Reaction to an "intellectual".

Many years ago, when I was barely out of my teens, I was on a train to a place unremembered, reading a book, never forgotten. It was one of Samuel Beckett’s novels, from his trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. As I read, quietly, in an end seat in the subdivided train compartment, I annotated the book, writing my thoughts in response to Beckett’s, my understandings of his understandings and ideas of my own that emerged as I read. I wrote in very small writing with a biro. I was very intent.

A voice interrupted me.

“You think you are so intelligent.”, sneered a middle aged woman across from me.

I looked up at her, somewhat surprised, but more puzzled at what she had said.

“I am just reading a book.”, I said, matter of factly, trying not to rise to her provocation.

“You think you are SO intelligent.”, she said again, with even more of a sneer.

Now, I thought this most odd, since I wasn’t thinking of myself at all, but of the book I was reading and the place it had taken me to.

“You know nothing about me.”, I began softly, but with an intensity that made it seem hard, “I have said nothing about my intelligence, to you. So, why are you attacking me for it? I am just reading a book on a train – what is wrong with that?”

Her mouth, if anything, looked even more sour than before.

“You are writing in your book.”, she said, as if that was proof of her view of my self-image.

“I am writing, because I am recording my thoughts in response to the book. That is all.”

Her sourness condensed further.

“You are just showing off.” Her sneer was well on the way to becoming a scar, by now.

“I am not showing anything. I am not writing for your consumption and entertainment, I am writing so that I am able to look at my thoughts again, later. It is not for you that I write.”

She didn’t know what to say, but there was a strange kind of hate cum envy in her eyes. She looked out of the train window. The conversation was at an end.

I returned to my reading and my writing. Aware that she was observing me from across the carriage, but not paying her any more attention. I had become accustomed to hostility from people less bright than myself, but I hadn’t expected to be attacked for reading on a train. I thought it odd that a middle aged lady should be so hateful of intellectual interest. It was odder still that she should assume to know what I thought about myself, from me quietly reading and saying nothing to anyone. Looking back, I do wonder if she were a little mad – and whether she projected her own evaluation of me – that I was “so intelligent” – onto me and ascribed it to me. This would be paranoid thinking and it seems quite possible now that that explains her behaviour.

Yet, there is another explanation that requires far less supposition: that she was hateful of any intellectual activity – that she was “giftist” as I call it. If so, then that attitude was alive and strong about a quarter of a century ago. Even now it is a toxic memory. At the time it was rather like being awoken to the sensation of sandpaper on one’s skin – a rasping reality that could not be ignored.

I have never forgotten her strange action – but was only reminded of it, today, after long years, on sighting the word “annotate”. Suddenly the event flooded into memory again.

It is a wonder that giftism is not more widely spoken of. I even had to create the word myself, some years ago, since at the time, there was not a single hit for it, on the Internet. Attitudes such as this unknown lady’s are truly corrosive, in society and make life difficult for more intellectually minded individuals. It seems likely that she behaved toxically towards any seeming intellectual she met. How many people would she bully in a lifetime? Hundreds, certainly...Imagine if she were a teacher, then there would be thousands of victims. These people are very harmful to society and to the health of a culture – yet she is not alone, there are many people who hate the “gifted”, the “smart”, the “intellectuals”...and even pride themselves on their hate. They think it “trendy” to attack the bookish, the thoughtful, the preoccupied. That woman wouldn’t even leave a young man to read in peace on a train, without trying to poison the experience.

I used to read a lot. I don’t read much these days. Life seems to take up too much time to leave enough time to read as much as I would like. Yet, I am now middle aged and I still see her words to me as foreign. I couldn’t possibly imagine saying them to a youngster reading on a train. I am more likely to feel glad they were reading and just to sneak a peek at the book title, to see how weighty it might be. I would be happiest if it were a complex and rich work. That is what I would like to see in the young today...intellectual preoccupations, thoughtfulness and a desire to learn. I certainly can’t imagine attacking anyone for it.

