Slashdot Mirror
Eight Year Old Physics Student Admitted to College
paris writes to tell us that The Korea Herald is running a story about Song Yoo-guen, the youngest university student that Korea has ever seen. At eight years old Song is already talking about building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity while others his age are attending the first grade. He completed his elementary, junior-high, and high school curricula in just nine months, something that usually takes 12 years, and has been admitted as a freshman to the physics department of Inha University.
Too bad he's not involving himself figuring out how to make 50% efficient solar panels.. with him on the darpa team, they could probably be making these panels for $1.00 within 3 years. Good luck to him though.
He's so nerdy that he won't be getting laid at all in college.
He surprised professors by explaining the Schroedinger equation, which is of central importance to the theory of quantum mechanics.
Oh my god, to think that a 7 years old best me when it comes to learning the good old Schrodinger equation...
Someone please bury me.
Did he get a blow job when he graduated high school? I did. If you grow up too quickly you'll miss the best things in life!
Although this is a great opportunity for him, Kids at that age have a lot of development ahead of them and jumping right into college might hinder some social growth
So much for letting the kid grow up.
"Dude, did Doogie Howser just steal my fucking car?!"
/Harold and Kumar...
I really hate it when kids rush through their education. What some people don't realize is school is just as much about growing maturity as it is about growing the mind. Yeah, this kid may be smarter than the average college student, but he is going to miss important aspects of life like having friends and interacting with other people his age, which is arguably more important than college.
Actually, at least in America, this could be a bad thing. There is a lot of experience you gain and a lot of things you learn about friendships, daily life, and relationships that is only obtainable by going through what everyone else goes through.
Not that I don't think that it is awesome that he is a prodigy as such, but will he not be lacking a lot of "street smarts?"
I know, spelling and grammer...
8 is too young, the liver hasn't fully developed yet.
I thought *all* eight year olds talked about building flying cars? Seriously, I know I did! I swore I'd never have to learn to drive since by the time I was old enough, we wouldn't even have cars anymore. So much for that. And poor, poor child. Pretty soon I bed he'd give anything to be "normal".
"The interview was conducted mainly with the senior Song since Yoo-geun is lacking in his ability to communicate with adults."
How can he be a college student if he can't communicate with adults? If his parents forced education on him, which the interview doesn't really say they due but you can only guess, isn't that a form of child abuse?
Mark
At eight years old Song is already talking about building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity while others his age are attending the first grade.
i was dreaming up flying cars and defying gravity in first grade. and riding dinosaurs... oh ya.
K1-12 is designed to keep things slow and to the level of the teachers.
Kids can learn faster and do it all well, its just the system is designed to make
robots and YES MEN.
The system cannot handle dynamic progress per student, its a FORD assembly plant.
Maths can be sped up 50 fold, first 5 years is ridiculously slow/low tech. Kids can learn 8 years in 12months.
History - that takes more effort/knowledge of the earth, tho skip the bit about remembering dates and its faster.
Languages - well , the whole language can be broken down in 1 4hr lesson into a massive 1 foot sized flow chart and rules, the rest are just like learning C++, all the verbs and nouns and functions.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but wonder how screwed up this kid will be at oh, say age 25 or so. One of the most important things my parents did for me when I was young was prevent my school district from having me skip... well, about 10 grades. Not as fast as this child, but nonetheless.
The reason? Simply that there are other things in life besides simply rushing through academics. There are issues which can't be handled simply from an academic perspective-- each day the engineers among us solve some new problem while thinking "outside the box," and this kid won't be able to do that. Because he doesn't have an "outside," he has what he's learned in books.
So I'm of mixed feelings on this one: on one hand, I'm happy for him, because he obviously has great potential, and parents that support him.
On the other hand, the best superstring theorists in the world, can't work for more than a few, perhaps 5 at a stretch, years from their start at that level. They simply burn out, every one. So if at 14, this kid's entirely burnt out... will it have been worth it?
You kinda wasted the joke, that way... let's see:
"In Korea only old people don't understand the superstring theory"
or
"Imagine a beowulf classroom of these!"
You insensitive clod.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I wonder myself from time to time - what happens to these people you hear of accellerating through school like this? It seems like they must be capabile of some incredible things... do they just end up in some really esoteric sidetrack of acadamia? Are there any books or studies detailing what has happened to past kids like this?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
he will grow up to be socially retarded.
