www.mensa.org.za
The Chronicle November 2015
In this issue Contacts and Committee
2
November and December events
3
Call for more SIG information
4
From the Executive Committee -139,880,000 What does this number mean?
5
A Haven for Korea’s Highly Gifted Children: the Eden Centre
7
The human body – four stages of evolution
9
Wondering What's on in the Mensa World?
10
Gifted Students – The Case of Cyprus
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Mensa Foundation International Report
16
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Hi Mensa South Africa The focus this month in the 'zine, post Intelligence Month, is on giftedness and fostering intelligence. Read 'From the Executive Committee', a message from Rudi Challupner about how we should proceed in spreading awareness of Mensa to as many eligible people as possible, and the Paper by Christina Angelidou, 'Gifted Students – The Case of Cyprus', as well as 'A Haven for Korea’s Highly Gifted Children: the Eden Centre', by Hal Swindall, talk about the many challenges faced by those who are out of place in normal academic environments. The Paleo world has been through a few surprises and upheavals recently, and new species (or not) of homonins, we have an article giving some context on human evolution for all the archaeology buffs, the human body: four stages of evolution. We're counting down to the beginning of Silly Season…follow the national and your local chapter Events on the Mensa National Calendar http://www.mensa.org.za/events.html Till the next issue, Donna
Mensa Contacts and Committee Simoné Deyzel-O'Brian Amanda Horn Annette Badenhorst Yvonne Steyn Schalkwyk van der Merwe Donna Stephen
National Chairperson PR & Membership National Secretary National Administrator National Treasurer Editor
chairperson@mensa.org.za marketing@mensa.org.za secretary@mensa.org.za admin@mensa.org.za treasurer@mensa.org.za st.donna@gmail.com
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NOVEMBER, DECEMBER
EVENTS
http://www.mensa.org.za/events.html
Thursday, November 5 6:00pm Mensa Jhb: Networking with Mensans Saturday, November 7 10:00am Mensa SA - JOHANNESBURG TESTING 7:00pm Mensa KZN: Speaker evening - Klaus Schoeman Wednesday, November 18 7:00pm Mensa Helderberg: Speaker evening Thursday, November 19 6:30pm Mensa Jhb: Annual quiz night Saturday, November 21 9:00am Mensa SA - CAPE TOWN TESTING Saturday, November 28 10:00am Mensa KZN: Young Mensans puzzle morning 10:00am Mensa SA - PRETORIA TEST
Saturday, December 5 9:30am Mensa SA - HELDERBERG TESTING 9:45am Mensa SA - DURBAN TESTING 10:00am Mensa SA - JOHANNESBURG TESTING Saturday, December 12 7:00pm Mensa KZN: Year-end party
2016 Events Thursday, January 21, 2016 6:30pm Mensa Jhb: Speaker evening Thursday, February 18, 2016 6:30pm Mensa Jhb: Speaker evening
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MENSA SIGS Many of the Mensa Facebook Page users post calls for forming new Sigs on the Page, so join the page and subscribe to page updates if you are looking to join a SIG. If you want to form one of your own, it's also a good place to put out the call...
SIGs, please send your info to marketing@mensa.org.za and any contact information you want to share with everyone.
All contact details and social media details will be listed here.
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From the Executive Committee 139,880,000
What does this number mean? I will explain a little later.
Firstly, many thanks for reelecting me for a second term as Treasurer – I am happy to further improve the financial development and transparency by regular reports to you. Now, just a few numbers for the fiscal year 2014 to show what I mean (all amounts in GBP): the budgeted income from components was 290,000, the real income was 280,000. In 2014 we had the expected very low financial resources of 170,000 only, which represents just 60% of our annual costs. For 2014, the IBD requested an initial increase of 30.000 to 200,000. Due to some cost savings the final result was an even +40,000, so our financial backing is 210,000 GBP now. Well done, Treasurer, I would say.
