Saturday, July 28, 2007

smart kids


mensa is the world's largest, oldest & best-known high IQ society, according to wikipedia (read here). anyone, that means you & i, will be invited to join as members if they can attain a score within the top 2% of an approved standardized intelligience test.
who doesn't want to be a genious, right? & who doesn't want their kids to be labelled super-intelligent, right? (i can see a big show of hands out there!)
but i was amused when my daughter showed me a form handed to her by her piano teacher. it was an application to take the mensa test at a local school next week. the piano teacher's daughter will be doing the test, as will a few of her other similar-aged music students.
seriously, isn't 13 a bit too young to subject a child (yes, my girl is still a child to me) to a rigourous evaluation of logical, analytical & spatial questions, all 36 of them to be completed in 40mins.even the malaysian chapter of mensa international (read here) recommends a minimum age of 14. there's no upper age limit.
i could sense that the girl was a tad hesitant to go ahead, notwistanding an unconvincing "OK-lor" when i asked if she was keen to do it. peer pressure, i fear. after a little deliberation, we concurred that it was best she put it off a bit longer & do it when she really felt ready to face it.
on her own time. after all, she just wants to follow her father's footsteps.
i hid my smile.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're a mensa member?
I took the test a few years back and personally didn't find the test too rigorous. Maybe it was because of my "bochap" attitude, to me, it was "fail ma fail lor, don't really care, RM50 go down the drain" and i guess it was partly due to the fact that I welcomed the challenge.
It was a fun thing for me.
And I passed, =D, with flying colours =DD.

Perhaps it is better to wait for your daughter to want to do it for the sake of doing it than to do it because everyone else is doing it. The former will cause the pressure to be much more bearable, and even fun.

doc said...

anastasia,

i took the test in 2004, & most of the others who sat at that time were easily LESS than HALF my age. which probably means i ..er...scraped through after my marks were adjusted for age-related dementia.

i would prefer the girl developed a little more mature & lateral thinking before attempting, most probably after PMR. but like i said, it has to be at HER own time, not mine.

Jonzz said...

Poor kids, the pressure they have these days, what with exams and all!

doc said...

jonzz,

kids live in a pressure-cooker environment these days, because parents put them there. hope they don't suffer burn-outs so soon in life.

savante said...

Hey she'll have exams all her life. You're right to let her take it one day at a time. No need to take another exam lah.

just me said...

Thankfully, "life" exams (failures we encounter along our life's journey) make us better and more compassinate people. I would want very much for my kids to learn that failure is part of life!

doc said...

savante,

this is one test that is optional, but at some stage, i would expect she'd want to match up to me.

& i will support her attempt.

doc said...

just me,

unfortunately, kids these days expect everything to be easy, & therefore take things for granted.

as the elders would say, they haven't tasted the salt yet.

HappySurfer said...

Doc, it's wise of you to let her take it in her stride. There's enough pressure already from other routines.

doc said...

happysurfer,

i'm glad you agree with me. she will do the test on her own time - if she still wants to.