Many studies have shown that rushing kids through grade levels without adequate peers will result in socially developmental retardation and, in some cases, detoriation.
Small price to pay to get the brain for the society as a whole.
I talked about building flying cars at the age of 6. In fact, I built one. It amazing what legos and some good old childhood imagination can do.
"The interview was conducted mainly with the senior Song since Yoo-geun is lacking in his ability to communicate with adults."
Something tells me that he might no be ready for college just yet. . .
I feel pretty bad for this kid. After all, he will never have a normal life. I've known a genius who burnt out and worked a crappy job. I'm not saying that will happen with this kid, but I fear that there is a strong chance that he will crack at some point. Imagine living your whole life around people who are so much "slower" than you that they might as well be retarded for all intents and purposes. He will likely relate to adults better than kids, which is going to be hard because so many will envy him. There will be many who are threatened by his precociousness. Think of Good Will Hunting x 20. He will never know what it is to have a normal life and that may cause him to envy "normal" people to an extent. That being said, I really hope he does well and can find a good core group of people who will guide him and treat him well. This kind of makes me think that reincarnation truly happens....
This feat has been accomplished before. Children of only average intelligence, if they are drilled at early enough age, can master the basic GED curriculum by eight years old. They tend not to do well in university however as they usually have not developed the abilty to think critically and independantly. A teenager coming up with a nobel prize worthy idea is a prodigy. An eight year old who gets into university is just an example of a yet to be identified form of child abuse.
You guys are all jealous because he gets to meet all the older chicks without having the Tom Hanks machine and stuff. *ducking and running*
Ok every once in a while we would hear about these child prodigies that accomplish a lot while they're still young. Rather than put them down so quickly to salvage your own egos, wouldn't it be better to ask for a study to see what happens when they actually grow up?
Do these kids just max out at age 10 and eventually are equalled or even surpassed by their peers later on down the road? How are they when they are say 25, 30, 40?
Now that is what I really want to know. The final form of the adult.
eTrade SUCKS
Tycho, is that you?
How we know is more important than what we know.
He's just getting all this school mumbo-jumbo out of the way so he can concentrate full-time on playing Starcraft once he turns 14.
Ok so the term common is a little loose here since there aren't many prodigies like this, but he's not the first. Social and communication problems are fairly common. Why? Well these kids aren't born with an adult brain. Their logical side is, hell it's that of a very bright adult. However the emotional side is not, it's still that of a child. It makes for a really weird disjoint that leads to social problems.
I mean try to imagine, if you can, posessing the knowledge you do now, but without the experience that has come with it. Then further try to imagine being ruled by the strong emotions of a child. Look at the things that upset children, the things they need, that are so different from adults.
Did they follow the same methods that produced the genius of William James Sidis? (similar childhood, IQ estimated between 250 and 300)
The poor kid is not going to have much contact with other kids his age. I'm guessing he's going to grow up a bit anti-social and with a lack of understanding of general social rules and rituals.
- Jesse McNelis
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Another sidis in the making? ...
:-) ] people completely understanding shrodinger's eq at 30 let alone 7 years of age.
I really really hope not
How much is this guys IQ? No mention of the same in the article.
Another issue with child prodigies are that they grow up fast, but in the end have the same intelligence as a normal human being.
Anyways, here, I don't think that's an issue since I dont know too many [ normal
He'll do great until he hits 11 or 12, i.e. puberty. Then he will suddenly be overcome by impulses he's going to be extremely frustrated by - who out there is going to actually be his equal?
Will self-destruct during adolescence.
+++ATH0
I also talked about flying cars and defying gravity when I was 8. What else is new?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
He is a specialist. Mastering Physics is no doubt the best choice. But how do these kids fair say when they are 20 or more ? Do they really go ahead and get a P.hd ? I have known some extremely bright students in high school now flipping burgers. I don't know what happened to them but they derailed.
eBay Sucks!
You're the guy behind that time cube thing, aren't you?