But financial funds are good, only if they serve the purposes of Mensa. You all know, we have three main purposes defined in our constitution: 1) to identify and foster hum2) to encourage research into the nature, characteristics and uses of intelligence; and 3) to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for our members. For purpose 3) we do a lot (gatherings, lectures, groups of regulars, …), for purpose 2) some things like MERF, but for 1)? There we have a big opportunity to become really world-famous. Globally many things don’t go as they should – we could offer our brains and intellectual abilities to work out and promote better solutions and proceedings. In the “good old days” we had “other income” (from the use of the 5
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Mensa name and brand mainly) of up to 30,000 GBP. This year we had 2,657 only. To increase this amount even beyond the old values for example would help us tremendously to keep membership fees low.
a Treasurer, and Directors of Administration, Development, and Smaller National Mensas. Maybe an additional “Director of World Projects”, capable of initiating and pulling through some things would be an option?
But to be successful we would need projects which reach out to the “real” world; it is only then that we can earn “real” income in return. We would need projects to use our intelligence and our abilities to find excellent and sustainably effective solutions for the benefit of humanity. To offer the capacity of our brains can bring us a very big step forward towards concentrated attention and a high profile in the general public.
I would support this and I strongly believe that to spend some of our funds towards this direction is the best investment we could make. What is your opinion? Please let me know. I will appreciate each single idea! Thank you and kindest regards,
Rudi Challupner,
treasurer-mil@mensa.org
So, 139,880,000? At present around 7 billion people live on the globe. Our potential membership is 2% - which in numbers equates to140,000,000. We have about 120,000 Mensans currently, so there are 139,880,000 out there we could attract. Isn’t this a worthy direction to aspire to? Maybe we should strongly think about improving our structure and administration. At the moment we have an International Chairman and “Reprinted from Mensa World Journal, issue #034, November 2015, Editor Kate Nacard”
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A Haven for Korea’s Highly Gifted Children: the Eden Centre by Hal Swindall
In Western countries, East Asian students are characterized as whiz kids who study incessantly and achieve top scores on standardized tests, an image borne out by the PISA rankings. Those of us who actually live and teach in this part of the world know, however, that there is a dark side to oriental scholastic achievement, namely a stifling competitive conformity with little room for individual initiative or creativity. That is why many highly gifted East Asian children actually suffer in school, without anyone to recognize and encourage their specialness. Amidst this grim scene there is one beacon of hope, at least in Korea: the Eden Centre in the Seoul area, founded by Korean Mensan Zhe Hyoungbeom (pictured above right), who followed an IT career with companies like Microsoft Korea and Hewlett-Packard. In 1999, Hyoungbeom was impressed by an issue of Newsweek dedicated to giftedness that led him to the American psychologist James Webb, whose book he translated into Korean. Ten years later, he founded the Eden Centre with modest offices in Seongnam, a city south of Seoul. After five years of counselling highly gifted children and their parents, Hyoungbeom became
Director of Administration for the National Institute of Mathematical Science. Therefore, Eden presently only exists as a cyber-community run by volunteers, with periodic family and parental gatherings on weekends; when he retires from NIMS, however, Hyoungbeom plans to “drive this community to the maximum” in new premises. Hyoungbeom named his institution after Edison, Da Vinci, Einstein and Newton, all of whom were highly unusual. In the ultra-conformist Korean school system, it is precisely the odd behavioral traits of highly gifted children that alienate them from their peers, teachers and even parents. Among Korean pupils, being labeled a “wangtta,” or social outcast, invites 7
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both verbal and physical bullying. Many highly gifted children are so treated, and Hyoungbeom believes the “intelligence gap” between gifted and non-gifted kids is actually widening, leading to even greater misunderstanding. He also identifies “teachers with prejudices” as making a bad situation worse by their impatience with constant questions from highly gifted children, who are bored by the slow pace of rote learning that defines the Korean educational system. Parents, for their part, are baffled by their highly gifted children’s sensitivity to stimuli such as noise, as well as their strong personal preferences; at the biweekly parents’ meetings, some mothers weep as they share their ordeals. Hyoungbeom’s remedy for this plight is accelerated learning and creative activities. For example, he claims he taught some gifted children how to add and subtract fractions in half an hour, whereas learning this skill takes place over several years in the regular school
system. He also gives children opportunities for hands-on work making things such as sword replicas and drums. Hyoungbeom believes that Eden’s children need “satisfactory intelligence motivation” just as much as nutrition, so that every day the child should be fed some new knowledge and challenging questions for an individual “intellectual mission.” Eden’s most popular family activity is its Annual House Concert, in which the children perform on stage and participate in a quiz competition; Hyoungbeom plans to hold it twice yearly in the future. About 200 families attend this event, and another 500 have joined Eden online, with more coming every year. Hyoungbeom thus believes his centre is needed by many families, and plans to expand nationwide after he retires from NIMS, helped by volunteers from many professions. While he cannot singlehandedly change Korean education, Hyoungbeom is an example of a lone Mensan trying to make a difference in the lives of a fortunate few.
