The wisdom and folly of Great Britain.

Great Britain is showing both wisdom and folly in recent times. It is curious to observe these two characteristics at work, simultaneously, in one of the world's great, but formerly greater nations.

I admire the preparedness that Great Britain is showing against the flu pandemic - this one, and all others, that might or might not come. Great Britain has the highest proportion of Tamiflu/Relenza antiviral treatments that I have seen in any nation - enough for 55% of the population. They are also seeking to buy 32 million masks, on the international market (enough for each of those receiving treatment, basically). Now, I look at those numbers and I see a great willingness to do what is necessary to mitigate this coming pandemic. There is wisdom in their actions, in this case. It should also be noted that these medications and masks would, I have no doubt, be issued FREE to everyone, under the National Health Service - it would not be a case of the poor must go without (as it would in certain Asian countries I could mention). There is a wisdom in that, too, since disease spreads between people of all degrees of wealth and treating people for free, ensures that the poorer members of society do not pass illness to the richer members. So, not only is it humane, but it is good public health policy, too.

Yet, there is another decision that the UK has made which does not seem so wise. The government is raising the top rate of tax to 50% from next April. Last year they raised it from 40% to 45%. This will apply to all people earning more than 150,000 pounds. They are also removing all tax allowances from people earning more than 100,000 pounds a year. Apparently, these changes will affect the top 600,000 earners, in the UK. This strikes me as particularly foolish - for it is a competitive world and one thing all nations are competing for is talent. If Britain takes too much of the earnings of its most talented people off them, they will just up and leave. Great Britain will not stay "great" for too long, if it is scaring accomplished people away.

There is, perhaps, a philosophical connection between the first examples of wisdom and the example of folly. It is clear that the public health preparedness costs money and that this money is raised in taxes. So, the attitude that leads to great preparedness also leads to greater spending. Yet, in this particular case, the connection is weak. It does not cost much that much to be prepared for a flu pandemic. However, it is true that if there is a general tendency to spend, there will be an increased tendency to tax.

The way things are going, Great Britain looks set to be a healthy nation, with a great shortage of skilled people. It could be said that the new tax policy could cost Britain more in lost economic health - as good people leave - than the public health policy will save them.

It is strange to see such long-sightedness on public health present in the same country where such short-sightedness is present with regards to taxation and talent retention. It is my view that Britain will learn an interesting lesson over the next few years: that taxation is limited not by legislation, but by competition with other nations, for talent retention. Great Britain is just about to lose a lot of its talent, to the rest of the lower taxed world. I hope Britain wakes up to the situation before the damage is too great.

(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.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The end of Great Britain.

Britain is officially not "Great" anymore. At least, that is the implicit conclusion of a Unicef report on Child well-being in rich countries. Its message is clear: in short, the children of the UK be far from well.

Unenviably, Britain came LAST in the report which compared the well-being of children throughout the qualifying rich OECD countries. Not all such countries were included (for instance Australia was excluded) because there was insufficient data to come to a judgement about them. Out of the 21 countries examined, Great Britain (I use the adjective deliberately to emphasize its absurdity) came on average in position 18.2, in the six dimensions of child well-being researched.

The dimensions of well-being were: material well-being, health and safety, educational well-being, family and peer relationships, behaviours and risks, subjective well-being. The UK beat out all other competition across the OECD, to come bottom in behaviours and risks, family and peer relationships and second from bottom in subjective well-being. They were 18th out of 21 countries in material well-being, 12th in health and safety, and 17th in educational well-being. All in all, Britain's kids are a sorry lot.

Now, have a guess which other high profile rich country did badly? Yes. You guessed it: the United States came second to last, above Great Britain. This is below such countries as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Predictably, I suppose, given America's love of guns and using them, the USA came bottom of the pile for health and safety, at 21st position. They were second from bottom for family and peer relationships and behaviours and risks. Educationally, they did better than I expected, at 12th (way below Canada in second position, by the way). Surprisingly, given the mythology that America is a rich country, of loud and brash millionaires, the USA came in 17th position for material well-being. The Czech Republic was 11th in the material well-being stakes.

This survey confirms for me what has long been clear. The UK and the US, while once enviable nations that anyone would love to call their home, have rather lost their way. These are no longer ideal places in which to live, or grow up. Indeed, I am somewhat thankful that, by chance circumstance, I have ended up thousands of miles away in Asia - for it seems a better lot, for my children, in certain ways, than what they would face in the UK, at this time.

The UK apes the US. So it is unsurprising that both should show the same failings. The primary failing, I hazard, here, is that both nations in the past couple of decades, became too obsessed with work and material accumulation and forgot the simpler, more important things of family life, rearing children and creating a livable environment. All that was swallowed up by the drive for a bigger car, a bigger house and a "promotion" (for which read "gift" of less time for more money). In the end, what both societies have been doing is trading away the quality of life, for a whole society, in exchange for material goods. As any rational person could have told them, that is not a fair trade. Quality of life is far more important than wealth. Knowing your children and having your children know you, is worth far more than a larger house, by the beach. Giving your children the love and support they need, when they need it, has a lasting effect, for generations to come. A nice new Mercedes Benz doesn't have quite the same long-term effect on anyone's life.

The most interesting part about the survey is not that the UK and US were bottom of the list - but that poorer nations were much higher up. A child is MUCH better off in the Czech Republic, of all places, than in either of the great powers. I say this, even though the Czech Republic was only 15th on the list. It trounced the US and UK.

I fear for the future of the UK and the US. I fear for them because if their children are officially bottom of the heap, of the world's OECD nations...then might not their future adults be bottom of the heap in some way, too? Surely, unhappy children (for "well-being" is code for happiness), lead to unhappy adults? Is not a nation of unhappy adults likely to be one that somehow fails to thrive?

Though I am but halfway through an average lifespan, I fear that I may already have seen the greatest heights of the US and the UK that I am ever going to see. To come bottom on a survey of children's well-being is not such a "Great" achievement. Britain would do well to act now, to ensure that only one generation of children so suffers. The same applies to the US, as well. They could start by melting down all their guns...(to get them off the bottom of the health and safety rankings...)

(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.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Of cheers and jeers in the classroom.

I have been in Singapore for many years. I have seen things here, that I have not seen elsewhere. Many of these things are to do with a difference of culture and mentality, a distinctness of outlook and beliefs. One of these differences is in how school children treat each other.

In two schools, now, I have seen an unusual reaction that I never once saw in the quite a few schools I attended, when I was growing up in England. In one classroom, of foreign Asian students, studying in Singapore, there was a talented student. He was the brightest boy, in one way, in the class (though not the most creative). As a teacher should, I would ask several people to speak in front of the class, either to read or think before the others. Whenever I asked anyone else, there was generally silence. Yet, when I asked this particular boy to speak, they would CHEER him. This was most unexpected when they first did it. The reason they CHEERED is that they delighted in his skill. They cherished his intelligence. They admired his gift. Whenever it came his turn to do anything academic, they would herald his words, with a universal cheering in the classroom.

