Chocolate and Gold Coins

Sunday, February 19, 2006

My Son’s First Hypotheses

“Daddy, I think there are more Asian elephants than African elephants.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“All African elephants have ivory tusks and only male Asian elephants have tusks. Poachers want to kill elephants for their tusks. So they probably kill more African elephants than Asian ones.”

I thought that was really very good coming from a seven-year-old.

posted by Michael Higgins at 06:45 | permalink

5 Comments:

  • Hi Minh-Duc
    I want him to be whatever he wants to be. Right now, he is keen on being a paleotologist. He might study zoology or biology. There are lots of good choices.

    By Blogger Michael Higgins, at 8:34 PM  

  • Right now, he is keen on being a paleotologist. He might study zoology or biology.

    I don't think ambitions at the age of seven have stability. Around that age my ambition was to be a mahout ( seriously! ) . But I think today's kids are more mature, so his case may be different.

    That said, economics and reasoning skills seem to come naturally to him.

    By Blogger froginthewell, at 10:38 PM  

  • He learnt the word 'paleotologist' and decided he was going to one, din't he? I remember those days when I had a different ambition on different days of the week.

    By Blogger Nilu, at 11:25 PM  

  • If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:44 AM  

  • Hi Froggy, Nilu, and SloganM
    Froggy: Mahout would be pretty cool...for a seven-year-old. My son would love that. I'm not going to push him into economics. My dad pushed me into engineering and I wasted many years figuring out that this was not right for me.

    But you're right. It is very rare that someone's favorite profession at age seven becomes the actual profession at age 30.

    Nilu: He takes the study of dinosaurs very seriously. He knows the names of over 100 of them and which age they lived in and which family they belong to and million other pieces of trivia. He's a walking encyclopedia.

    Hi SloganM
    I like that quote. But I think you would get an abundance of genius Mahouts and fire truck drivers.

    By Blogger Michael Higgins, at 3:23 PM  

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