Let the baby listen to Mozart music since he/she
was in the womb and study Chinese in kindergarten, the parents are expecting
their children will have a solid foundation to become successful geniuses in
future.
Of course, we heard a lot about pressure of
studying, learning, exams, why can children have a normal life? Many parents
are joining in competing movement in kindergarten and primary school. Kimberly
Bremenneman, Ph.D., Rutgers University professor cum speaker of Sid the Science
Kid program, shared “I remember when my child has just known to walk, I took
him to a playground, the other mothers said that “My daughter can read the
alphabet and she can read to 20”. At that time, a part of me reassured that my
son had not reached the age to learn these things, but the rest wondered “It’s
so crazy, why do I show these things about my boy?”
Genius effects are making children struggle
to catch their foreign peers. The level of children in our country is affected
by the achievement of children in Finland, Singapore, South Korea, mostly in
math and science. We wonder about the definition of “smart”. Sometimes, people
think “smart” is: a child can speak soon so he/she can write his/her name
(while the peers only doodle), in other words, this child has intuition and
maturity earlier than his/her age and this makes he/she become genius on people’s
eyes.
Last year, Steve Jobs - Apple owner, a
technological genius, has died, his reputation was circulated around the world
stronger than his technology products. This event made people think about how
to awake talent and search tools to measure children’s intelligence.
The definition of “genius”
First, you should know that, “genius” just
has relative meaning and does not have a precise definition. Even the IQ scale –
an international intelligent scale, cannot reaaly define the intelligence level
of “genius”. Currently, some schools use the word “gifted” to describe a group
of excellent students, many schools have “talent fostering” program to
distinguish gifted students and normal students. According to Michelle Rhee,
CEO of the Students First - an organization that improves the teaching level for
public schools, shared “There are just a few gifted students and hardly to find
them in the normal classroom. My daughter is attending “talent fostering” class,
there is only 20% of the children at her age attending this class”. These
special classes usually start very early at the kindergarten, the class will test
periodically the subjects such as math or reason ability, or IQ, parents can
also observe the children’s mind and discover the hidden talents at early age.
The
definition of “genius”
The truth about the tests
The standard test in public primary school is
used to measure knowledge level of children through the school subjects, while
IQ tests measure logic and reason ability. According to Frank Lawlis, Ph.D., psychologist
cum IQ Answer writer, said “IQ tests measure the ability to solve problems of
children, IQ score represents the level of familiarity with the questions and
thinking process of the children”. However, according to some experts, both
tests - standard test and IQ test - do not measure accurately children’s
intelligence. “The results will be affected if the night before children did
not sleep enough, or having cold, too hot examination room and other candidates
annoy them” - by Vivian Kirkfield, kindergarten teacher cum former President of
Head Start organization. The standard tests usually use for measuring
achievements and they have one-dimension feature, the results cannot say
anything about the true success in the future, it cannot measure own viewpoint,
the real ability to control in life. Currently, the kindergarten teachers also
focus on children’s behavior on social relationships and emotions rather than
academic knowledge such as mathematics, science and foreign languages”.
The
truth about the tests