Now, this boy's work was indeed consistently very good. He was the most skilful, in a conventional sense, of all of the students. Noting their reaction to him, I decided to ask another student to read - one who was less obvious, less a known factor, to the other students. It was the Indonesian boy of whom I have written before - the one I have termed the best student writer in Singapore. Now, his writing was brilliant for an unconventional reason: it was imaginative in writing, content, choice of words and originality of expressions - but it was not perfect in grammar and spelling (unlike the class hero's work).

Knowing that he would not, perhaps, be the best of readers of his own work, I took the Indonesian's writing from him and stood still in front of the class and began to read. No-one said anything before I began. There was no heralding of the work to come. I read, with care, depth and feeling. All the room was silent. As I said the last word and looked out over the classroom, a murmur of appreciation went around the room. They had realized something: this boy, this very quiet boy from Indonesia, whom they had overlooked, had something very special. They did not react with jealousy to this discovery - but with a kind of awed admiration. I had just created another class hero. He didn't receive cheers in the way the other one did - but he did, thereafter, receive a murmur of appreciation, a strange, almost inaudible communication that passed swiftly around the classroom each time I chose him. It seemed as if his quieter personality (for he never spoke in class) warranted a quieter response.

So, that class of Asian foreign students admired people of gift, and welcomed them with cheers and other cries of appreciation. I have seen the same thing in another class, in Singapore - this time of Singaporeans.

It was a Secondary One class and what struck me about it was that every time a WEAKER student had difficulty with a task, the class would urge them on. Once the task had been completed, the class would cheer the student for their efforts. This is a complementary attitude, therefore, to the response I observed in the other class - but it has, essentially, the same meaning. In both classes, the striving for greatness is appreciated and rewarded by the rest of the class. I recall one student in particular. She was the sole foreigner in the class, from China. She was older and taller than the others and it was difficult to judge her brightness or otherwise, since her English was a little too weak for a decision to be made. When it came her turn to speak before the class, the whole class cheered her on. She was quite a shy girl and I could see she was very touched by the support of the class - she didn't know whether to smile or shed a grateful tear. It was sweet to watch. Then she began to speak, unsteadily, stumbling over words and structures. Throughout, the class was silent, but intent, their eyes and their encouraging nods urging her on. I could see that she felt their support, that their united attitude of care was allowing her to do this most difficult of all tasks: public speaking. At last, she was done - and the classroom was filled with "whoops" and cheers. The tall, awkward Chinese girl walked fluidly, bouyantly back to her seat, with a smile that could not have been broader - a smile of relief to have achieved her aim and gratitude for their support.

Now, I have spent this much time on description of these two classrooms: one of Singaporeans and one of foreigners, for a good reason. I would like to constrast that with what I experienced in many different schools in England, when I was growing up. At the time, there was a common response to anyone who excelled: the jeer. The scenes I have written of above could not have happened in any school I observed in England (and I observed many, having moved around quite a bit). There, excellence of the academic kind always attracted a venomous reaction. There was no surer way to unpopularity, in all schools that I experienced, than to be brighter than the rest. If you were smart, you were an exile. That is the way it was and no doubt, given the dumbing down of the UK, since then, that is the way it remains. There is an anti-intellectualism that undermines the health of the nation, there. The best people have to learn to mask their greatness and blend in, in some way. However, should they blend too vigorously or too long, there is the risk that they will lose the essential difference that made them great in the first place. I saw many people excel, in my schools, in England. Yet, never once were such students cheered, and not a few times they would be jeered. The jeers would not come in the classroom, before the teacher, but in the playground, later, where jealousies and spite would be taken out on the gifted student who had dared to show them up, simply by existing.

Never once did I see a class in which the other students supported the most gifted members of the class. Never once did I see approval of achievement or excellence, as a general response. The teachers, too, were often poor at rewarding greatness. They would usually not comment on the relative achievements of students - and so it was that the achieving student would receive no positive feedback from the students and none from the staff, either. They would be left to generate their own positive feelings, to understand their own position in the world.

I do not know how common this phenomenon of cheering on the greater and the weaker is, in Singapore. I only know this: I have only ever seen this in a Singaporean classroom. In UK classrooms it was the jeer, not the cheer that came readily to every throat. I wonder what this means for the long term future of the UK and of Asia. I note that the classroom that cheered on its best student (academically) was a pan-Asian classroom, with children from all over Asia. The gifted boy in question was Malaysian. So, if this cheering of the great is a pan-Asian phenomenon it could very well be, that in decades to come, Asia could emerge as a greater power than one might suppose. For nothing more is likely to help the flowering of the gifted, than that they should find support from the wider community. I have witnessed that force at work in Asia - I have never seen it at work in the UK.

The UK would do better, I feel, if its students could learn to cheer the greater on (and urge the weaker to achieve). Singapore would benefit if what I have seen in two classrooms could become a property of all.

How much more likely is a gifted child to succeed if they hear cheers in their ears, rather than jeers? Correspondingly, how much more likely is the child who hears jeers, in their ears, to fail?

The answer to this question will be found in the corresponding fates of Asia and the UK in the decades to come.

(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.)

Crime in the UK and Singapore.

Violent crime is the type that people most fear: property can be replaced, life and limb cannot.

I have lived in both the UK and in Singapore. There are many differences between these two countries. Most people are of the view that Singapore is less free and that one's life is less restricted in the UK. There is some truth to this, but there is another side, too. In the UK, there is an epidemic of violent crime afflicting the nation - in Singapore there is no such thing.

In 2006, the Metropolitan Police released a statement that 52 teenagers a week, in London, were subject to knife related crime. That is an astonishing figure and indicates that London is no longer the safe place it was, when I was growing up there. I have seen no figures for Singapore, but in the six years I have spent here, I have only heard of a handful of cases of knife use, in the media, or by word of mouth. It is rare, here.

Why is the UK suffering an epidemic of knife-related crime - and Singapore is not? Well, one key reason is the way the state responds to violent crime. The UK takes a softly softly approach: the penalties for knife crime are really very minor, there. Singapore takes a harsh line, on all crime.

In the UK, in 2006, the Violent Crime Reduction Act increased the maximum penalty for carrying a knife from a pathetic two years in prison, to an almost as pathetic four years in prison. I am not able to find the corresponding penalty for Singapore but, as an indicator, a comparison can be made with gun possession. The possession of any weapon in Singapore is severely punished with lengthy prison sentences and caning (which causes terrible wounds). The use of any weapon in a crime results in life imprisonment and caning. Should anyone be killed by the weapon, the penalty is death - and death is almost inevitable in the Singaporean system. I have never seen anyone "let off".