...welcome this kid going straight to college. You learn best in those years - for all of you fluent in English, think about the difficulties of learning a new language. It seems hard now, to most people, but it was certainly pretty easy back then. This will always be embedded in his mind, and he'll potentially never have to dampen his ability. I was far above my classmates throughout school, and never skipped grades. As a result, I just became incredibly bored with school, and never really learned how to learn new things and study. When my knowledge I had already amassed in elementary school finally ran out, I hardly knew what to do. I'd like to think that I've since learned how to work efficiently, but I don't recommend putting someone with obvious potential through a decade of complacent boredom just to try to develop him socially. He'll be well-known anyway, and the curious semi-fame that he'll gain is a good preparation in case he does indeed discover something of a Nobel Prize magnitude later on.
From time to time we hear about such brilliant minds. But what happens when they grow up? Was anyone from here a child prodigy?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Give a year, two max. He'll be a master StarCraft player, and all that physics education will go down the drain.
I'm sorry, but in what parallel dimension do they teach maturity in the school system?
In all the schools I went to, the clique-ized and institutionalized immaturity was actively supported by the teaching staff that openly favored the "popular" kids. The end result when this cancer has fully metastasized is national news stories of the football team stuffing foriegn object up the asses of other students while the coach looks on approvingly. Google on "mepham high football". And that's the best case. Worst case is Columbine.
Maybe that's teaching about the real world, but don't you dare call it maturity.
This kid is going to have the social skills of a log.
``At eight years old Song is already talking about building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity while others his age are attending the first grade.''
Err, that's not particularly impressive, is it? Aren't plenty of eight year olds talking about that stuff? I know I was programming and thinking of how I would build my own OS, and a friend of mine was designing a machine to take atoms apart and put the parts back together, so that one could transform one element into another. I don't think that's world news.
Being eight years old and having completed your high school curriculum and having been admitted to college, now, that's a lot more impressive. I'm sure plenty of people could do school faster if they were given the opportunity (in fact I'm sure - I did and so did a friend of mine), but having completed high school before normal people even start it is an entirely different league.
Of course, as others have pointed out, all of this is not necessarily good for the kid. On the other hand, remembering how bad I felt in preschool having to do all kinds of silly things instead of actually _learning_ something, I can well see that he wouldn't wish it any other way.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
William Sidis
Of all the prodigies for which there are records, his was probably the most powerful intellect of all. And yet it all came to nothing. He soon gave up his position as a professor, and for the rest of his life wandered from one menial job to another. His experiences as a child prodigy had proven so painful that he decided for the rest of his life to shun public exposure at all costs. Henceforth, he denied his gifts, refused to think about mathematics, and above all refused to perform as he had been made to do as a child. Instead, he devoted his intellect almost exclusively to the collection of streetcar transfers, and to the study of the history of his native Boston.
This article about gifted children was published on the Prometheus Society website. I'm not a member of that society, but another one with a high level of exclusivity (much higher than Mensa). It's as much a support group as it is anything else, because children with this "gift" are often brought up in ways that are quite harmful to them. I certainly was not the prodigy that this child was, or that William Sidis was, so I can't say that I know what it's like to be a child like that, but from everything that I can tell in this group, putting a child into college at age 8 is wrong in every way. My childhood was bad enough, I can't imagine how awful it will be for this little boy.
He may be the first Nobel prize winner to thank Big Bird and Elmo in his acceptance speech.
Tenure.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Ummm, seriously, you look at the people around you, and how many of them don't have social problems? On top of that, do you remember how incredibly boring it was to basically go through the exact same thing over and over again for a year just so other people in the class would catch up? Imagine doing that for 5 or more years. Some people here claim that the child is being 'rushed through school', but has it ever occured to the people out there that perhaps the kid wanted to not be bored in school, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the other kids to grasp the same things you did a long time ago? Perhaps the child wants to be creative and grow in his own speed and way, and for that, the child should grow. To keep the child from advancing faster than others is a detriment to that child, if that is what interests the child. I've personally had college courses with 10-14 year olds in attendance, and to be quite honest, they are not ill adjusted, and to be honest, I personally would have loved to go to college at a younger age than to be bored to death fro so many years, going through things I've learned at the library, by myself, years ago. (Yes, I went to the library after school because it was one of the few places that I could actually learn at my own pace.) So to that, I say, bravo to their parents, and the prodigy. I hope he does well, and that it truely is something that he wants to persue.
Too bad he's not involving himself figuring out how to make 50% efficient solar panels.. with him on the darpa team, they could probably be making these panels for $1.00 within 3 years.