"Reprinted from Mensa World Journal, issue #034, November 2015, Editor Kate Nacard"
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The human body: four stages of evolution Research into 430,000-year-old fossils collected in northern Spain found that the evolution of the human body’s size and shape has gone through four main stages, according to a paper published this week. A large international research team including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam studied the body size and shape in the human fossil collection from the site of the Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. Dated to around 430,000 years ago, this site preserves the largest collection of human fossils found to date anywhere in the world. The researchers found that the Atapuerca individuals were relatively tall, with wide, muscular bodies and less brain mass relative to body mass compared to Neanderthals. The Atapuerca humans shared many anatomical features with the later Neanderthals not present in modern humans, and analysis of their postcranial skeletons (the bones of the body other than the skull) indicated that they are closely related evolutionarily to Neanderthals. “This is really interesting since it suggests that the evolutionary process in our genus is largely characterized by stasis (i.e. little to no evolutionary change) in body form for most of our evolutionary history,” wrote Quam.
Comparison of the Atapuerca fossils with the rest of the human fossil record suggests that the evolution of the human body has gone through four main stages, depending on the degree of arboreality (living in the trees) and bipedalism (walking on two legs). The Atapuerca fossils represent the third stage, with tall, wide and robust bodies and an exclusively terrestrial bipedalism, with no evidence of arboreal behaviors. This same body form was likely shared with earlier members of our genus, such as Homo erectus, as well as some later members, including the Neanderthals. Thus, this body form seems to have been present in the genus Homo for over a million years. It was not until the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, when a new, taller, lighter and narrower body form emerged. Thus, the authors suggest that the Atapuerca humans offer the best look at the general human body shape and size during the last million years before the advent of modern humans. The study, titled “Postcranial morphology of the middle Pleistocene humans from Sima de los Huesos, Spain,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/201 5-08/bu-srh083115.php
Reprinted from Mensa World Journal, issue #034, November 2015, Editor Kate Nacard
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Wondering what’s on in the Mensa world? Log into the International website at
www.mensa.org for the calendar of national events. You can also read or download copies of many national journals and the Mensa World Journal.