I have watched the Singaporean legal system now, for several years: punishments for all crimes tend to be severe - and I have never seen moderation in the state's response to crime. In the UK, however, in 60,000 incidents of knife use, only 9 offenders received the maximum penalty. So, the Singaporean state responds aggressively to an individual with a weapon. The UK state does not. Singapore has no violent crime problem; the UK has a terrible one. It is reasonable to conclude that the UK problem is partially caused by its judicial leniency - were they to adopt a harsh response to the possession of weapons, the problem would most probably decline.

In a very real sense, the UK has chosen to have a knife crime problem. They have chosen to have the problem because they have chosen to respond too leniently to the criminals. Imagine that they adopt a harsher penal regime. Imagine that to be found carrying a knife, or any other weapon, would lead to a mandatory penalty of 15 years in prison without parole or bail. Imagine that using the weapon in a crime would lead to a mandatory penalty of life without parole. Imagine that killing someone with the weapon would lead to a mandatory death sentence for the killer. How much knife crime (or other weapon related crime) would the UK have once a few criminals had been sentenced under the new regime? I would think that they would have very close to NO KNIFE CRIME AT ALL.

So, it is up to the government of the UK and its judiciary to solve this problem. All they need to do is come down harshly on the weapon wielders - doing so will make the UK a safe haven, once more, as once it used to be. I really rather hope they do something akin to what I have suggested.

Yesterday, news of the latest teenager to die in a knife-fight in London broke across the world. Rob Knox, an upcoming actor, with a role in the next Harry Potter film, was stabbed to death defending his younger brother and friends from an enraged knife-wielding 21 year old man, outside the Metro pub, next to Sidcup railway station. Rob was stabbed four times, while trying to disarm the man and several others were injured, too. Had the UK a Singaporean style response to crime, it is most likely that this young actor would not have died. It is most likely that his killer would have thought better of the penalty he would receive and not carried a knife in the first place.

Fourteen teenagers have been stabbed to death in London so far this year. How many more must die before the UK adopts a civilized response to knife crime? By civilized response, I mean a response that protects the people of the nation and refuses to tolerate such crime. So, in a sense, one should be as uncivilized as possible to the criminals, so as to preserve the quality of life for everyone else.

Rob Knox's death has brought the knife issue in the UK to the attention of the world. Let him not have died in vain. It is time for the UK to act. Knife crime is easy to stop. All they have to do is make the penalties truly substantial - then it will quickly become a problem of the past.

For the sake of the UK, I hope the government there chooses a better future for its people: stiffen the law, to save the society.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-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, 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, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The top 100 living geniuses

Who are the greatest living geniuses of today? Creators Synectics asked and answered this question. They did so by asking 4,000 Britons to list up to 10 living people they considered geniuses. They received just 1,100 nominations in reply (which would seem to suggest that many Britons are not interested enough in genius to answer a question about them). Only 60 per cent of these nominees were actually alive at the time - the dead ones being discounted owing to their poor health.

Now, I would like you to guess (without looking at the list below to cheat), which country had the most geniuses per head of population, on Earth (according to this survey)?

The answer was Britain. One Briton out of every 2.5 million is considered a living genius, by the respondents. For America, only one in every 6.9 million Americans was considered a genius.

If this survey is accurate, it would seem to suggest that something in the British culture and education system is more conducive to giving rise to genius than the American system. It may be, for instance, that the American system is insufficiently intellectually challenging in High School (and perhaps at Bachelor's degree level) to bring out the best in its students. Whatever the reason, it is something to be concerned about, for it suggests that America's intellectual pre-eminence in the world is not to be an enduring one. To make the comparison more clear, if these proportions for genius hold true, then Britain has 23 living geniuses and America, just 43. Thus, though America is far vaster in size, it does not have a comparable intellectual weight.

One reason for this could be that the people asked for their opinion were Britons. That might hold true in a world where information was not transmitted so readily. In the modern world, fame extends around the world. American geniuses are just as familiar to Britons as British ones - so too the geniuses from elsewhere in the world. So, I doubt that that is the explanation. The Britons would know of American geniuses (and those from elsewhere) and would therefore be able to vote for them.

Nor can we say that they were excluding Americans in preference for Britons, because they had up to 10 votes each: there was room for many a nationality there.

We have to consider, therefore, that this is a real difference and that American ingenuity is not, comparatively, what one would have thought. Perhaps they need to become more attractive to British immigrants.

A note: when this list was compiled, Bobby Fischer was still alive.

Other curiosities: J K Rowling is on the list. I am not sure that she is really a genius, for her work does appear to be rather derivative - yet she got the popular vote. Damien Hirst, too, has often been accused of plagiarism, by other artists - so his place, too, is questionable.

The funniest thing about the list is Richard Branson's description as a "publicist". In a way, that is exactly what he is, for he has built his Virgin empire on generating media coverage for himself.

The numbers after each listing are the score for the genius in terms of five factors that were used to rank them. The factors are: paradigm shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. It is notable that some geniuses secured a very low score. This means that though they were voted in by the people, the judges did not think them to have great power as geniuses. Quentin Tarantino best exemplifies this, on the bottom of the list with a score of 2. He, too, is known to be derivative in the extreme (a big chunk of Reservoir Dogs echoes Ringo Lam's City of Fire, very closely). Again, therefore, he shouldn't really be on the list at all.

Interestingly, the joint first place goes to two scientists: Albert Hoffman, the chemist who invented LSD - and Tim Berners-Lee who invented that other hallucinogenic distraction, the world wide web.

Please take a look at this list and give me your views, if you wish, as to whether these people should be on it, in the first place. Are they geniuses? Are they good enough to be in the top 100? Who is NOT on the list that you think should be? Is Britain truly producing more geniuses than any other country on Earth, per head of population?

I originally encountered this list on the Daily Telegraph website, from the UK.



