THERE was a story of a 6-year-old girl who drew a picture of God during drawing class. She hardly ever paid attention to other lessons but art.
One day a teacher asked her, “What are you drawing, honey?”
The girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God”.
Surprised with the answer, the teacher tried to reason: “But no one knows what God looks like”.
Calmly the girl replied, “They will in a minute”.
While the origin of the story is unknown, the message is substantive. Children are bold and imaginative. Unfortunately, as they become adults, they start losing creativity.
Children are indeed geniuses. They learn very fast. However, genius is individualised, not general. It is deep and different in all people.
In some domains, all humans are potential geniuses as God creates us equally. All talents, in fact, can be taught and learnt.
Professor William Maxwell, the chief executive officer of Inventive Quotient, said the fundamental key point of the genius principle is love. Genius is a product of love.
In reality, we can see that a child who is raised with lots of love will become more successful than a child who is lacking in love, especially from his family.
As a result, genius is not a discovery. It is a gradual realisation of ourselves. It is, however, pretty much influenced by time, environment and mentor.
To find the genius in ourselves, Maxwell suggested that we become more introspective, find one or more mentors, study intellect heroes, inspect our dreams and use classical aptitude.
Learning from intellect giants like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking is vital. What do they all have in common?
First and foremost, they are humans who have had some form of issues. Yet, they invested more than 10,000 hours in their field and are great mentors.
Which of the 226 nations of the world should take the lead and become the first genius nation?
The answer of many scholars will be surprisingly not the super power countries.
Maxwell, for example, based on his vast experiences teaching in over 50 countries since 1954, chose Fiji, Morocco and Malaysia as the first genius nations.
The reason is simply because these three are multiracial and multicultural countries.
He believes that these countries will be one of the geniuses leading other countries in the world.
He remembered that over 60 years ago, when he first visited Malaysia, he found that the citizens were fluent in the English language.
But now, the fluency has decreased. Perhaps today’s generation just learn English for the sake of passing examinations.
Why do we learn English when we have so many other easier languages? Perhaps Malay and Indonesian are easier. English, however, is one of the hardest languages to learn and understand. Nevertheless, since it is the international lingua franca, therefore, we should learn it properly.
Someday, we hope, our language (Bahasa Malaysia) will become one of the international languages used by many all over the world.
If we want to produce geniuses, first train and educate the parents appropriately because they are the first teachers for our children. Then, as Maxwell recommended, concentrate on educating those aged 5 to 9, because they are the pillars and leaders of the future.
In addition, pay the teachers a higher salary than janitors, doctors and lawyers, so we will have quality results. Get out of the old paradigm that only two per cent of us are geniuses. Start believing that all humans are potential geniuses.
And last, but not least, might we want to follow Plato’s prescription, begin teaching our children first with Math, Science and athletics.
Ahmad Faizuddin, PhD student, Educational Management and Leadership, International Islamic University Malaysia