DARPA is great, but string theory, should it prove true, would be much more important than DARPA or anything the Pentagon is working on, at least as far as science goes.
That said, I'd really like to know how string theory could be applied to cars. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've read The Elegant Universe and so forth, and I think there are at least two big hurdles before this kid even has a chance with his idea. 1) There is no experimental evidence to support string theory, so we don't even know if it's true yet. 2) If he can make flying cars using string theory, that implies that these cars would serve as experimental evidence for it. Why is he already jumping from "something that might be true" to "let's start an engineering project with it?" So, if he has some magic that he can pull out of his hat, great let's hear it, but somehow I doubt that this will happen any time soon.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
"It goes against Newton's law. Everything on earth gets drawn to the surface by gravity, but in the case of flying cars, it's different," Song said. "There should exist the same opposite magnitude of power as the earth's gravity-pull. So, a balance is formed between gravity and reaction, which makes flying cars float in the atmosphere," he explained.
I'm sorry, but if this kid thinks balancing out gravity with a force of equal magnitude in the opposite direction (which is clearly what he meant by that "same opposite magnitude of power" giiberish) goes against any of Newton's laws, he shouldn't be in a *high school* physics class, yet alone a university one.
If you look through the news in the past 5 years everyone of you will notice that young people with extraordinary brain abilities are coming to life all over the world! This is the proof that the New RACE is coming! People who are smarter and better than us! Humans are evolving like they have been doing it since the creation of life! I hope these kids understand that wars are evil and stop them unlike the normal guys (us, the people who take at least 25 human years to get a university degree) who think fighting and wars are normal thing!
I wish all the representatives ot the new human race success in the betterment of mankind!
Good luck!
sex is better than war!
and Soviet Russia, for that matter, College is only for Old People!
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for the are subtle and quick to anger.
Surely there are lessons to be learned from becoming famous too young, take Michael Jackson for instance. Will this young boy soon want to get sugical enhancements to make up for his immuturity ? --> hair implaints maybe, or 'willy' just want to piss the same sound in the stream of life like everyone else ?
bæ8Ã0sÃOE?5r©oÂÃ?âz:ÃÃAÃ?ÃOEÂ6fXÃ?]Â
Really? That would have them getting out of high school school 12 later at age 20. I suspect there are not really many Korean first graders at age 8. But then this is /. and it's not like the editors check for any accuracy.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The following is a rant which is completely uninformed, not factual in any way shape or form and the author can't figure out when is the right time to hit 'Submit'
I'm in high school myself (in Vic, Australia not America), and being a total nerd, I've gone up a year in some subjects deliberately.
I'm having the ride of my life. No seriously, I actually enjoy school now.
Maybe its because I'll just end up smarter, the education system being designed to push people in University when they don't need it, or the education system being broken anyway, or society AND the education system having rapidly decreasing expectations. Maybe despair.com was right with their slogan "Increasing performance by decreasing expectations".
* The quality of some final year high school exams here is laughable. Yet I'm meeting resistance from teachers because their agenda is to have someone graduate within the top 0.00001% in the state without taking risks. I had to have my parents battle the supreme authorities because I knew I'd get kicked out of someones office just for asking. I'll suprise a LOT of people when I go to write my resume.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Being a genius, doesn't mean you're happy, or have a happy life, or even that you can choose your life. Did this kid really choose to be sent to college at age 8? What other choices will be made, in order to "optimize his future possibilities"? Rich people usually have the greatest debts. It's really amazing how paradoxial the world is..
This is why envy does no good to a man, it only makes you drop your innocence and thus happiness. Envy can happen to this boy, as well as his peers, leaving all of them ravaged. Or the opposite might happen, which would be truly great.
The real geniuses I admire are those who can be happy while contributing to the benefit of all. That has nothing to do with the type of IQ or school grades being measured by scientists, yet.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
"In Soviet Russia the string theory understands you." or maybe "In soviet Russia the classroom beowulfs you"?
Well, I will mention it. This guy is amazingly smart. Smarter than me. Probably smarter than 99%+ people here. And I'm jealous to boot.
Just an observation.
I hate these people :| .. ok.. i'm just jealous... but they really irk me :|
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Basically, people make the mistake of treating the brain's functional power as a linear equation (something like),
Where the implicit assumption is that the scalar factor m is equal between all people, and the initial condition Po is the soul source of variation in function. So for a kid identified as very smart (a high Po), we reach the false conclusion that following this relationship above, the freakish gap in funciton will remain constant. We ignore that m (which for simplicity's sake I am treating as a simple scalar) is just as significant and allows for what we observe in nature.