The UK has gone into a cultural and intellectual decline in recent decades. No doubt that lady, who would now be a pensioner, would be quite happy with the way things are going. I, however, are not. Here’s to a future world in which every youngster reads on trains and thinks in public. How much better a world that would be.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Sydney Spies and the Curse of Beauty.

Sydney Spies is, in most eyes, a beautiful girl. She is also, alas, seemingly quite unpopular at her High School. The reason? She wants to be seen in a certain way – and the authorities, and it seems, her fellow students, don’t want her to be seen in that way.

Sydney Spies is suffering from what I call the Curse of Beauty. This is the counterpart to the hostility that very intelligent people often receive from their more ordinary fellows. Truly beautiful people are rather loathed by their same sex colleagues (except the gay ones I expect). An instinctive enmity exists between people of ordinary looks, and people of exceptional looks, of the same sex. This is, in my view, what Sydney Spies is experiencing. Basically, the ugly people around her, can’t stand her. (Let’s be blunt.)

Sydney Spies attempted to have a picture of her in a yellow skirt and black off the shoulder top placed in the Durango High School yearbook as her Senior Year photo. This was refused by Durango High School, whose authorities were of the opinion, in the words of Brian Jaramillo, that it would be unprofessional. He said: “We are an award winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional.”

My reaction to this is quite simple: the Durango High School is run by conformist, narrow-minded morons. The rejected photo is not too strong for inclusion, in my view. It just shows something that is not allowed in Durango High School: a personality. Sydney Spies is showing her innate personality in the construction and composition of the photograph. She is showing herself as she would like to be seen. However, at Durango High School, it seems that everyone must conform to an ideal of what is “professional” - that is strait-jacketed within a narrow set of rather dull rules and limitations about what is an acceptable photograph.

A school yearbook should show the people of the school as they really are. It should show them in all their diverse character. It should not be a robotic showpiece in which everyone is presented in the same set of limited ways to create an overall “look” that is deemed “award-winning”. It should be true to the personalities in the school. Quite clearly, the Durango High School yearbook is not true to the personalities of the students. It is actually a constructed lie, that seeks to present the Durango High School students in a certain way that is deemed “acceptable”. It is a photographic fraud, thereby. I would suggest that the only truthful photograph in the Durango High School yearbook may be the very ones they rejected of Sydney Spies. In fact, they rejected three of her submitted photographs – all for pretty much the same reason one intuits – she is just too attractive. (Though they said the last one missed their deadline). Instead, they used her school ID photograph!

There is one positive side to this controversy, from Sydney Spies’ point of view. She wished to be seen in a certain way. She wished to present her personality through a particular kind of image. Well, now she has, to the whole world – for one of those rejected yearbook photos has been run by news agencies around the world. So, the wish for Durango High School to censor their student, Sydney Spies, has had the unintended effect of making her much more famous than a yearbook would have done. That strikes me as suitably funny.

There is a not so funny side to this though. Sydney spies has experienced considerable bullying from her fellow students at Durango High School since all this fuss began. This is characteristic of the Curse of Beauty, as I describe it. I am certain...100% certain that ALL the bullies are ugly in comparison to her. This controversy around her yearbook photograph is just giving an excuse to the ugly ones to take out their resentment for her beauty, on her. A beautiful person would understand her position and viewpoint and would, in my view, be very unlikely to bully her. I am sure that the resentment she has experienced at Durango High School has come from those who are challenged in the looks department. This is parallel to the kind of resentment gifted kids often receive, from their less intelligent colleagues. It is always the dumb ones who hate the smart. Just so, it is always the plain, or even ugly ones, who hate the beautiful.

I wish Sydney Spies well and hope that she becomes the successful model she aspires to be. No-one should ever be in the position of being bullied because of their innate gifts as Sydney Spies is being – not if that gift is beauty, intelligence or any other gift. All who are gifted, in whatever way, should be welcomed for their gifts – for those gifts make the world a better place. Durango High School has forgotten that. It has proven itself, in this “scandal”, to be an ugly place – ugly at heart and, no doubt, ugly by sight, too.