1= Albert Hoffman (Swiss) Chemist 27
1= Tim Berners-Lee (British) Computer Scientist 27
3 George Soros (American) Investor & Philanthropist 25
4 Matt Groening (American) Satirist & Animator 24
5= Nelson Mandela (South African) Politician & Diplomat 23
5= Frederick Sanger (British) Chemist 23
7= Dario Fo (Italian) Writer & Dramatist 22
7= Steven Hawking (British) Physicist 22
9= Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian) Architect 21
9= Philip Glass (American) Composer 21
9= Grigory Perelman (Russian) Mathematician 21
12= Andrew Wiles (British) Mathematician 20
12= Li Hongzhi (Chinese) Spiritual Leader 20
12= Ali Javan (Iranian) Engineer 20
15= Brian Eno (British) Composer 19
15= Damien Hirst (British) Artist 19
15= Daniel Tammet (British) Savant & Linguist 19
18 Nicholson Baker (American) Writer 18
19 Daniel Barenboim (N/A) Musician 17
20= Robert Crumb (American) Artist 16
20= Richard Dawkins (British) Biologist and philosopher 16
20= Larry Page & Sergey Brin (American) Publishers 16
20= Rupert Murdoch (American) Publisher 16
20= Geoffrey Hill (British) Poet 16
25 Garry Kasparov (Russian) Chess Player 15
26= The Dalai Lama (Tibetan) Spiritual Leader 14
26= Steven Spielberg (American) Film maker 14
26= Hiroshi Ishiguro (Japanese) Roboticist 14
26= Robert Edwards (British) Pioneer of IVF treatment 14
26= Seamus Heaney (Irish) Poet 14
31 Harold Pinter (British) Writer & Dramatist 13
32= Flossie Wong-Staal (Chinese) Bio-technologist 12
32= Bobby Fischer (American) Chess Player 12
32= Prince (American) Musician 12
32= Henrik Gorecki (Polish) Composer 12
32= Avram Noam Chomski (American) Philosopher & linguist 12
32= Sebastian Thrun (German) Probabilistic roboticist 12
32= Nima Arkani Hamed (Canadian) Physicist 12
32= Margaret Turnbull (American) Astrobiologist 12
40= Elaine Pagels (American) Historian 11
40= Enrique Ostrea (Philippino) Pediatrics & neonatology 11
40= Gary Becker (American) Economist 11
43= Mohammed Ali (American) Boxer 10
43= Osama Bin Laden (Saudi) Islamicist 10
43= Bill Gates (American) Businessman 10
43= Philip Roth (American) Writer 10
43= James West (American) Invented the foil electrical microphone 10
43= Tuan Vo-Dinh (Vietnamese) Bio-Medical Scientist 10
49= Brian Wilson (American) Musician 9
49= Stevie Wonder (American) Singer songwriter 9
49= Vint Cerf (American) Computer scientist 9
49= Henry Kissinger (American) Diplomat and politician 9
49= Richard Branson (British) Publicist 9
49= Pardis Sabeti (Iranian) Biological anthropologist 9
49= Jon de Mol (Dutch) Television producer 9
49= Meryl Streep (American) Actress 9
49= Margaret Attwood (Canadian) Writer 9
58= Placido Domingo (Spanish) Singer 8
58= John Lasseter (American) Digital Animator 8
58= Shunpei Yamazaki (Japanese) Computer scientist & physicist 8
58= Jane Goodall (British) Ethologist & Anthropologist 8
58= Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (Indian) Historian 8
58= John Goto (British) Photographer 8
58= Paul McCartney (British) Musician 8
58= Stephen King (American) Writer 8
58= Leonard Cohen (American) Poet & musician 8
67= Aretha Franklin (American) Musician 7
67= David Bowie (British) Musician 7
67= Emily Oster (American) Economist 7
67= Steve Wozniak (American) Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers 7
67= Martin Cooper (American) Inventor of the cell phone 7
72= George Lucas (American) Film maker 6
72= Niles Rogers (American) Musician 6
72= Hans Zimmer (German) Composer 6
72= John Williams (American) Composer 6
72= Annette Baier (New Zealander) Philosopher 6
72= Dorothy Rowe (British) Psychologist 6
72= Ivan Marchuk (Ukrainian) Artist & sculptor 6
72= Robin Escovado (American) Composer 6
72= Mark Dean (American) Inventor & computer scientist 6
72= Rick Rubin (American) Musician & producer 6
72= Stan Lee (American) Publisher 6
83= David Warren (Australian) Engineer 5
83= Jon Fosse (Norwegian) Writer & dramatist
83= Gjertrud Schnackenberg (American) Poet 5
83= Graham Linehan (Irish) Writer & dramatist 5
83= JK Rowling (British) Writer 5
83= Ken Russell (British) Film maker 5
83= Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (Russian) Small arms designer 5
83= Erich Jarvis (American) Neurobiologist 5
91=. Chad Varah (British) Founder of Samaritans 4
91= Nicolas Hayek (Swiss) Businessman and founder of Swatch 4
91= Alastair Hannay (British) Philosopher 4
94= Patricia Bath (American) Ophthalmologist
94= Thomas A. Jackson (American) Aerospace engineer 3
94= Dolly Parton (American) Singer 3
94= Morissey (British) Singer 3
94= Michael Eavis (British) Organiser of Glastonbury 3
94= Ranulph Fiennes (British) Adventurer 3
100=. Quentin Tarantino (American) Filmmaker 2

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and four months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and nine months, and Tiarnan, twenty-six 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, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Rapid drop in IQ of Thai children.

There is this idea that the world is getting smarter, due to the Flynn Effect. This was so, superficially, for several decades, as children simply got better at taking IQ tests. Yet, at the same time, there was evidence of dysgenic change - that is the increasing frequency of poorer genetic endowments, in comparison to better ones. Quite simply, average performance on tests was improving (perhaps due to more exposure to such tasks), but the underlying genetic quality was in decline. This has been so for a very long time...in the West since the 19th century, at the least.

The problem is that smarter people tend to have fewer kids, since they tend to be the ones focussed on careers and personal ambitions, delaying families and ultimately having smaller ones. This has long been so.

Recent studies are showing a very different trend in the intellectual function of today's children, than the legend of the Flynn Effect suggests. A King's College London study that I referred to in another post, proved a 25% drop in cognitive function (it wasn't an IQ test, as such), in children of the same age compared across 15 years. That was a very disturbing result. Is this a British problem, or a global problem?

Well, a 2002 study performed in Thailand indicates that the problem is not localized.

In 1997 the average IQ of Thai children was 96.5 in Bangkok, 92.3 in the central region, 87.9 in the North. Five years later, in 2002, the figures were 94.6 in Bangkok, 88.8 in the central region and 84.2 in the North.

The children in both groups were 6 to 12 years old. Clearly, this is a very marked change in so short a time.

Should this trend continue for long, it would deletriously affect the whole future of the Thai nation. It would only be a matter of decades before the country would completely lack the mental wherewithal to perform many important functions at all. Where will the doctors come from? The scientists? The engineers? A small shift in mean iq greatly reduces the numbers of the gifted and talented - much more so than is widely realized.

It is likely that other countries face the same problem: the decline in intelligence of their children. I will try to gather relevant figures.

From this data, and the King's College data, the futures of Britain and Thailand promise to be very different from their presents. It is a difference no-one would welcome.

The question is: is this a completely global decline?

I really hope not.

However, I worry that it is - because the social forces that lead to just such a decline are common to all countries.