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Gifted Students – The Case of Cyprus Paper presented in Dubai on 15 July 2012 at the 12th AsiaPacific Conference on Giftedness, 14-18 July 2012 Christina Angelidou, PhD MSc DIC DiplChemEng, Chair Mensa Cyprus
5c Ayias Marinas Street, CY-3026 Limassol, Cyprus. E-mail: info@mensa.org.cy
Abstract The first identification of highly gifted children in Cyprus occurred through Mensa Cyprus in 2010. Mensa Cyprus was then at its initial stages of organisation and development. Two little brothers aged 6 and 12 years were its first young members, accepted in Mensa via a Prior Evidence Application. The number of our young student members (with the youngest joining Mensa at the age of 4 years 5 months) has increased since to reach about 30% of our total membership and is yet increasing... a characteristic that makes Mensa Cyprus proud, gives more meaning to our purposes but increases at the same time our responsibility. Our young student members excel at school, in athletics and sports and show talents in arts and music. They enter contests, local, regional and international competitions e.g. Olympiads of the Cyprus Mathematical Society and obtain medal awards and other prizes. Those who study in private primary and secondary schools have their special needs met to a certain degree by acceleration in the form of grade skipping. Public schools however treat all students as equals providing for the average ability student; there is hardly any provision for the gifted and talented students. It is Mensa Cyprus’s noble ambition to have gifted education, care and support integrated into Cyprus’s National strategy. The education system should be reconstructed considering every child as potentially gifted and aiming at talent development, nurturing and support. Introduction This paper is about gifted students, children or youth from age 4 to 18 years, in the learning environment of Cyprus. Of the many definitions of gifted students the one given currently by the National Association for Gifted Children (http://www.nagc.org) in the US, is used here: Students, children or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capacity or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities. 11 The Chronicle, November 2015
The common characteristics of most definitions are: the diversity of areas in which performance may be exhibited e.g. intellectual, creative, artistic, academic; the comparison with other groups e.g. those in general education classrooms of the same age, experience; the need for development of the gift (at the beginning potential is the key variable whereas in later stages achievement is the measure of giftedness). As it is stated in the above definition and is widely recognised, gifted students need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school; they are exceptional learners who require special educational provisions if they are to receive the effective education to which they are entitled and which is appropriate to their needs. In countries where gifted education is provided the procedure followed is to have children identified as gifted or talented according to the definition of giftedness adopted by the country and the criteria set by the gifted education programs. The Education System in Cyprus The education system, public and private, in the Republic of Cyprus, has four stages: Pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher/tertiary. Public education is free whereas fees at private schools vary from school to school. Nine years of education are compulsory: from pre-primary school (age 5) to the end of the third year of the secondary school (age 15). Children are also accepted over the age of 3 at nursery schools or kindergartens, public or private, that all operate under the approval of the Ministry of Education and Culture. A child cannot enter a secondary school without a leaving certificate showing completion of primary education. Public secondary general education is offered to pupils between the ages of 12-18 through two three-year levels, the lower level, the Gymnasium, which is a complete cycle of general education focused on humanistic education and the upper level, the Lyceum (Eniaio Lykeio), with an educational system more flexible
that offers common core obligatory subjects as well as optional subjects allowing pupils to select subjects according to their inclinations, skills and interests. Private international schools at all levels have considerable independence from the state system in both their operations and the curricula offered; teaching is in English. There are 36 private secondary schools which prepare pupils for enrolment in tertiary education in Cyprus or abroad. Higher education in Cyprus consists of public and private institutions of higher education at university and non-university level. The higher education system in Cyprus is shaped by the European Higher Education Area as outlined by the Bologna Process. The Government policy regarding higher education is to fulfil the local needs of high education and to establish Cyprus as a regional educational and research centre, a hub for international scholars and students alike. The public education system in Cyprus has elements of the ancient Greek education with ancient Greek among its core subjects. I distinctly remember when our teacher used to read to us in the classroom Plato’s Dialogues of the Greek philosopher Socrates with his student Plato and how fascinated I became by the inductive and deductive reasoning applied step by step, with infinitesimal subtle advancements of thought, to finally arrive at the ‘truth’! Plato’s philosophical Dialogues should be part of every high school curriculum. The Socratic method of instruction is a classical educational method considered ideal for bright students. And although Plato (427347 BC) with his emphasis on the right education[1] was perhaps the first to describe 2500 years ago, men of superior intellect as ‘men of gold’, there is no mention whatsoever in Cyprus’s educational policy of gifted students. On the contrary, it is specifically stated that the aim of primary education is to create and secure the 12