Best of luck Sydney Spies. I hope you get to be seen as you wish to be.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Gifted or Impaired?

Today, I am led to wonder why the gifted are called "gifted". You see there is a basic assumption in that labelling that may not be immediately apparent - what is assumed is a perspective. The term "gifted" is a perspective on the more able from the point of view of the less able. It is the majority of less capable people who are, in effect, labelling the minority of the more capable as "gifted". At least, that is the viewpoint of the label. It is a comparison between the average people and the more capable people, using the average as a base line to form the description. Yet, why is it that way? It seems, to me, that, in some way, this way of looking at the world ignores and sidelines the way of looking at the world that the gifted people themselves may come to form, in the course of their lives. It is a view of the gifted from the non-gifted. It, therefore, fails to understand what life for the gifted is like.

What does an average person look like to a gifted person? Well, that is something rarely publicly considered. However if one reflects on it, for a moment, it will be seen that a gifted person must, at times, be puzzled by others - particularly in childhood, when they have yet to come to understand the world. You see, from the point of view of a gifted person, the average person does not seem "average" or "normal", they seem IMPAIRED. Many a gifted child - in fact all gifted children, if they speak to others - will have had the experience of not being understood by others. They will have spoken their minds, perhaps with great enthusiasm, about their latest ideas, understandings or insights - and met with a frown, perhaps, or scoffing, even. The other child simply did not and could not understand them. Now, the gifted child, who has not come to see this as usual, might be immensely puzzled why he or she was not understood. You see, from the point of view of the gifted child, understanding what they understood, or seeing what they saw, would not appear a difficult thing to do. It might, in fact, be immensely obvious to them. It might be something they understood immediately, without much effort - it might have come in a moment of joyful insight, typified not so much by effort, as by an involuntary state of instant conception. To the gifted child, therefore, the last thing they might expect, is that others wouldn't understand them. However, more often than not, the gifted child is not understood by the "average" children they encounter. From this comes so much pain, of course and so much sorrow - for it leads to the gifted child being intellectually isolated, unless they can find suitable companions from among their gifted peers (increasingly difficult to do for the more gifted categories) or, perhaps, understanding adults.

Now, think for a moment what the life of a gifted child is like - say one whose gift is relatively rare - a highly gifted child, or above, say. Such a child may not know ANYONE in their childhood of comparable intellect. They may NEVER encounter any other child on their level, in the time that they grow up. What perspective would they have on life and people? They would puzzle that everyone seems rather slow in understanding. They would wonder at how little others see or understand or think or create, or, even feel, since the gifted often have intense feelings, too. They would, after a while, conceive an understanding: that they, themselves, are NORMAL - and that everyone else seems IMPAIRED. You see, a gifted child is not "gifted" from their own point of view. They will always see themselves as the "normal" in their own world. It is EVERYONE ELSE who seems abnormal and somewhat lacking. So, even though the world may label a gifted child as "gifted"...surely, the deeper truth here, unpalatable as it may seem, is that, from the point of view of the gifted child's experience of the world - all the other children seem "impaired".

I realize that it would be politically incorrect to use the term "impaired" to describe the average person - yet, that is the reality of the experience of the gifted, in the world, as they grow up. They will not, usually, see themselves as particularly abnormal, since no-one likes to conceive of themselves as abnormal. They will, instead, more likely, conceive of themselves as NORMAL - and everyone else as ABNORMAL. They are not "gifted" to themselves - it is just that they happen to be surrounded by "impaired" people.