The future may not be as bright (in every sense of the word) as many people think...

(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.)

A lesson in economics for a child.

My childhood was not like my son's is turning out to be. For a start his is in a different country and this makes more difference than I had thought it would.

Today is an example. At school a circular was sent around to all the children. It was a slip of paper, rather oddly, containing economic information. It told these primary school children that prices were to rise in the school food outlets, "owing to the rise in the price of flour". I found this stupefying. Not even children are immune to economic alarm. Here they were being told a) their food prices were going to rise and b) a reason and justification for why this was to be. Amazing. I don't remember my childhood being like that. We were completely insulated from economic information. Maybe that is why we didn't all grow up being obsessed by money-making at the expense of any other social or human value.

I can see, now, why so many Singaporeans grow up to be concerned with money and money alone. The indoctrination that money is everything begins in primary schools with such subtle lessons as an economics lesson masquerading as a slip of paper.

I have had a good look back at my own childhood and I don't remember a single corresponding incident. However, this may be because in government schools in my childhood the food was free to all. There were no price rises because there was no price in the first place. It was regarded as a social boon that every child, no matter from what background, or however poor they might be, would receive at least one "good" meal a day. I say "good" because the food was, of course, of institutional quality.

It has taken my son's experience with this financial notice, from his school, to awaken me to how sheltered children in Britain were in the seventies and eighties, from economic realities. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Well, it depends what you value. If you value a child's peace of mind and ability to relax and enjoy the only period of their life that could reasonably be free from worry (if only we would let them be)...then I think it is best that children are not troubled by economic understanding. It would only add to their worries. However, if you wish to create a nation of people who begin to be concerned with money at the earliest possible age and who will go on to make it their primary concern throughout life - then, by all means, send little price rise notices and explanations around the school for the children to become economically awakened.

This method seems to work. I had a conversation about economics today with Ainan. (A very unusual occurrence.) He was rather surprised at the contents of the slip of paper and felt a need to discuss it with me.

The economic awakening has begun. To where will it lead?

(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.)

On the life of an expat

Expat. It is such a simple word but what does it really mean? Beyond the obvious in that it is short for expatriate, it means a whole lot more.

Recently, I was reminded of what it means to be an expat. I am one. I live daily as one. But it is only when I am confronted with the life I had before I came here, that I come to fully understand what it is that expat actually means. It means an exile.

Why do I say this? Well, all expats are living in a country other than the one of their birth. They have left behind all that they once knew, for a new land, a new world, a new experience. That has its merits. There is much to be learnt and understood, much to be felt and seen, thought and experienced. Yet, there is a price. To be an expat one has to give up all that one once had. One has to give up a country, friends and family. New friends must be found - and in my case a new family founded. Those are rewarding things - but they are not that which has been given up. The price paid remains paid. There is still a loss, still something left behind.

My thoughts have turned to these matters because of the recent visit of my mother and sister to Singapore. Seeing them, again, after a couple of years called to mind the world of my past that I have left behind. Old friends, old places, old thoughts and old feelings were evoked by their presence. I realized what I had had to give up, to win, for myself a new life. Some of those things I would wish not to have given up. Yet, it is unavoidable. Those places, people and things are not here, in Singapore. They will never be. Unless I return to England, one day, I will never see those places, people and things again. They will exist only as memories within, memories that will never live again. I have gained a new world, yes, but lost an old one. It is a hard trade, in many ways, that all expats have to make. They cannot be an expat and win a new world, without losing an old one.

There are riches, here, for me, in Singapore. I have a wonderful family, who daily give me joy and surprising moments - and I have interesting work, too - but all that I used to have, is mine no longer. In a sense, therefore, to be an expat - especially one who does not return to the homeland with any frequency - is to live a life truncated. All that went before has been cut away, to make way for the new life to come.

I knew the ways of the old world, well. I spoke the language with mastery, understood its customs, and had a map of it in my mind. The new world, however, remains strange, in some ways, despite the familiarity of my five years here. The people don't speak the standard English I once enjoyed. They don't think as the people I knew do. The social issues are not the same. Here I am a minority race member - and not just another one of the majority, as before (though being Irish, I was also a minority, in England, too, in another sense...). My social perspective on life here, is different. I am forever an outsider, looking in, not an insider looking out. I have friends, here, but they are few. It is difficult to relate when there is little common ground. The distance between me and others, here, is greater, though it was never that short, before. I have come to understand that I will never truly be a full part of the new world around me - for I will always be different, always be of another breed, another world. In that sense, I have brought my old world with me: it is inside me, it is me. Here, therefore, I am part of another culture, another nation, another race. My differences can never be dissolved, never wash off, or be forgotten. I will always be apart.

I look at other expats, here, too and note that though they may integrate quite well, in terms of work, socially they remain distinct. The world they have brought with them, inside them, cannot fully integrate with the world without. They are ever seen as different, and never, therefore, fully accepted as a true part of the scheme of things.

No doubt it is much the same all over the world, wherever expats live. They have left their old worlds behind, physically, but brought them with them, psychologically. Thus, they can never truly fit in. They are, therefore, marooned between worlds. They are no longer in their homelands, nor at home in their new nations. There will always be things, people, places, that they might wish were still part of their lives. There will always be things, people, places missing from their new worlds.

Only those who have been expats can fully understand these issues. Most countries take their expats for granted - seeing them as no more than a form of migrant worker. Yet, all these expats have given up a lot to be in their new world. No-one becomes an expat without a kind of sacrifice which cannot be seen, but which is ever there. All expats have left behind family, friends and culture. All expats have found new friends, a new culture and, for some, a new family. It is an exchange usually made by choice. But it is not an exchange without cost.

Perhaps the home nations of the world, should understand their expats a bit better, and appreciate them a bit more. For behind every foreign face, there lies a tale of an old world lost, a new world won.

Welcome them, therefore, for every expat has paid a price, no native ever pays: the giving up of a homeland just to be here.

(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.)

Can Britain survive trash culture?

I am constantly amazed at the way expat British people, recently moved to Singapore, speak of the country I grew up in. It is not what it was, by a long way.


It is saddening to be told that all those forces that were just beginning to take hold when I was in school, have now triumphed, and become the dominant culture. A nation once known for breeding sophisticated "gentlemen", is now best known for the abundance of its yobs, or "Chavs" as they are now known.

Let me explain. The Chav represents all that was once regarded as base in the human. They revel in stupidity, actively hate all who are intellectual, have no respect for the law, for education, for employment (they often live on benefits and petty crime), or for anything that once was remotely considered a social value. Yet, this moronic creed is now the dominant culture in Britain: it is the nature of the "masses".

I left Britain almost eight years ago. It is now clear that, though I have often wanted to, I can never return. That is, the place that once I knew, is no more. Britain of today, does not resemble the Britain of only a few years ago.

