmar government blamed a stray round. Well, the video suggests otherwise: that was a round that strayed only a few feet from the gun.

What touched me, however, was Kenji Nagai's reaction to his own impending death. He had just been shot. He must have known that he could be dying. So what did he do? He pointed his camera in the most interesting direction and continued to take pictures. That makes him a hero, in my book. How sad that a man with such a dedicated, committed attitude to his work, should die by the bullet, at the hand of some gun-wielding government thug.

Kenji Nagai may not have come to our notice before - but in the manner in which he conducted himself, in his dying minutes, he certainly distinguished himself as a heroic personality. It is a pity that he did not survive.

As for the soldier who shot him. His action is that of a murderer - for one thing must have been clear: the man with the camera was not a native of Myanmar, nor a participant in the unrest. He was clearly a journalistic observer - for extraordinarily few native Burmese could possibly afford a camera. The soldier shot dead a man he knew to be a journalist. The question is why? Are soldiers on the ground in Myanmar under instruction to kill journalists, as witnesses to their repression of the population? I hope not - but if so, then all the more reason for the world to take a good look at Myanmar.

My condolences to the family of Kenji Nagai, Japanese videojournalist - and, undoubtedly, a hero to the last minute.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty 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, 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.)

Where love is banned.

Travel affords one many unexpected opportunities. In particular, living in a part of the world different from one's formative years, can teach us much more than one might suppose.

Singapore, where I live, has a fairly broad contact with mainland China. There are many mainland Chinese here - living, working and studying. Recently I had a peculiar conversation with a group of Chinese mainland students. The subject of social expectation had come up. On this matter, one girl remarked:

"In China, no-one is allowed to fall in love, in school."

I was shocked at this and so was initially silent. Into this silence, she continued: "Not in middle school or high school - but in University, it is OK."

This young woman, of University age, evidently found my surprise, surprising.

"That is really strange." I couldn't help but remark.

"It is normal.", she shrugged, accepting it.

"So, what happens if a student falls in love in high school?"

"Then they are a bad student." Her words were said with meaning: clearly she had imbibed the viewpoint of her society and made it her own. To her, indeed, such a student would be a wrongdoer and a "bad" student.

"Their teacher will be very angry..." she continued, "and will call their parents. Then their parents will be very angry, too."

I was beginning to feel a little horrified at this point, at the nature of the society she was painting. A society in which young love is greeted with anger; in which the natural feelings of bonding that arise between people in their mid to late teens, should be looked upon as "wrong" and "bad", made me really uncomfortable - queasy even.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up in a society so set against love. Every thought and understanding that came to me was accompanied by the conviction that such a world would be very damaging to human development.

I had never met a truly passionate character from mainland China. By this I mean fired with emotion, driven by it, propelled by it. Such people are very capable of great things. Perhaps, the suppression of emotion which all their young have to undergo is responsible for that lack of fire, as adults. Something suppressed for too long, may very well shrivel up from disuse.

This conversation raises a very important issue. Which is more important: academic success or healthy emotional development? Chinese society has, as I am informed, made the decision that academic success stands above all things - and not even love may stand in the way. In choosing this stance, they have, probably without realizing it, chosen to stunt the emotional development of an entire nation. Yes, they may not be distracted from their studies - for as she further explained: "When you are in love, you cannot study well." - but they will also not experience the natural development of their emotional self. That side will be blocked - for many years. By the time they are allowed to express that side, it will have become muted, through both time and disuse. A dispassionate people will be the result.

Raising a child is not easy - and there are many choices that a parent - or an educator - must make - but from my point of view, no choice should be taken that leads to the diminishment of an individual. Nothing should be done to impair their growth in any way.

Yes, love may distract the students from study - but it would also make them happy in the face of great difficulty and perhaps more able to shoulder the burdens of academic demand which are placed upon them. Disallowing it and making it a forbidden emotion, on the other hand, can only ever have a negative and inhibitory effect on the development of their children. China will be much the worse for it, when these emotionally disabled teens become their future leaders of society.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and no months, or Tiarnan, seventeen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted children and gifted adults in general. Thanks.)