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The boy who knew too much: a child prodigy

This is the true story of scientific child prodigy, and former baby genius, Ainan Celeste Cawley, written by his father. It is the true story, too, of his gifted brothers and of all the Cawley family. I write also of child prodigy and genius in general: what it is, and how it is so often neglected in the modern world. As a society, we so often fail those we should most hope to see succeed: our gifted children and the gifted adults they become. Site Copyright: Valentine Cawley, 2006 +

Saturday, December 08, 2007

A secret beauty therapist, Singapore

Yesterday, I noted something strange about Syahidah's toes. They had been painted. Now, this is no ordinary circumstance for Syahidah, for she never paints her toenails - or fingernails, for that matter. Furthermore, these were no ordinary colours. The big toe was in pink. The next toe was in green. The one next to it in blue - and so on, in a multi-coloured splash of colour. It was quite surprising.

Seeing me looking at them, she smiled and said: "Tiarnan did it."

Then she told me the tale. Tiarnan, twenty-two months, had held each toe in his right hand and took a marker pen in his left hand and carefully, most, most carefully, coloured in each toe nail, without straying onto the skin of the foot. It was quite neatly done. Then, when he had done with one colour and one toe, he would swap pens and do the next toe in a different colour, until the whole foot was done.

He was most pleased with his handiwork.

Now, what I wonder could have inspired him to do this? Well, when my mother and sister were here, he noticed, one day that they had painted their nails: one in red, the other with white tips. I can only imagine that this observation, of a couple of weeks before, had stuck with him and so, when presented with the unadorned foot of Syahidah, he thought to do something about it.

At a distance, one wouldn't know that it had not been done with nail varnish. It seems that even an ordinary marker pen can do a reasonable job of it, when done with care - by a toddler.

(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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 7:16 PM  2 comments

Friday, December 07, 2007

Chimpanzee Brain vs Human Brain

It is customary for humans to think of themselves as mentally superior to all other known forms of life - but is this true? Do we truly have the best minds on Earth?

In one way, it is evident that we do: we are, after all, the dominant life-form. But perhaps all is not as it seems.

Two days ago, an article published in the US Journal Current Biology challenges some of our most basic assumptions about ourselves. Researchers from the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, led by Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa wanted to compare the memories of chimpanzees with the memories of humans.

The researchers pitted three pairs of chimpanzees versus nine University students. Note that this is not a fair match. The chosen humans were of a superior type: University students will have superior intelligence compared to the average person in the street. Thus randomly chosen chimpanzees were being compared to superior humans. This is not, one might suppose, a fair match - and you would be right, for reasons soon to be clear.

This was a multi-year study. The chimpanzees were trained to recognize the numbers 1 to 9 when written down. In the tests, they were rewarded with food (a peanut) when they got the right answer. These numbers were distributed at random about the screen and the chimps had to tap each number in the right order to get a reward. (So the chimps were essentially counting through a sequence).

The next step in the experiments was to cover the randomly distributed numbers with a white box and to ask the chimps - and humans - to again tap through the numbers in sequence, without being able to see them again. Thus, of course, the memory of the test subjects was called upon.

Shockingly, the chimpanzees did FAR better on this task than the University students did. The chimpanzees showed inherently much superior memories for the position of numbers, than smart human subjects.

There was another stage in the testing. Some of the numbers - and covers - were removed, leaving some behind. The test subjects - both chimp and human - had to again tap through them in ascending order, taking account of the fact that a number of them were missing.

Again, the chimpanzees far outperformed the smart, young human students.

So much better at this task were chimpanzees than humans, that the chimps could correctly remember the position of the numbers, once hidden, from a single glance at the array. The human subjects were unable to do this.

The researchers suggested that this demonstrated that, perhaps, humans had lost a similar ability, perhaps giving it up for the new skill of language.

I am not convinced, myself, for Koko, the gorilla, has managed to acquire human sign language (as posted elsewhere), showing that other primates can learn a language, too.

The chimpanzees beat the human students on both speed and accuracy. They even managed to do this, when interrupted in their tapping, by loud distracting noise.

So, this experiment establishes that, in terms of this mental function, anyway, that of memory, chimpanzees are superior to relatively smart, young humans.

All of this makes me wonder just why some people persist in treating our primate relatives so poorly. We may be the dominant life-form, but our primate cousins are certainly not without their gifts. They should be better looked after, all over the world. Perhaps experiments like this can inspire better efforts to care for them.

(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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 12:09 AM  0 comments

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The 2006 Pisa survey on OECD education.

The results of the 2006 Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey have just been released. They make interesting reading.

The Pisa report is a comprehensive survey of the skills in science, reading and mathematics of 400,000 15 year olds tested in 57 countries around the world. Singapore is not one of them.

The survey is conducted once every three years and serves as a snapshot of international students' comparative abilities.

The OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. An average performance for the OECD across the three areas was calculated. Before I discuss who was below average, however, I will state the results for the top three positions in each category. There are some surprises, here, at least for me.

In Science:

Finland was no.1. (average score 563)
Hong Kong was no.2 (average score 542)
Canada was no.3 (average score 534)

In Reading:

South Korea was no.1 (average score 556)
Finland was no.2 (average score 547)
Hong Kong was no.3 (average score 536)

In Mathematics:

Taipei was no.1 (average score 549)
Finland was no.2 (average score 548)
Hong Kong and South Korea were equal at No.3 (average score 547).

Now, firstly, it is remarkable that both Finland and Hong Kong appear in the top 3 for all categories. This shows that there is a distinct correlation between performance in each of these areas. Perhaps it reveals that bright students, on average, do well in all subjects. Alternatively, that well-educated students do well on all subjects (depending on whether you ascribe the results to nature or nurture).