.. but being 8 you're way too young for the social aspects of uni life. You dont go to school to be taught that 1+1=2 and the Schroedinger equation (you can learn those in your back yard with a private tutor), you go to school to identify and share the social interaction with fellow human beings and gradually be adapted to your society role. What does an 8 year old do when the rest of the campus drills holes to their livers down the local club? Or roll up a fat one? Or date? People would approach him while he's still under media coverage to steal some karma. When the hype is over he's a sad little bastard locked in a room, writing a letter to mum while everybody else is out and about having fun having forgotten all about his sad existance.
I remember watching CNBC, a business channel in Asian and broadcast to Australia via Foxtel/Austar (and perhaps other providers), that at one point, several years ago, showed a 3 year old or 2 or something, that could read e-mail. They made a big deal about it, but didn't impress me too much. But i was wondering if this is the same kid?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Remember William Sidid!
Perhaps these kids do not derail? Perhaps they just come to a more profound understanding of the Universe then most men... If that was so, it take an active role in this physical world would be very pointless to them. It's not so hard to imagine.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
I was never the type to be having a discussion about quantum phsyics that wouldn't get sneered at by real college students at the age of 8, but I was well ahead of my time, testing for post-high-school-level skills in all subjects at about that same age on the standardized US CAT/MAT/whatever tests. I'm very grateful now in my late 20's that my parents didn't push me or skip me up grades or anything like that. They *encouraged* me, by buying me whatever books or materials I wanted at various times, and a computer early on (and perhaps significantly, tried to keep me broad - encouraged music lessons and sports, etc). But they never pushed me to succeed or tried to get me to skip over grades in school. As a result I was mostly a slacker C student (do no homework, skip when possible, ace tests, impress teachers, barely pass on grade averages somehow, often with a little fudge-factor help from the teacher) in school for lack of challenge or motivation, and I gave up on college in the first semester, but I've turned out fine as a self-learner in the real world with a somewhat normal (if a bit nerdy and introverted) life. I hate to think what this kid's life is going to be like.
11*43+456^2
The real question for this kid is whether he's going to have a good life. Will he be happy? How long will it take him to realize that's what's important, and stop worrying about all of the BS expectations of everyone else. Fucking parents...
Social skills are mostly bs. You almost always either have the personality for them or you do not. Sitting in school bored to death because he remembers everything when he sees it for the first time will not help this kid talk to people. If he's interested in people bs, then he will persue it in due time (he still has 20 years to develop his brain) If he's not interested in those things, then he will persue something else. His personality will dictate what he's interested in, and most people interested in math/physics are not people people. Note: lack of falsifiable opinions. Only time will really tell, but from just the article I'd lean towards my view. Ultimately, the parents are the responsible ones here.
Here let's try that again
When I was growing up I always felt like I was surrounded by idiots.
That has less to do with being extra-smart and more with the fact that most people are idiots.
On a purely statistical basis, the vast majority of prodigies will become adults of high intelligence who won't do much to the shatter the world, but hopefully will lead happy lives.
(Robert J. Sternberg, "The Uneasy Fit of the Precocious And the Average," The New York Times, March 12, 2002.)
Why not go to a 'usual' school, but also do an independent study at home? Why not take additional classes?
If you say you're bored, it means you're not getting much pressure on yourself; but who told you that school is the only pressure-maker?
If you had a shitload of spare time, you could have invested it in other projects, projects you chose YOURSELF (i.e. you're bored with school topics, but you can choose the additional ones yourself). If you didn't do that, then maybe you were lazy?
Either way, I admire the kid's talent; but he should take it easier. I think that if he keeps it that way, it will be great for mankind, but it will make his personal life miserable.
The saddest poem
I'm sure the translator didn't do it correctly.
;-)
I often encounter such cases... Sure, the translators know grammar and spelling and literature and all the other stuff... but when it comes to hi-tech, they only know what they saw in movies... and they honestly believe that a firewall is a wall of fire thru which viruses cannot pass because they are burnt
The saddest poem
Flying cars, my brother still has the scar's today from are first test flights, then someone told me about planes! Also we used magnets to suspend objects metal toy cars/planes in the air, seeming to defy gravity, ooh ooh.
