Watching: Beautiful Young Minds
Morgan Matthews' Beautiful Young Minds is one of those documentaries with that magical quality of gripping you with a subject in which you had no prior interest. It followed a number of young hopefuls through the process of selection for the British team for the International Mathematics Olympiad in 2006. This is an annual competition open to all teenagers who have not yet embarked on post-secondary education. Just as he did with Taxidermy: Stuff the World and Hair Wars, Matthews turns the camera onto a group of quirky individuals and creates something truly exceptional.
These are boys (in the main - the adults in the documentary shied away from saying why they thought this to be the case) who are treated as losers and swots in the "real" world, at least in the UK where class war memories still equate intelligence with elitism. This is in sharp contrast with Chinese society which highly values their exceptional talents; so much so that one of the subjects of the Beautiful Young Minds taught himself Cantonese in three months and went there to live, far more comfortable in its nurturing environment. The main theme of the documentary is how these outcasts thrive when put together with others just like them.
There is apparently a high coincidence between exceptional mathematicians and autism and both Jos and Daniel, the main subjects of the film, have Asperger's Syndrome (medically diagnosed and not the armchair diagnosis that today seems popularly made on anyone who is socially awkward). Jos is further down the spectrum than Daniel and it shows. He appears arrogant and cold, discounting emotions as a fictional cover for needs-benefit analysis. He is one of those people that you really don't want to ask the time for you'll get not just the history of the watch, but the history of relativity too. Jos gains the least in human terms from the various math camps and competitions because he adamantly refuses to acknowledge the talents, thoughts, or feelings of others and he remains an outcast even in a group of the like-minded. Daniel is much warmer and better-adjusted, even if he had to go to China to find his comfort level.
It's worth catching if you can. Beware side effects. I was awake in bed last night for hours trying to remember if the formula for the area of a circle was pi x r squared or (pi x r) squared. My conclusion was that I'm not smarter than the Jos, Daniel, a fifth grader or a ten-year-old.
These are boys (in the main - the adults in the documentary shied away from saying why they thought this to be the case) who are treated as losers and swots in the "real" world, at least in the UK where class war memories still equate intelligence with elitism. This is in sharp contrast with Chinese society which highly values their exceptional talents; so much so that one of the subjects of the Beautiful Young Minds taught himself Cantonese in three months and went there to live, far more comfortable in its nurturing environment. The main theme of the documentary is how these outcasts thrive when put together with others just like them.
There is apparently a high coincidence between exceptional mathematicians and autism and both Jos and Daniel, the main subjects of the film, have Asperger's Syndrome (medically diagnosed and not the armchair diagnosis that today seems popularly made on anyone who is socially awkward). Jos is further down the spectrum than Daniel and it shows. He appears arrogant and cold, discounting emotions as a fictional cover for needs-benefit analysis. He is one of those people that you really don't want to ask the time for you'll get not just the history of the watch, but the history of relativity too. Jos gains the least in human terms from the various math camps and competitions because he adamantly refuses to acknowledge the talents, thoughts, or feelings of others and he remains an outcast even in a group of the like-minded. Daniel is much warmer and better-adjusted, even if he had to go to China to find his comfort level.
It's worth catching if you can. Beware side effects. I was awake in bed last night for hours trying to remember if the formula for the area of a circle was pi x r squared or (pi x r) squared. My conclusion was that I'm not smarter than the Jos, Daniel, a fifth grader or a ten-year-old.