32 countries were statistically below the average of all OECD countries in science. These included the United States, Spain and Italy.

Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and, oddly, given Finland's astonishing all-round performance, Norway, were below the OECD average in reading.

For mathematics, the United States, Italy, Spain, and Portugal were all below the OECD average.

Interestingly, South Korea beat Finland in reading. This is notable because Finland topped the reading results in both Pisa 2000 and Pisa 2003. Even more interesting, for what it says about the education system in South Korea is the source of the improvement. South Korea improved its average, not by bringing up the performance of the lower end students - whose quality of work remained essentially unchanged - but by enhancing the performance of its more able students. The stellar students shine more brightly in South Korea.

It seems to me that the South Korean approach is more likely to result in truly capable adults, who are able to do something worthwhile. As a nation, they seem to be aiming for peak performance of their best students. Most countries (like the United States and its famous - or infamous - No Child Left Behind Act) appear to aim at strengthening their weakest students. I think this has limited utility from the point of view of getting the best out of a student population. The results of Pisa 2006 seem to show this, with the United States lagging behind most other nations in Science and Mathematics.

The students were generally asked to carry out paper and pencil tasks, in the three areas of Science, Reading and Mathematics.

One of the most interesting results of this study is that Canada came third in Science, but the United States was below average for an OECD country. I am not familiar with the differences between the Canadian systems and the US systems. Perhaps a reader of this blog post can enlighten both myself and my readers by suggesting why Canada came third but the United States was below average. Do Canadians spend more time on Science than US students? Are they just more gifted at it? Is the education system simply better in general? I would welcome any insights on the conundrum.

(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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 7:00 PM  12 comments

Giftedness and the assumption of provision

I read comments on gifted issues around the internet and what strikes me most is how much sheer ignorance there is in the words of many of the commenters.

The commenters are often scornful and skeptical of the issues parents of gifted children face. They doubt that the gifted parents could possibly face the difficulties they encounter in getting provision for their gifted children. Their assumption is that the gifted child, if actually gifted, would receive automatic provision. Yet, as any parent of a truly gifted child knows, this is simply not so. Provision has to be fought for, on a daily basis. Most educational systems specialize in IGNORING the needs of gifted children. I know of nowhere in the world where suitable provision is automatic. Yet, skeptics assume that this is so. They assume that any parent of a gifted child who is encountering difficulties in finding educational provision for their child is only doing so because their child cannot be gifted. How ridiculous. The true state of affairs is that the needs of gifted children are commonly ignored the world over. Neglect of the needs of gifted children is the norm. Provision is the exception.

I puzzle why people who evidently have no real experience of the situations they comment on - ie. the issues facing gifted children and their parents - actually feel able to comment on the issues such parents and children face. It does not help the situation and only, in fact, makes the situation far worse. It creates a misunderstanding of the true situation. The reasoning is rather like that of viewing starving children in Africa and observing that: "If they have no food, it is because they are not hungry." The thinking is that, if they were hungry, they would automatically be given food. This is, of course, nonsense. Children starve all over the world because of genuine hunger. So, too, do gifted children "starve" intellectually, from lack of provision, despite their hunger for educational opportunity.

To see a child without food and say they cannot be hungry, despite their evident starvation is absolute foolishness. So, too, is it to see a gifted child without educational provision and to claim that they cannot be in need of such an education, simply because they don't have it.

What is interesting is that many of these negative comments on sites around the world, are written by people who appear to be in anger. It would appear that the giftedness of the children concerned inspires jealousy and rage in them.

The big question, then is, why do the site moderators allow the comments to be posted in the first place? Perhaps they have bought into the arguments given and have no understanding of the true issues involved. I rather hope that is not the case.

Many gifted children, the world over, do not have adequate educational provision. The more gifted they are, the less adequate the provision. This is the true situation. It is about time everyone knew it - and acted upon it.

(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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 12:17 AM  0 comments

Comment post backlog

There are a number of comments which I haven't had time to post, or write a reply to. I will try to attend to them in the next couple of days.

Thank you for your patience.

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 12:12 AM  0 comments

Monday, December 03, 2007

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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 8:08 PM  0 comments

Sunday, December 02, 2007

A little shop of horrors.

Today, we went to the airport, fairly early, in a surprise visit, to see my mother and sister off on their journey back home.

In the course of that visit, we passed a clothing shop, on the concourse. There were six of us: my mother, my sister, Syahidah, Ainan, Tiarnan and myself. Fintan was busy elsewhere. As we passed the shop, Tiarnan suddenly stopped and said: "Tacot" (spelling to be checked), which is Malay for "I am scared." What was he scared of? A mannequin stood before him, without an essential part of its anatomy. It was headless. Tiarnan found this apparition scarey. He tapped his chest in the symbol for fear and looked up at the unfortunate "person" before him. Why would a headless body be wearing a short-sleeved shirt in a shop, he may have wondered?

Then he noticed something at the other side of the shop and pointed: "There's the head!", he said.

Sure enough. At the other side of the shop, there was a head, on its own, without a body, wearing sun glasses. Tiarnan had, seemingly, found the headless one's head. He was somewhat relieved to have found the unfortunate mannequin's head for him, but I don't think he was entirely reassured that it was a sensible arrangement - to have one's head so far separated from one's body.

Tellingly, he wouldn't venture into the shop. He bypassed it carefully, leaving the headless and bodiless ones to their fate.

How funny it is to see an innocent child's reaction to modern marketing practices. Truly, it is a fearful thing to sell a shirt with a headless body - or to sell sunglasses with a bodiless head. Certainly, anyway, in the eyes of a twenty-two month old toddler.

He was happy to be led away to a less scarey part of the airport.

(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.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 12:49 PM  2 comments

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