I love it when NERDS (thats us people!) give people who are smarter than us this kind of crap. I swear nerds are the most jaded people in the world. I mean come on, some of these petty comments are just ridiculous. You think he's gonna have a normal life anyways? I know that most of us in this forum were bored in pre-college school at one point or another. did you guys turn out normal? did u like gettin crap for being smart in high school? i say let the kid have his chance and best of luck to him. if he happens to invent an affordable flying car then i want one. to all the pocket-calculator-carrying trash talkers, get a beer and chill out. u want the kid to get wedgied through school like you were?
-cha lee ucsb, ca
yeah he can do complex math formulas but I bet you he still wears velcro shoes!
Some of them do end up making great discoveries. JD Watson went to the U of Chicago at 15, got his Ph.D at 22 and at 25, discovered the structure of DNA with his researCh partner, Francis Crick. Now that is precocious.
I heard that his father had quit his job so that he could help his son studying (or whatever). I don't know but it seems he isn't a total publicity whore after all. Good for him? That I'm not sure. (If there's nothing I can do to protect the kid, at least I can hope his family get some money)
How good of an education did he get is he thinks he can defy gravity? Seriously, brilliant physicists who have been studying their entire lives don't think that's possible.
Another case of someone who thinks they can memorize test answers gets accelerated through school. This will probably be the last time we hear about this kid, and he'll probably fail out and, with any luck, live a normal, happy life. Unless his parents get in the way...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
From the article: "While other children his age are first graders at elementary school, he is a freshman at the Physics Department of Inha University in Incheon, west of Seoul."
/. for it... It would be rather hard to spot such a mistake for someone not familiar with the Korean school system.
If that's wrong (I don't know), there's no point in blaming
One thing that has to be done to correct the education system is to establish many specialized (by subject) 8-year schools, that children could enter after finishing 4-years of education in primary school. (there are more on my mind)
In these schools children could learn skills and acquire a lot of knowledge in a more specialized area like quantum physics or anything.
everything i learned in public school probably could have been compressed down to about the same length once you cut out all the useless repetition and other extraneous bullshit.
It wasn't very obvious in the story if this was North or South Korea. Obviously if it was North Korea this would be totall bullshit, as it happens it mentioned Incheon so this is South Korea and thus believable. Remember everything that comes out of NK is bullshit.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This shows that when you have one chance over a billion that something happen, let a billion guys try and it will happen. Some are picking up chicks that way ...
I attended a "Seminar for the gifted" (99.5+% range) several years ago at the age of 16. One of the highlights was a conversation with our Minister of education. Beeing a very smart person (and doing his job by the heart) he gave me a very simple but very precious hint, how not to became a complete social retard:
...
;-)
In case I am bored (at school, university, etc), I should just learn an other (non programming) langugage. (Although learning new (real) laguages is what I hate most, as it is none of my "natural gifts"). That way I have something to do against the boredom while actually improving "social skills".
Apart from beeing "forced" to communicate with people, a positive side effect is that I am constantly reminded how "normal people" feel when they have to work real hard, trying to figure out real simple stuff life maths,
Btw. At the moment I am bussy learning Japanese as my 4th foreign language while working in the R&D Department of a huge Company in Japan and getting drunk with my collegues very often...
End of the story is, he'll be a social reject all his life. I have a friend not too dissimilar. He's not that amazing, but pretty damn good at maths.
At 15 he came 2nd in the British National Maths Challenge, and at 16, he came first. He's currently on a 150% scholarship at Harvard. Only thing is, he's a complete social outcast. No friends, no social life, no real reason to exist. All he does is Maths.
The extremely intelligent are often social outcasts, it's just the way it is.
I am, in no way a prodigy, never was, never will be, but I am intelligent. While at high school, I found that lots of the teaching was simple regurgitation of facts, so it was easy to get away with doing f*ck all, all year, then reading the text books from cover to cover just before the exams and passing.
In the end, I didn't even attend classes much, if at all. I discovered that socially, I was better off pretending I wasn't intelligent. Vast reserve of potential friends, less beatings in the schoolyard etc. Consequently, I forgot how to interact with "intelligent" people, and became tuned in at a lower level.
