Let kids be kids, for their sakes
Those As are important. But they are not everything. What we need is wholesome education for all.
IF geniuses weep in the face of a minor defeat, what of children driven to succeed by parents and a system that requires a string of As? The education system is changing, hopefully for the better. But more needs to be done to stop the moneymaking cheats.
It’s the kind of stuff that would boggle the mind of cardsharps.
A 12-year-old girl looks at a shuffled pack of cards for a few seconds and hands it to the TV host who then distributes seven cards each to three other participants. The rest of the cards stay in the deck.
Then, the host asks what cards the trio holds and she calmly identifies them. He then starts laying the cards in the deck on the table. Katherine He names them before he can even show it to the audience.
Welcome to the world of the child genius.
Child Genius is a television programme that is rocking the United States and Britain. It is run with the help of Mensa, the high IQ society. And my, are those kids brilliant. This year’s winner in Britain, Rahul, is touted to have an IQ of 162 – higher than that of Albert Einstein.
They can do mathematics off the top of their heads. You know, questions like: If A = 20, B = 5 and C = 42, what is the value of B (C – A) – 11? Or, what is the missing number? ____, 3,720, 4,557, 5,394, 6,231. Or better yet: a car drives for two seconds at a constant velocity of 12m per second. Calculate the work, in joules, done on the car by an opposing force of 120 newtons.
I know I would flee the stage and run into a dark cave somewhere if confronted with questions like that. But these children can rattle off answers like 99, 2,883 or 2,880 joules after barely a few seconds’ hesitance.
It’s amazing to watch them in action. There’s one little boy who understands string theory, something that PhD students grapple with. It’s a complicated theory of what makes up the universe, where quarks and photons come into play. Many an adult would be hard-pressed to even understand it. Yet, this little boy revels in it, on live television.
However, the programme that showcases the abilities of these children has also come under fire.
Despite their brilliance, these are still children. They have yet to be able to handle the many challenges of life.
These children are pitted against one another in competition. Adults question them, and give them points. Parents drive them mercilessly to win. Defeat is unthinkable.
There is one girl whose life revolves around nothing but study. She lives in a house surrounded by whiteboards and Post-its. Questions and answers are everywhere. Her father believes drinking lots and lots of water can keep the child going.
The only thing is: in competitions, there are winners and there are losers. For a child who has given so much into training for the competition, it is too much to take.
So many of the aspiring “child geniuses” were left sobbing on the stage as the cameras zoomed in on their crinkled faces. As they wept, the audience applauded the winner. In one case, the winner’s father smirked.
A thing of beauty – their brilliance – met an ugly monster called TV ratings. If children of such brilliance, with such great drive, are unable to handle defeat, what of ordinary children pushed to succeed in areas not of their strength?
Right here in Malaysia, we have heard of tiger parents, those who drive their children, even in fields where they have no interest. For many years, we in the media, too, have always glorified the children with the many As, the top scorers, the schools with the best results.
Year after year, we hear of children being unable to handle the peer pressure. There have been deaths – suicides.
A boy hanged himself because he was unhappy with how he had answered his Maths questions. He did not even wait for the results!
There was a top-scoring student who jumped off a building – because she came in second. It did not matter that she had beaten hundreds, or thousands of others. She had lost to one. And that was too much to bear. She did not know how to face her parents.
We may finally have come to our senses. Those As are important. But they are not everything. What we need is wholesome education for all.
Only in recent times has the Education Ministry decided not to draw comparisons among schools. Or students. The days of the state’s or the country’s top students being hero-worshipped are over.
All should have a chance to continue – and keep trying – until they are able to find the best of themselves. We need to identify strengths and weaknesses, boost and rectify them as we go along.
Profiteering has to be stopped too. Fly-by-night colleges that promise the sky are aplenty. Just this year, the ministry had to close down 33 colleges. The average number of colleges closed in previous years was 10 a year.
Of the 206 colleges that were surveyed, only 15 were of the highest quality. A lot has to be done to drive our students to be brilliant – and I don’t mean reality TV.
Just a week or so ago, the PT3 results for those who will be going to Form Four next year were released. It passed almost as a nonevent. I am glad. I hope all those who sat for the paper attain their full potential, in good time.