Curse of the prodigy
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TANISHQ Abraham is 10 years old. At an age when most children are finishing fourth grade, he is graduating from a high school in the United States. Schooled at home, Tanishq took an early high school exit exam and has already started taking classes at a local community college in California.
His parents celebrated the occasion with a large party at which at least 200 people were invited. The young Tanishq, dressed in graduation garb, was photographed and his pictures were splashed across newspapers in India, which proudly proclaimed the Indian conquest of the American high school system.
The phenomenon of the South Asian child prodigy is not a new one, nor a particularly Indian-American one. In India itself, 13-year-old Sushma Verma was reported last year to be getting ready to enrol in a Master’s programme in microbiology. Sushma graduated from high school in India at the age of seven, beating her brother who accomplished that goal at the age of nine. Her brother also obtained certification in computer science at the age of 14.
Having completed her Bachelor’s, Sushma reported that she was pursuing graduate studies in microbiology until she turned 18, at which point she would begin studying medicine. Students under the age of 18 are not permitted to do so in India.
When education itself is a privilege for many millions, it is difficult to make an argument for parental affection to be devoid of parental expectations.
Pakistan shares this Indian penchant for prodigy, the glee at demonstrating how a deficit in years can be overcome by the proficiency of intellect.
In South Asian societies, childhood is simply the bridge between infancy and earning money, and the sooner the bridge is crossed, the better, everyone agrees, it is. When child prodigies emerge, they are happily feted; no one questions the value of their achievements, or the marketisation and exhibitionism that is now attached to them.
One recent Pakistani example was teenager Arfa Karim Randhawa, who suddenly and tragically passed away in January 2012. Arfa, much to the delight of her parents and to that of Pakistanis in general, had become the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in 2004 at only nine years of age.
Following that achievement, she was recognised in television shows and newspaper columns, feted by numerous technology companies, and at one time served as a brand ambassador for the Pakistan Telecommunications Company Ltd. She represented Pakistan at numerous international events. In December 2011, while she was an A-Level student, she suffered sudden cardiac arrest. The ensuing illness and hospitalisation lead to her death a few weeks later. Pakistan mourned the death of a girl who had inspired so many.
In countries where childhood is a tenuous concept, unavailable to many who are too poor or too endangered, the question of whether children should be rushed or pushed into availing themselves of opportunities at an early age is never questioned. The pressure is particularly great in societies where emerging middle classes see themselves as teetering on tiny slivers of opportunity for which there are many competitors.
Cramming, studying day and night, and memorising vast tomes are the cornerstones of their lives; a difference of one or even half a percentage point can mean vastly disparate career choices, which in turn will lead to markedly different class consequences. In this mix, permitting a child ease or relaxation could well equal condemning them to a substandard life of poverty and struggle; good parenting is thus transformed into pushing them to achieving more and more, pointing to child prodigies as proof of incredible possibility.
This leaves little room to question the treatment allotted to the child prodigy, a mix that depends in equal parts on the natural intelligence of a particular child and the push received to achieve more at an early age. Particularly popular among the middle classes of postcolonial societies and the immigrants they have spawned, the production of prodigy proves so much.
In a world where inherited wealth still means so much and determines even more, it is a windfall, a winning lottery ticket that can reverse life’s otherwise ordinary allotments. It is not that there are no child prodigies in the West and that they do not suffer the pressure of overweening parental ambitions; it is just that they do not have an entire culture’s expectations pinned on them.
Childhood is scarce in the subcontinent anyway and so to lament its unquestioned giving away in the case of the childhood prodigy is not an argument likely to convince many people. When education itself is a privilege for many millions, it is difficult to make an argument for parental affection to be devoid of parental expectations.
The babies of the subcontinent grow up working in factories, begging on the streets, sharecropping in fields, baking bricks — all often for the hoped-for prosperity of their families. Against this reality, how indeed does one make an argument for middle-class parents to view their projections on their children, their expectations of academic excellence, and their conditional affirmations as impositions or abuse?
The dark side of prodigy is that the children with incredible gifts have still only a child’s abilities to understand the social and emotional world around them. Saying ‘no’ to what their parents or teachers or countrymen would like them to do is hence not a possibility; they cram for exams, memorise the spelling lists, take the tests as instructed.
Children expect and deserve love, but for child prodigies this very basic desire gets mixed up with the requirement of performing, of proving their ‘gift’, and for uplifting the conditions of their family, their country, their culture. This demand, the production of the extraordinary, may make them famous and revered, but it deprives them of central notion of childhood, the simple freedom to make mistakes.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2014