The end result of this is, 20 years later, I am isolated from both groups. The intelligencia treat me like a farm labourer who has read a book, and the manual less educated people tend to steer clear because I know things. some guy at work calls me Stevie Wonder, after his song, He's Misstra Know-It-All.
I can't help knowing things or learning things and I see no reason to keep pretending to be 'stoopid'. The only forward path seems to be more of the same, and I'm not happy with that idea. Unfortunately, with no one of equal or greater intelligence prepared to treat me as I am, I have to go it alone.
The interesting part is, that the original situation still holds - The lower educated have a much better respect for each other and are more social, make firm friends, and stick by you, while the higher-ups just seem so selfish in comparison, it's not funny, or pleasant to watch. I know I'm generalising here, but in the main it's true. I'm in the UK, and people who've graduated university think they are the mutts nutts, and treat the "lower orders" with such contempt, which is quite amusing considering virtually everybody gets to go to uni these days.
Maybe I should learn to speak like an old Etonian, and people might take my brain more seriously.
Or maybe it's the same for everybody, and I'm just whining. Who knows ? I know that when I'm standing in a bar looking blankly at a far wall, people think I'm weird, but if I were to share the complexities of the select case statements return values I'm trying to work out in my head or whether a particular array needs to popped or pushed to get at that particular data I need right now, then they would just look blank and a little unsettled, and move away. So I am one thing in my head and another to the world. </disturbed rant>
In Soviet Russia, beowulfs cluster you!
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
...comprehend knowledge and even apply it.... that is the brain recorder and playback
Social development does require more time simply because of the time it takes the body to change enough to expreience and know.
However, on the matter of social skill/knowledge, there are many different customs around the world but one constant, the constant of dishonesty, the ability to understand human nature and manipulate it to fit your needs, desires, etc..
This too can be taught, however, the avoidance of learning this will be detrimental to this kids ability to make breakthrus in physics.
If you don't know how to manipulate people, then how will you handle the most powerful force in nature... human ignorance and denial.
You can know how to bring all the wonderful things to mankind, but what good will it do, when nobody listens because they are to afraid of what they do not understand or what threatens their personal ways, beliefs, etc..
for example:
Galelio was exonerated around 1990, by the catholic church, which finally accepted the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe. Alot of good it did him in his life time to be exonerated long past his death.
As another example.... google and how so many are becomming to "fear" it and wage a war on them. imitate them , etc...
This kid needs to learn the truth about dishonesty, for that is where he will find the answer to how to lie to gravity.
And he is not going to learn that without genuine real time feedback..The difference between theory and practical application.
Agreed. Well said. Also, I think it's important for people in general, but especially great scientists to have the benefit of wisdom too. Often, that's learned through slow, thoughtful processes of ordinary life. Certainly not normally on fast-tracks to greatness.
Best
:)
disclaimer
ever!
Seriously, I liked it
p.s. 5-5 vertical/horizontal (7-7 with this line)
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
You never hear of a prodigy like this later on. One would think that they would be changing the world with ideas and inventions. The 13 year old medical students, the 12(?) year old MCSE (heh) never come up in later years. With a 5 or more year jump on their peers they should be shining stars in their 30's but they never appear on the radar.
I know, the government sequesters them in their secret.. oh nevermind.
As as physicist, I believe the progidies that come to the university because they never step foot into the physics department. They usually fill their lab science requirement with geology because they can't cut it with real science (usually). But I have hard time believing this kid can actually do real physics.
building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity
this statement show a complete lack of understanding of all known laws of gravity.
make flying cars, based on the superstring theory
I doubt he has any understanding what-so-ever of actual string theory. I bet if you asked him to write down any Lagrangian of choice he wouldn't know what you are talking about.
Making flying cars based on superstring theory is a completely rediculous idea. I think he dreams big but understands little.
"It goes against Newton's law. Everything on earth gets drawn to the surface by gravity, but in the case of flying cars, it's different," Song said. "There should exist the same opposite magnitude of power as the earth's gravity-pull. So, a balance is formed between gravity and reaction, which makes flying cars float in the atmosphere"
This shows a simple understanding of basic mechanics. In the case of a flying bird the forces cancel out as well. Flying birds do not defy Newton's laws.
I have strong doubts about this. But I would want nothing more than a new physics prodigy, a new Feynmann. We have none. I don't think Brian Greene cuts it, because he hasn't made any contributions relevant to reality. And unfortunately I don't think Hawking makes the best role model because of his condition.