Children are often jealous of the gifted. They often treat them poorly. Yet, this is just another sign that the average child doesn't understand the "gifted". To the gifted child, the world is impaired. Few people seem able to understand their thoughts - perhaps no-one really "gets" them. Then again, many of the average children will be spiteful towards them, out of jealousy for their gifts - yet what, exactly, was the gifted child's crime: simply to be, to exist, to have been born. The gifted do not CHOOSE to be gifted, no more than the average choose to be average: it is just the way it is. So, it is profoundly wrong, to be hostile towards someone simply for the way they were born to be, having had no choice in that matter. It is precisely the same type of thinking that leads to racism over skin colour. The colour of one's skin, Michael Jackson, notwithstanding, is beyond our choice: it is the way we were born to be. Thus, one should have a certain pity for the gifted child, if they do not find peers to relate to. They will be surrounded daily by people whom to them, appear "impaired" - and from whom they receive much hostility based on nothing more than their natural inherited nature over which they had no choice. Long ago, I labelled this as "giftism" - the dislike of and ill treatment of those who are gifted. At the time, there were no google hits for the term, in the world, so it is clear that I coined the term, for the first time.

The gifted child is subject to "giftism", from an impaired world that does not understand them. That is a sad situation and one that is not fully appreciated. Yet, think of it the other way around: how often does a typical gifted child show "impairedism" towards the "normals" around them? I have never heard of that behaviour. Typically, a gifted child is quite introverted, a little shy perhaps, frequently a bit awkward socially - and they try, desperately, in their own way, to reach out to the world and be understood by it. Thus, a typical gifted child is trying to connect to the world - but is the world trying to connect to the gifted child? I think not. By singling them out as "gifted" the world shows that it is not trying to include the child, so much as exclude them. It is saying, "you are apart from us...you have been given what we have not". The gifted child does not say "you are apart from me, you have had taken from you that which I have." Yet, the gifted child could say that, and could think that. Generally, they don't however: they just feel somewhat alone in a world that cannot understand them.

I am moved to remember my son, Ainan's remark when I asked him what he thought about himself, in relation to other children. He said: "I am average". I understood what he meant. He is his OWN "average", his own "normal". He was saying that he felt "normal" for him. I reported his remark and he was much attacked for it, by anonymous strangers on the internet. They thought that he must be disregarding the nature of others, to make such a remark. They accused him of lacking social skills. Well, no: it shows none of these things - it just shows what I have been saying - that a gifted child will typically see themselves as the normal way to be - and everyone else as the abnormal way to be. They are usually defined as "normal" by themselves.

I find this interesting. The whole world goes around defining these children as "gifted"...that is distinguished from the average by the presence of "gifts"...whereas these children probably, in fact, see themselves as "normal" as my son does, despite his prodigious childhood. (The fact that he spends so much time among adults may have something to do with it, of course). Indeed, it seems healthy to conceive one's own way of being as "normal" even if it is not. Conceiving of oneself as "abnormal" cannot be a good stressor. Yet, also interestingly enough, I don't think that gifted children go around defining, consciously, others as "impaired". The term, "impaired" has never entered any human language I know of, to describe the average person. Thus, the perspective of gifted people has never entered common language. The world is defined, therefore, not by the gifted minority, in this descriptive sense - but by the ungifted majority.

What I am trying to convey is that, to the gifted, they do not seem "gifted" to themselves they seem "differently normal". They know they are DIFFERENT - but that difference feels NORMAL. It is the way they are. It is the way they have always been: how else could it feel but normal?

So, perhaps, instead of marking out the gifted as apart from the rest of the world and subject to jealousies and hates, as a consequence, perhaps they can be reframed as "differently normal" - and accepted as just another way of being. After all, a gifted child has to learn to accept, as they grow up, that the impaired people they see around them, everyday of their lives are, in fact, the most common type - and conceive of themselves as "normal". The gifted child has to learn to accept them, as "normal". Yet they also conceive of themselves as "normal" - for how else could they think of themselves when that is the way they are involuntarily? Yet, they can also see that they are different from the others. The way to resolve this is to see that each type of person - the "gifted" or the "impaired" is "differently normal" - normal from their own point of view. Perhaps this way of looking at things will allow all people, of all gifts or otherwise, to get along.

At least, that is my hope.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.htmlI also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to:http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)