The problem is only just beginning. The next generation of British kids are showing shocking signs of being subnormal, compared to the kids of only fifteen years before. There is a twenty-five per cent drop in intellectual function of the average British child compared to 1990 (according to a study of 10,000 children by Michael Shayler of King's College London). That means that, in a few short years, these rather intellectually impaired children (by recent historical standards) are going to become adults. They will add to the dumbing down of British culture. They in turn will become parents, and so the problem will grow, over time. Unless something effective - and rather major - is done, Britain promises to be a country without a future.

An insight into the minds of the people of each nation can be garnered from the kinds of comments they leave on my site. This morning, I found a handful of posts from the same person, from Lambeth, London. None of the posts were publishable. Some of them lacked capitalization and punctuation. None could be classified as sentences. But that wasn't what struck me. What struck me was their coarseness. Two comments consisted of nothing but expletives. That was the sum total of their ability to contribute to the debate of ideas that the internet - and blogging - should be about.

On reading them, and recalling what my colleagues recently arrived from the UK had told me, I was moved to write of the declining situation, in the UK - and to do a little research.

I found something, in my search that should appal all who have ever been a parent. I found the story of one "chav" who had won 9.7 million pounds in the lottery. He set about living "large", in a rather grotesque manner (for instance he appears to have bought 30 vehicles, so that they could be smashed to pieces in a demolition derby in his spacious garden). That, though crass, wasn't what worried me. My concern was his proud boast about his two year old daughter: "Her first words were f*** and s***." He thought it was great.

England was once a nation of refined and cultivated gentlemen, renowned throughout the world for their manners, wit and "breeding". Now, they have become a moronic breed who delight that their babies' first words (and therefore, implicitly, the words they had heard most frequently) should be two expletives. What hope is there of such a child growing up to be an adult of wit, manners and "breeding"?

How long can Britain hold its position in the world, when the quality of its people - in a very real sense - is in such decline?

Britain is a nation that once possessed a rich intellectual tradition. It produced world-class thinkers by the bundle. Its universities were among the best in the world. But now, it is a nation that loathes all that is intellectual. Thinking has become socially unacceptable. To sit in a pub, and speak intelligently, is to court a jeer at best, or a beer glass (broken), at worst. Only stupidity and vacuity are now socially permissible. The intellectual is on the run - and lives in perpetual hiding, marginalized in society, daring not to raise a voice, lest they be denounced and set upon.

Once a society has marginalized its thinkers, it cannot be long before such a civilization collapses. Britain has taken that step of marginalizing its best people. Not even mediocrities have taken their place. It is the idiots who have taken the reigns - it is they whose voice shouts loudly. Britain, is now a land of the lout.

I don't believe that anyone in a society should be marginalized - but if any class of people had to be marginalized - it should be the louts, not the thinkers.

Britain needs to step back from this particular abyss. It needs to discourage loutishness, to subdue the creed of the moron, encourage intellectual activity, reward brilliance, foster thinking. It needs, in short, to be what it used to be: a great nation, brimming with great people who dedicated their lives to serious endeavour (or at least, enough of them did so, to make it the leading nation it once was). It is time to shrug off this attack of idiocy - and return to the values and sophistication of yesteryear.

It won't be easy. It won't take place overnight. But if Britain is to survive as a nation worthy of the term, it must fight the decline of its people. It must urge them to better themselves, as people, and not just as economic units. If nothing is done, many of us will live to see the "decline and fall" of a once great nation.

The land that produced William Shakespeare, also produced the barbaric poster of expletives on my site. Would it not be a better nation, if it fostered more geniuses and less loutishness?

I hope, one day, to see, comments of wit, and brilliance, from the British Isles, as once might have been written. We will see just how long I have to wait.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eight months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and one month, or Tiarnan, eighteen 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.)

Educational testing and intellectual performance

Why do education systems test their students? Usually they want to find out "how good" their students are. Does this work? Does constant testing improve the students, or does it prevent them from learning?

I have written about the problem of over-testing in the UK (and Singapore, indirectly), recently. My contention was that obsessive testing of students would get in the way of their real education, by focussing the students upon an ever smaller set of knowledge, driving them away from a true pursuit of education and learning. I offered this as an opinion yet, I have found evidence, now, that it is true. The more you test, the less you get, in terms of student development. England tests their state school students over 70 times between the age of 7 and school leaving age. What effect does this have on the students?

Well, a recent study of over 10,000 British students tested at the age of 11 and 12 for cognitive performance has produced alarming results. The research was performed by Michael Shayer of King's College London and published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology. The study showed that in their cognitive and conceptual development, today's 11 or 12 year olds from Britain were TWO or THREE years BEHIND their counterparts from 1990. This means that, in real terms, young British children have regressed intellectually compared to children of 15 years before: their actual ability to think and reason is impaired by comparison. Think about what a three year difference at age 12 means: it is a 25% difference - which, if it were IQ, would indicate a 25 IQ point difference. This is a HUGE drop in intellectual function, for a whole nation.

In the same period, in which the drop occurred, Britain became a test-mad nation. The students were subject to endless tests beginning at seven on their performance on every little matter of schooling. The idea behind the tests was to guarantee that students were adhering to "standards" - but what, actually has happened? In real terms, Britain's kids have got stupid, by comparison to their former intellectual performance. Is there a connection? Does excessive testing drive children away from true education? Does it prevent children from actually growing intellectually? This situation in Britain would seem to support my understanding that excessive testing will get in the way of true education.

When I was in school, there was very little testing other than formal examinations such as O level and A level. So, too, the children from my generation were demonstrably smarter than the children of today's generation: is there a direct connection? Were we freer to think and grow and learn owing to less testing? In my heart, I feel so. I was one of many students who studied because we loved to think and to learn. I was not studying because there was a test coming up - because there just WASN'T a test coming up. It was a better way to learn, I think.

The research threw up many alarming results. One was that the gender gap had vanished. Girl students were traditionally better than boys, being more studious and less disruptive by nature - but that advantage has gone, too, with girls showing great deterioration in intellectual performance.

In the new Britain, one in six British people do not have the literacy skills expected of an average 11 year old. You would think that was bad enough - but it gets worse: half of British people do not have basic functional numeracy. That's right: 50% of all British people today are not sufficiently numerate.

What is the real world effect of such educational and cognitive declines? Well a review by Leitch, found that a 1 % increase in literacy in a population, resulted in a 1.5% increase in GDP, for the nation - and a 2.5% increase in labour force productivity. Thus even slight changes in the educational standards of a nation have noticeable real world effects on the standard of living and quality of life, in that nation.

