High Cognitive Minds

Ainan Cawley. This seven year old prodigy’s name comes up fairly often in the search terms, twice in the last two days.  Today’s issue of the Times Online has an article about his father’s so-far unsuccessful attempts to find a university placement for him. Ainan’s extreme giftedness has naturally been a subject of interest to many people, an interest constantly promoted by his father, even to the extent of responding to letters to the editor, and answering questions or leaving comments about giftedness all over the web, always leaving the URL of his blog. I have no doubt that he will show up here in response to this post.

But what I’m interested in is encapsulated in his responser to a comment on the Times article. He said “It is far more harmful to ignore the intellectual needs of a prodigy, than to engage them.” The assumption that rapid acceleration and early college is the only way to avoid ignoring a child’s intellectual needs is at the heart of books like Accidental Genius, and of Mr. Cawley’s efforts to have Ainan admitted to college.

He is following in the footsteps of generations of parents trying to understand and encourage their children’s extraordinary abilities. It isn’t his fault, any more than it was the fault of Michael Kearney’s parents, who followed the same path, that more than fifty years of research into giftedness has nothing to offer them in the way of alternatives. The mother of “Adam,” one of the prodigies discussed in David Feldman’s 1986 book, Nature’s Gambit, was desperate to support her son’s intellectual development. At one point she asked how to find an Aristotle capable of educating Adam. It was clear that she had a much better understanding than most parents, including Mr Cawley, of the kind of education her son needed, but had no idea how to go about providing it.

Does it require an Aristotle to educate these children? I think not. I’m no Aristotle and just off the top of my head I can come up with a list of ways Mr Cawley can put off college until Ainan is more mature and, at the same time, develop his reasoning powers and expand his intellectual interests and knowledge. In fact, I believe it’s possible to develop guidelines that will help any parent willing to put some effort into it, to either teach their highly gifted children or to supplement their regular education.  

Mr Cawley has said that “a great mind could be lost” if Ainan isn’t admitted to college very soon. He needs to understand that the pursuit of advanced studies doesn’t necessarily lead to the development of such a mind. And neither does the emphasis on the narrow range of subjects that Ainan is currently interested in. Development needs to take place within the context of physical and mental maturation, not in the career and achievement-oriented pressure cooker of college classes. The path that Mr Cawley is currently taking may lead Ainan to a highly paid prestigious career in science that is no different from the careers of thousands of other high achievers. He may be capable of much more, or he may not. The choices his father is making for him today can lock him into too small a box rather than expand his horizons.