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necessary learning opportunities for children regardless of sex, family, social background and mental ability, with children with special needs (learning and/or attention disabilities) being accepted into the regular mainstream classroom to aid integration and support as required by Law (Education and Training of Children with Special needs, Law of 1999). Public schools treat all students as equals providing for the average-ability student although they encourage the drive to excel among the students and reward academic excellence or excellence in athletics, art, music, dance, with gold medal awards for the first of the excellent, as well as other prizes and distinctions. Students both in the public or private schools attend school in mixedability classrooms; there is hardly any provision for the gifted or talented children. It must be acknowledged however that some forms of gifted education are used in the education of students in the public and to a greater extent, in the private schools. These are mainly forms of enrichment addressed to all students, like the Cyprus Mathematical Olympiad which is a Cyprus mathematical competition for students in every grade organised by the Cyprus Mathematical Society (www.cms.org.cy), and other international and regional mathematics or science competitions which students can enter; educational and summer camping (where issues of Life Education e.g. Environmental Education are fully implemented) including hospitality programmes for children from abroad as well as children’s missions abroad; museum and art education programmes; physical education programmes; many activities and courses within the objectives of the European dimension of the Education in Cyprus. Acceleration in the form of grade skipping is nowadays applied only in private schools. Other forms of acceleration like early entrance to any level of schooling or early access to college courses, the advancement of a student in one field or a
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single subject (subject or partial acceleration), are options that could be easily applied and be effective both academically and socially for highly gifted students[2]. As Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher and pupil of Plato said, and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the US, repeated and made well known in modern years: ‘Δεν υπάρχει τίποτε πιο άνιςο από την ίςη μεταχείριςη των ανίςων’; ‘There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people’. Mensa Cyprus The first identification of high-IQ gifted children in Cyprus occurred through Mensa Cyprus (www.facebook.com/mensacyprus ; www.mensa.org) in 2010, fulfilling Mensa’s constitutional first aim: ‘... to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity’. Mensa Cyprus was then at its initial stages of organisation[3][4] and development. Two little brothers aged 6 and 12 years were its first young members[5], accepted in Mensa via a Prior Evidence Application. The number of our young student members (with the youngest joining Mensa at the age of 4 years 5 months) has increased since[6] to reach about 30% of our total membership and is yet increasing... a characteristic that makes Mensa Cyprus proud, gives more meaning to our purposes but increases at the same time our responsibility. Our young student members excel at school, in athletics and sports and show talents in arts and music. They enter contests, local, regional and international competitions e.g. Olympiads of the Cyprus Mathematical Society and obtain medal awards and other prizes. Those who study in private primary and secondary schools have their special needs met to a certain degree by acceleration in the form of grade skipping, and by other practices. Many of those children had been having learning and/or attention difficulties as well as social and emotional needs, and their early identification and assessment 13