Education should be about learning and growing, in all the ways that are suited to the child. As soon as it becomes about bureaucratic measurement - as it long has become in Britain and some other nations - then, I contend, that is a nation that will fall into decline - because in such a test obsessed environment there is no time for, or attention given to, real learning, real growth, real insight.

The Shayer study is strong evidence that education conducted in the way it is conducted in Britain - as an incessant round of tests that bedevils pupils throughout their education - simply does not work to bring about real intellectual growth. Britain's pupils are now demonstrably stupid compared to their forebears of only fifteen years ago. A drop of 25% in cognitive performance is a massive decline. It is almost the difference between a moderately gifted student and an average one. It is a huge disparity.

It is time, for all countries that are obsessed with testing and measurement of their students, to throw that aside in favour of a classroom that favours true learning by the student: deep, exploratory, insightful learning that will bring forth the intellectual leaders of the future. The alternative is national decline and failure.

Will Britain choose to do anything about this situation? I think not, for one can read in the reaction of their media the true attitude towards the situation: indifference. Not one single main British media outlet covered this story about the Shayer study. Only one magazine, the Spectator, wrote of it. All the British newspapers ignored it. So, where does this leave the British people? They are left ignorant of the true state of decline in the mental quality of their children and in the education they have been receiving. Yet, these children are the future of Britain. Based on their decline in ability, at age 11 or 12, one can safely say that in twenty to thirty years, when this generation of children are in their thirties and forties, that Britain will have declined significantly as a nation. It cannot be otherwise, when the quality of minds on which the nation is built has declined so precipitously. It is all very well to be indifferent to the situation now, but in two or three decades the price of that indifference will be paid - by the whole nation.

So, nations everywhere, should focus on an education system that truly allows their children to learn - and not binds them up in an incessant bureaucratic requirement for testing. Britain made that latter choice - and the results are very clear: a generation of dumb kids - and a generation of dumb adults to come.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, 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.)

The tyranny of tests

England is not what it was, in many ways. Yet, only recently have I become aware of one way in which it has changed since my childhood.

I now live in Singapore and, having observed Singapore for a few years, I had come to the conclusion that Singaporeans are test mad. There is a test for everything and nothing is trusted unless it has been tested. I had come to view it as somewhat pathological - in the sense that it is far too prevalent to be healthy. Yet, that was before I came to know of the recent situation in the UK. If anything it is worse, there.

A UK student is now expected to take over 70 official tests from the age of 7 to the time they leave school. These are not, as far as I am aware, optional, in-house school testing, but obligatory mandatory, national testing.

I only became aware of this situation, not having lived in the UK since my children were born (apart from one stint), because of a proposal to end all such testing, that some brave political soul has tabled. It would probably be a good thing for British children were it to be enacted - but it is extremely unlikely, for the leaders of the educational establishment were quoted as being fully behind the test-taking tradition.

Let us look at what these tests do to children. With so many of them, there is forever another test coming up. There is ever the need to prepare for the next test. The focus of the students is on passing the test. There is never time or space to look around and see subjects in greater breadth or depth - there is only that which is in the test, in their minds. The consequence of an education that is nothing but a long series of tests is that the child is never truly educated. They are trained to do tests - and that is all. I have seen this phenomenon at work in Singapore which produces very good test takers...but not truly well-educated people: their minds have been too constricted by constant testing. The same unhealthy pressures have been constricting the minds of whole generations of British children while I wasn't looking. I don't imagine that it will lead to the national prosperity (and all the other things that politicians seek) that they imagine. Rather, it will lead to a nation unable to hold its place where once it reigned supreme.

Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of the education of children - and most certainly not an official burden of over 70 tests per school career. How ridiculous.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and six months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, sixteen 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 gifed adults in general. Thanks.)

On athletes and geniuses

At my school, in Britain, athletes got cheered, geniuses got jeered. The great sadness of this is not in that this happened, but in that this is not unusual. The world over, this is the more common of the possible reactions to such people.

The gifted athletes were school heroes - almost universally popular, accepted and welcomed. Those of great intellectual gift, however, were marginalized, picked on, bullied, victimized. They were often subject to consistent, systematic, social exclusion. This did not happen to all gifted kids at my school - but to many of them, it did. The mediocre majority ganged up on them and made their lives uncomfortable at best, hell at worst.

It was common for the kid who was brighter than the rest, but perhaps somewhat different, to be mocked for their differences. I remember one kid who was clearly genetically unusual from his appearance alone - who was gifted in physics and maths, who never received anything but a jeer everytime he spoke. No-one welcomed him. Everyone laughed at him. He, however, would talk on as if they were saying nothing until he got his point out - yet, I wonder how he really felt at this universal scorn, hate and mockery that greeted his every word. He never showed any reaction - but he must have heard what they said; he must have felt their loathing directed at him.

I remember his name, but won't mention it for fear that I might bring him some harm, now, all these years later. No doubt, he wouldn't want to be reminded of how he was treated. He was the most acute example of this phenomenon - but there were others: gifted children who had become the centre of much dislike, simply because of their gifts.

The oddest thing about this is that my school was a fee-paying, "Public School" - a highly selective institution, which made an effort to find academically able students to fill its classrooms. Yet, that did not mean that all were equally able. There were those one would term highly gifted and above - but the vast majority would not have even been termed moderately gifted: there are simply not enough of them to go around, what with all the schools seeking to recruit them. So, most would just have been "bright".

Yet, though most were bright, by typical standards, they were not welcoming or kind, or warm to those who were brighter than they were. Usually, they were hateful towards them. They treated the best among them with a virulent spite that had no end: it was as if the very fact that the best were better than them filled them with a deep-seated loathing.

Looking back, I find it astonishing that gifted athletes should have been loved; and gifted intellectuals should have been hated. There was something profoundly wrong with the culture of the school. Thinking more on it, however, I think that it wasn't just the school, but the whole nation at fault. Britain was already showing signs of anti-intellectualism at that time - and, though I haven't lived in England for years, from what I have read, recently, that poisonous ideology has become even more entrenched in the British psyche. I will write more of that another time, perhaps.

Is it the same in your country? Are athletes feted and the intellectually gifted isolated and bullied? I would welcome your observations, thoughts and feelings. Thanks.

Singapore's experience of the gifted

I came across a strange criticism on the internet, recently, regarding Singapore that I wish to comment on. This commenter - who generally came across as more than a little rabid - said that Singapore had little experience of the gifted - because it had only 4 million people...so basically what would they know?

I thought this comment very interesting for what it revealed about the limited understanding of giftedness of the commenter. Even profound gift at its theoretical prevalance of one in a million would be present in a population of four million. Yet, profound gift is actually more common than its theoretical prevalence - several times more common, at least. Therefore gifts of all dimensions would be present in a population of "only 4 million". Then again there is the fact that Singapore's IQ curve is not centred on 98 like the US (it was an American commenting owing to cultural references made by him or her), or 100 like the UK - but on 104. This is significant. It means that the gifted will, if the curve is otherwise as the IQ curves of other countries are, be much more common, because of the shift to the right of the curve. This means that Singapore will have proportionately MORE gifted people in its "only 4 million" population, than expected.

