Are there real child prodigies?

This question was asked by a searcher from Texas, Dallas. Funnily enough, that search brought him to my entry on “Does Ainan Cawley exist?”, which was a search by another searcher who doubted the reality of child prodigies.

Now, I am going to make an assumption about why this question was asked. I put it down to the influence of television and film. In Hollywood, so many varieties of “hero” are deployed in films, that, perhaps for an uninformed viewer, it can become difficult to distinguish a cape wearing “superhero” – obviously fictional – from a child prodigy – which they may also categorize, therefore, as another variety of fictional hero. It may be that the effect of television by promoting such characters as “Dougie Howser”, for instance, is to undermine the very believability, in the public eye, of the notion of a child prodigy. The prodigy becomes nothing more real than any other fictional “superhero”.

There are real child prodigies. Though, there may not be a child as qualified as a doctor, as young as Dougie Howser – simply because it takes too many years to pass through all the hoops, even for the very brightest. There are also child prodigy musicians, in the real world, not just “August Rush” who, in some ways, is less impressive than a real prodigy, like Mozart.

The problem with film is that it can make a true story of a prodigy’s life, seem fictional. So often is the plot of a prodigy’s arc of life used in film, that when it happens in the real world, it can seem too “pat” to people. The public can, as this searcher has, react as if the true story were just another fictional example.

The other problem is that prodigies in fiction are much more common than they are in real life. Thus, the fictional prodigies can set up the expectation that there is a prodigy around every corner. Perhaps my Texan searcher was expressing doubt based on the observation that there WERE’NT prodigies around every corner. Perhaps the dearth of real world prodigies made them think that prodigies didn’t exist at all, outside of film.

If prodigies appeared in film, with the same frequency as they appear in real life, one might reasonably expect to see one prodigy per century of Hollywood output, or so. Thus, it can be seen that the situation in Hollywood films with respect to prodigies is absurd. The films create the expectation of an abundance of one of the rarest manifestations of the human mind. When that expectation is not met, it is understandable that people begin to doubt the phenomenon of prodigy. However, it would be more rational to doubt the phenomenon of Hollywood as a source of reliable information about the world.

The situation of prodigies, is a difficult one in many ways. The problems of adjustment and finding a suitable environment for the child are immense. I am not sure it helps, to have Hollywood creating a false impression of the numbers of such prodigious children in the world. For one thing, if people come to believe that they are plentiful the tendency might be to neglect those prodigies they do come across, for people might think that such children are actually fairly “ordinary”!

Then again, Hollywood is at least making people aware of the concept of prodigy, if to an unhelpful degree and in a misleading fashion. However, the “education” received from Hollywood distorts every phenomenon it touches – prodigy included – so that the nature of the truth in the real world, is obscured. The answer, here, of course, would be to look beyond Hollywood at more reliable forms of media, such as newspapers, to gather information about the phenomenon of prodigy – or, indeed, any other matter on which Hollywood touches. The problem, of course, is that films and tv are so easy to imbibe and that newspapers take more of an effort to consume. Thus it is, as reading declines, the power of Hollywood to form people’s minds grows, to the point at which, perhaps, their “understanding” of the world, becomes something almost entirely ficitional: they no longer know what is real, and what is not. They no longer have the capacity to decide whether the matters addressed in Hollywood have real world counterparts or not.

Child prodigies are real. What is not realistic, is Hollywood’s portrayal of them. It is worrying that, in the modern world, people are losing their ability to come to this realization.

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Cartoon lessons in Physics.

Cartoons are teaching our children about the world. However, the lessons they teach are a tapestry of errors.

Today, I was watching a cartoon with my kids, when I saw something that is typical of the cartoon world. A baby fell from a building and an adult jumped after it, some seconds later, in an attempt to catch it, and cushion its fall. Apart from, of course, the lunacy of imagining that two falling people are better than one, I saw a fundamental problem with the sketch that unfolded - and so did Ainan.

As is the way of cartoons, the journey to the Earth was rather eventful, with many twists, turns and interesting encounters on the way down - though both baby and adult continued, generally, to fall.

Towards the end, baby and adult took different paths. The adult fell into a giant tube, the baby passed alongside the outside of it. Oddly, the adult, who had jumped second, came out of the tube at the bottom FIRST - and caught the baby, saving the day.

"Impossible!" I said, to Ainan's agreement.

I know cartoons are meant to be enjoyed, but is it necessary for them to teach young children errors about the physical world? The acceleration due to gravity is going to be the same for all falling objects, the only variation being their ultimate terminal velocity. Basically, the man cannot catch the baby, because both are subject to the same acceleration, unless, for some reason, the baby's terminal velocity were lower than the man's.

Cartoons are eagerly watched for many years by growing children. I watched them, too. Yet, now that I am a father, I find myself concerned at whether children who watch them, come to imbibe misunderstandings about the physical world.

This, of course, leads to the question: is it impossible to be entertaining without breaking the laws of physics? I don't think so. There is nothing in the nature of entertainment or a child's mind that requires physics to be discarded when making an entertaining cartoon or any other form of entertainment. I think the problem here is more likely to be that cartoonists DON'T KNOW ANY PHYSICS. I think many of the cartoonists don't know that some of the things they do violate basic principles and are thus purveying misinformation. Of course, in other cases, I am sure that violation of basic physical principles is done precisely because it leads to interesting consequences - but there is nothing about how humans are entertained that requires that cartoons do that, universally.

All that our children hear, see, touch and feel, is part of their education about the world. I would like to see more responsible cartoon making that doesn't include subtle errors that might confuse a child about how physical reality actually works. Physics is difficult enough, for most children, without confusing them about its basic laws.

Some people will dismiss my concerns with a "Of course the children know it is not real!". Well, that is most certainly not so for young children (my two year old, Tiarnan, for instance, is convinced that he knows where Ben 10 lives!). Furthermore, many of the errors of physics found in cartoons are subtle - such as the falling adult catching the baby. They are impossible, but not obviously impossible to a young child. These are particularly dangerous. It is only when a child has developed sophistication about the physical world that they will spot such errors (such as Ainan did). However, the cartoons, themselves, will interfere with the development of such physical sophistication.

I think it is time that cartoon makers and Hollywood, in general, behaved a little more responsibly towards their young audience. I don't think it helps the world to be confusing young minds in this way, with lessons in misinformation that they may, actually, never unlearn.

Films and cartoons can be fun, without misinforming the audience. Why not try making entertainments that actually respect the laws of physics? It would certainly make it easier to be a teacher of young children, without having to correct a myriad of cartoon induced misunderstandings.

Note: It has come to my attention that at least one reader thinks I am stating that my own children are confused about physics. They are not. In fact, the eldest is very competent in physics and the others are just fine. I write about children in general, in this case and NOT my children in particular.

(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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