1 Nov 2012
Super child-Part 1
Imagine the following scenario;
A child is sitting in her class ready to take 11 exam. The teacher distributes the paper and the time starts. She is tensed and has sweaty palms. It will take a good few minutes to control her nerves and overcome sweating. This is followed by the usual nose bleed. By the time the child applies nasal cream and recomposes, good 5 to 10 minutes have passed, say ten mins. It takes the child 30 minutes to complete her paper (her actual speed is normally 25 minutes for 80 Qs) which takes care of first part of her preparation. She spends 5 minutes rechecking the answers in a pre planned priority sequence.
In the last 5 minutes the child attends to the second part of her preparation. She looks at one key question of the paper and commits it into her memory by making a mental ?key? and hooking that key in her brain in a specially trained method. The exercise is repeated several times in these 5 mins although some ?keys? were made during the 30 minute time.
At the end of 50 mins, the students in her class are told to put the pencils down and stop writing. She puts her pencil down and stops writing but does not stop thinking. She has been trained to do so as this is deemed to be within limits. By the time the teacher collects papers and answer sheets from the class, the child has committed 20 questions to her memory including the worded questions. She then engages in normal school activities for the rest of the day (the same process is repeated after 6 days for another test).
Fast forward the above by 9 hours when her father returns home. After dinner he sits with the child and gives her blank sheets of A4 paper. He asks her to ?offload? all ?keys? onto the paper. The father maintains a pin drop silence during this time knowing very well that unlike normal PC down loads, this download exercise can only take place once. After writing the key information, the child tells him that she has only managed to hook 20 keys out of which 5 may be rusty. The father accepts that knowing that ¼ of key questions are sufficient for his purpose.
The child goes away to play and the father looks at the information shown on the paper. He separates the rusty keys and the remaining 15 keys are checked by ?borrowing? selected students a few days later who also took the same test. The analysis concluded that all 15 keys were accurate and in many cases spot on.
The above scenario is a realistic one and the child in picture is my daughter.
I can envisage that there will be mixed type of parents reading this post with mixed reactions (hoping my post goes through the moderators without any problem?).
They may be grouped as;
?Those who do not believe in the above. They may move on to the next post (fair enough but do read Part 2 at a later stage)
?Those who took the DIY route (a route that I took) but stopped at 1st part of the preparation, without spending energies on the second part.
?Those who are curious to know more on this subject.
Wherever you fall within the above groups, there is one thing for sure.
My unusual post is going to leave a print on your mind for many years to come. As a father, I am interested in knowing if anyone out there has planned /experienced or even heard of a similar situation. I would also like to know if an average child can remember more than say 5 questions. Can you imagine what would be the outcome/consequence if was to train say 4 carefully selected super childs?
There will be many questions and I would be happy to see your response to my post.
Part 2 will be equally interesting!
Thanks