That, however, is just the beginning of the issue. For not only will more gifted people be present in the Singaporean population - but, culturally, more is done to meet their needs and become aware of those needs. You see, Singapore has a dedicated branch of the Ministry of Education catering solely to gifted children: The Gifted Education Branch. Their sole purpose is to understand and enable gifted children to become what they may. This is a government that has decided to open doors for gifted children - at least, that is the stated purpose of the organization and we are only just beginning to experience the reality of what they can actually achieve - a matter on which we keep an open mind. We will see how effective it really is - but that is another issue. The fact remains that there is a Department dedicated to the gifted - dedicated to understanding them and dedicated to enabling them. Can the USA say that? No. Can the UK say that? No. In fact, off the top of my head I know of no other country which can say that they have a dedicated branch of government devoted to the gifted. That says something. Does it say this country has "Little or no experience of the gifted"...err, no. On the contrary, it says that this country has more experience of the gifted than is usual - much more.

In a country that ignores its gifted and their needs - which appears to be the case at a central government level in not only the US and the UK but probably most, if not all, developed economies - that country will have little knowledge and experience of the gifted - for they are not looking at them as a constituency that needs individual attention; they are not thinking of their nature or their needs - and so they will not know of them. In short, they will be blind to the gifted within them, for they have never looked to see them. That, in fact, is a country which has "little or no experience of the gifted". Oddly, that situation pertains to the very country in which the commenter resides - and not the one that he criticizes.

His argument was basically that a country like Singapore, that had so few people, could not possibly know what a gifted child was - because they didn't have enough people to have any. Statistically, that is nonsense, of course - since four million is more than enough to encompass the variety of human types there are - and to do so amply if the IQ curve is actually centred on a higher than usual point, which it is, at 104.

That Singapore will have fewer gifted children, numerically, than a country almost two orders of magnitude greater in size is obvious - but that it would lack experience of the gifted simply because the other had more of them, is lacking in sense.

Singapore is a country without natural resources. Its only resource is its people. It is this background against which one can understand its wish to understand and cater for the gifted within: for those children are the greatest resource they have.

Singapore knows this; none of the other countries I have mentioned does. So who, then, has "little or no experience of the gifted."?

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

Singapore's IQ distribution and giftedness

I have just re-read my post on Ainan going to Raffles Institution, yesterday and, on doing so, I realized that I had made an error in my analysis. I have underestimated the number of gifted students who would be at Raffles.

How have I done this? Well, I realize, now, that I had made the assumption, in my statement that 1 in 44 people will be moderately gifted (IQ 130 or more), that the distribution was a normal one about an IQ of 100: as is the standard model of IQ. So, this is right, right? Wrong.

You see, the mean IQ in Singapore is, according to IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002), 104, NOT 100. This means that the distribution of IQs in Singapore is significantly skewed towards the gifted range. Quite simply, there will be more gifted students in the Singaporean population, for its size, than there would be in many other populations of the same size. That is the number of gifted students, per head of population should be higher in Singapore, than many other countries. For instance, the mean IQ of the United Kingdom is 100; that of the United States is 98. Singapore will have notably more gifted students per head of population than these two nations - because a few IQ points shift - amounting to almost half a standard deviation, in relation to the US, will push many more students into the gifted range. This analysis assumes that the shape of the distribution is the same - a normal curve (though in fact it should be trimodal - but normal is the usual model) - about an IQ mean of 104.

(Of course, although Singapore will have more gifted students per head of population than many other nations - including the US and the UK - these nations will have many more gifted students in terms of actual numbers - because they are much larger populations.)

Applying this to Raffles Institution, without detailed analysis, gives me the sense that it is probable that ALL their students are gifted - for they are the top 3% of a population with mean IQ 104, not the top 3% of a population of mean IQ 100, as I had inadvertently assumed.

Not all nations have lower IQs than Singapore. Hong Kong, for instance, has a mean IQ of 107 - indicating that China may become real competition for the West in the future - but that is another story.

Daily Mail Censorship - a policy of the newspaper

Out of curiosity, I did a search on Google on Censorship at the Daily Mail, after my experience with being censored on the website of this British newspaper. My search turned up over 1.3 million returns.

Clearly, I didn't check them all out - but the upper ones were clearly all relevant and referred to specific instances of censorship on this daily newspaper. What became apparent as I read through these readers failed attempts to comment on the website was why the Daily Mail censored them. It seems that the Daily Mail has a policy of blocking anyone who points out an error, an omission, an oversight, a misunderstanding, the presence of misinformation, or any failing of any kind, on the part of the paper. They also seem to block anyone who holds a contrary view to the one expressed in the paper.

Is this policy consonant with the idea of freedom of speech? No. Is it consonant with the modern idea that media are interactive? No. Is it consonant with the idea that a newspaper should seek to purvey the truth? No.

It is however consonant with the idea of an organization attempting to inflate its image by presenting a front of perfection. By this I mean, the organization wishes to appear infallible and all-knowing.

Yet, that is not the effect their policy has. Each time they block a reader comment, they are losing a reader. Do you think that a reader will have the same view about the paper after their attempt to correct a story has been blocked? I don't think so. What is likely is that reader will tell quite a few people about their failed attempt to comment and the censorship that the paper imposed on them.

It is evident that the Daily Mail doesn't want to be a newspaper in the long term. For it is obvious that the long term effect of their comment policy will be to alienate their readership. Who are the readers most likely to attempt to comment? The precise ones that they should be trying to keep happy: vocal, intelligent, proactive people who can either spread the word about a paper in a good way - or do the opposite if offended. I was really surprised at the tales of censorship that litter the internet in connection with this newspaper. This is a phenomenon totally at odds with the public image they portray in England as being "defenders of the British public". It is evident, now, that their public image is just a ruse. The true nature of this paper is not one that most free-thinking people would wish to support. They suppress the truth and massage their public image, in so doing.

It was quite a surprise to learn that my experience was not a rare instance of a comment being overlooked - but the product of an active policy of readership censorship.

In allowing comments, at all, they are trying to present themselves as being open to their readers. Yet, as one of many people who have tried to comment, but failed, they show themselves to be, in fact, closed to the truth, to feedback, to enlightenment of any kind.

There are many newspapers in this world. I will buy one that actually allows its readers to comment. For instance, the Daily Telegraph - they published my comment within eight hours. I think I will stick to them, then.

(If you would like to read about Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months, or his gifted brothers, 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.)