helped them a lot; all gifted students have special needs and they, as well as their parents, need help and support. I am pleased to say that both children and parents have benefited from joining our Mensa Group. One of the links we recommend to our young members once they join is www.mensaforkids.org that has a wealth of resources for them, their parents and teachers[7]. Mensa Cyprus will soon have its first ever Special Interest Group, SIG, devoted to its young members. It is Mensa Cyprus’s noble ambition to have gifted education, care and support integrated into Cyprus’s National strategy. I am also happy to say that your unique Conference along with Mensa Cyprus’s extraordinary record in the recruitment of young people during the last year or so helped give a renewed emphasis and a new impetus to the area of ‘Gifted and Talented’ within Mensa International[8][9] and other National Mensa Groups, creating a number of initiatives to support and nurture gifted and talented children and young people. Discussion Subotnik et al in their landmark monograph in 2011 ‘Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education’[10], proposed that gifted education should aim primarily at the successful development of talents, outstanding achievements and eminence for the betterment of mankind. James H Borland in his recent paper[11], 21 June 2012, disagreed asserting that the main concern should be to make sure that students of high ability receive the appropriate to their needs education. I say that whereas the first does not necessarily exclude the second and self-actualization can be attained along with talent development, focusing only on meeting the needs of gifted students might easily result in the case of high-IQ gifted students with an all-round high level of ability, in the ‘dispersion’ of their potential and turn them inevitably away from their (many) talents; because challenge which is usually lacking in The Chronicle, November 2015
their lives might turn out to be an important factor in determining their path in life – pursuing their talent might appear too easy for them! It is the ‘refrain’ in every single paper, scientific work or piece of scholarship in the field of gifted education[12][10]: Too many definitions of giftedness ... no consensus within the scientific community about what is giftedness ... one of the most vexing questions in the field is how to define giftedness... In the US there is considerable diversity among states and districts in how gifted students are defined and evaluated for gifted programmes. It is recognised that throughout its history the field of gifted education has suffered from a lack of agreement on the definition of giftedness; a major obstacle for a way forward. As early as 1977 a national investigation by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate in Britain reported: ‘The plain fact was that ‘giftedness’ as a concept has not be thought about’. Headteachers in that survey seemed determined to see children as individuals and not to place them in any such category[13]. The term gifted is causing controversy as to its appropriateness: the idea that some children are not gifted is not accepted; philosophically everyone has strengths and is in their own way special; gifted also is often thought of as elitist. Some states have changed their terminology. European Union uses the term ‘highly able’ and ‘talented’. With all respect, why stick with a label (gifted) that is anti-productive and an obstacle to progress? Proposal My proposal is that the education system should be reconstructed considering every child as potentially gifted – in the broad multidimensional sense – and aiming at talent development, nurturing and support so that to create a whole new generation that can be educated and trained to be beneficial to humanity in the years to come. Perceiving everyone as potentially gifted, would eliminate the stigma of elitism from 14
gifted education and render the label ‘gifted’ obsolete. Gifted or no gifted education, I strongly believe that one should pursue and develop one’s talent; that was the conclusion I reached at some point in my life and I am
really very happy that it coincides with the theme of this unique Conference, ‘Nurturing Talent, Growing Potential’, that I had the honour to be invited to attend as presenter and special guest.
References *1+ ‘The Republic of Plato’, Translated with Notes and an Interpretive Essay by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, Second Edition, 1991 *2+ ‘A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students’, Vols 1-2, N. Colangelo, N. Assouline, S. G. And Gross, University of Iowa, 2004 *3+ ‘Mensa in Cyprus’, Christina Angelidou, ‘Haravgi’, November 12, 2009 *4+ ‘Wanted: 50 Smart Pants for Brainy Gang’, Sunday Mail, November 22, 2009 *5+ ‘Cyprus Seeking Mensa Members: Cypriot brothers aged 6 and 12 newest members of world’s top two per cent’, Cyprus Mail, September 24, 2010 *6+ ‘Mensa Glory for Brainy Paphos Students’, Cyprus Mail, August 10, 2011 *7+ ‘From the Chairman of American Mensa...’, Elissa Rudolph, Chair, American Mensa, Mensa International Journal, issue number 559, May 2012 *8+ ‘From the Executive Committee...’ Chris Leek, (proxy) Chair, British Mensa, Mensa International Journal, issue number 560, June 2012 *9+ ‘From the International Chairman...’ Willem Bouwens, International Chairman, Mensa International Journal, issue number 561, July 2012 *10+ ‘Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science’, R. Subotnik, P Olszewski-Kabilius and F. Worrell, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2011 *11+ ‘A Landmark Monograph in Gifted Education, and Why I Disagree with its Major Conclusion’ James H Borland, www.creativitypost.com June 21, 2012 *12+ ‘Who is Currently Identified as Gifted in the United States?’ Scott Barry Kaufman, www.creativitypost.com, January 4, 2012 [13] ‘Gifted Children’, Joan Freeman, 1979
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