Singaporean child genius leaves rigid system for Malaysia

Valentine Cawley, left, father of Ainan Celeste Cawley who is seen playing with the microphone.

A Singaporean child prodigy who passed 10th grade chemistry at age seven has moved to Malaysia for higher education because his homeland is too rigid to accommodate gifted children, his father says.

Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, gained attention when he passed the O Level - or American 10th grade - chemistry examination in Singapore at 7. Two years later, he passed the O Level physics exam and the AS Level, or 11th grade, chemistry exam.

However, his Irish father Valentine Cawley told reporters Monday that the Singapore government was inflexible and failed to support his son's needs to ensure his intellectual growth.
Ainan attended primary school for three years and was "bored silly," Cawley said.

In an e-mailed response to The Associated Press Wednesday, Singapore's Education Ministry said it had sought to work with Ainan's parents to develop him "holistically to become a successful adult."

It said the ministry designed an individualized education plan to help Ainan excel. Cawley said the plan was useless because it did not allow his son to study subjects from higher grades.

"What they did instead was to ensure that he was bored to death with the normal curriculum. The standard school numbed his mind and put his brain to sleep on a daily basis," he said.

The ministry did not address Cawley's specific complaints that his request to have his son home-schooled was rejected and that it refused to give Ainan access to a chemistry laboratory.

"They didn't want to make exception for one child," Cawley said. "We wrestled with the system for three years and found it too inflexible and unwilling to accommodate Ainan's needs. It's punishing him really and we gave up in the end."

With the help of the National Association for Gifted Children of Malaysia, Cawley and his Singaporean wife enrolled Ainan at the private-run HELP University College in Kuala Lumpur this week.

Cawley said his son will be joining 18-year-olds in studying in a degree program with computer science and chemistry options, as well as adding A-level physics and math to his tally.

"We chose HELP as they understood Ainan's unusual needs and were willing to do their best to help," he said.

HELP officials said they would offer Ainan a full scholarship. Cawley will also work as a psychology researcher at the college.

Cawley keeps a blog on Ainan's progress titled "The boy who knew too much."

He says Ainan spoke his first words after a couple of weeks of life, began crawling at four months, walking at six months and running at eight months.

According to HELP officials and Cawley, Ainan can recite pi - the number starting 3.14 that gives the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter - to 518 decimal places. He also knows the periodic table by heart.

But a shy Ainan didn't demonstrate his abilities or talk to reporters at the news conference. Instead, he spent the time laughing and playing with the microphone. - AP