Hey. Didn't this already hit theatres? Some guy sees a bright flash of light, and he becomes, like, super smart and gets all sorts of mind powers like ESP and telekinesis? In the end, it was just a brain tumor and it killed him. I think it starred that guy from that disco movie and that other movie with the boxer and the hit-men and the gimp.
This Song kid better watch out or the MPAA is going to be up his ass with a microscope soon. If the brain tumor doesn't kill him, the MPAA will.
blog |
I don't know what to think... guess I'll have to go ask Dvorak since he knows everything.
No worries, he will retire ( though we dont wish ) at 13 yrs!
...is we push people with great ability to USE that ability, and center their lives around it before they are even formed enough as humans to CHOOSE what they wish to do with their lives. Many of the great scientists in history came to science after wandering many other paths in their lives, sometimes late in life. Even the idea of being a "professional" scientist is only a few hundred years old - it was seen as a "hobby" or an adjunct to a proper career in the priesthood, government, or the sport of nobles with spare time. I think this forced experience with other endeavours in life was actually highly beneficial to them.
/.ers miss the point of a broad education - it is not to teach factiods that will be directly relevant to one's chosen career - those you will pick up when you want to and on the job, and at a much more effecient pace. It is to give one a sense of other paths in life, what other people do, and ultimately what YOU want to do. If someone is shown only ONE path (one that they happen to be really talented at, perhaps), and that is all they see in life, is it any surprise such a person would burn out young and feel lost in the world?
Remember the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton U.? The idea was gather a whole bunch of world class geniuses (Einstein, Godel, Oppenheimer, etc.), put 'em in a nice, idyllic place, give them no teaching responsibilites, or for that matter, ANY responsibilites, and wait for the works of genius to flow! After all, with no other tasks to distract all these luminaries, they should be able to come up with brilliant stuff! Right?
Right?
Well, as most people know, it really didn't work out that way at all. AFAIK, it is still there (I think Dyson is the head of it now), but the qualitiy and quantity of work never came anywhere near what people expected. Feynman wrote a bit about why it failed to live up to expectations, and the conclusion he came to was that they were too isolated from real life; he said whenever he had a "block", or felt burned out, ultimately his students would pop him out of it by asking him a question he really didn't know the answer to, or suggested something that never occured to him before.
In most of the fields I have encountered, the "best" people to work with are frequently the ones who tried a few other careers, moved around a bit, and finally settled on their present job after they gathered some life-experience. These folks are usually the most motivated, have a broad and wise perspective on what makes what they do important, relevant, and fun.
I think many
It is usually a logarythmic curve, where you reach a "flat" at adulthood. The bottom line being that "flat" part being more or less high, and it is true some people will be smarter than other in adulthood, but I saw very bright kid go very high (for their age) and them not rise again, and other start below as normal kid, but getting slowly brighter and brighter until they rise over the former.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Usually the news blows this out of proportion. Remember that Sarah chick from Ireland that was a "crypto prodigy"? Yeah, she fell off the radar something hard. Never published, never pokes up in discussion forums, etc.
It isn't because she's stupid or something. It's because she had a high school project and the news blew it up to something it wasn't. It was just that. She heard of RSA and thought "this would be neat". Her idea didn't work out in the end but it was still an intelligent project none the less.
Chances are this kid is doing the bare minimum to pass exams or something and when you actually ask him to solve a problem not listed in the textbooks he'll get stumped. It takes a very short time to memorize data, it takes longer to form the patterns in the brain to be able to manipulate the data.
So the reason you don't hear about them in the future is because they end up fluttering into "blandness". He'll get his degree at age 12 or whatever and it'll take him 20 years to actually know what to do with the knowledge.
And I'm not trying to shoot down these people. I just hate how the media focuses on all the wrong qualities and blows things way out of proportion....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
So he learned tons about physics, but not the first thing about economics, law restrictions, marketing, or infrastructure?
I had one built out of a cardboard box and Sharpie markers. Well, I think it was a Sharpie. It might have been one of those markers that they say smells like grapes.
Sho Yano, born in Portland, Oregon, is the son of a Japanese father and a Korean mother. At the age of 8, he scored 1,500 on the SAT I, and started college at Loyola University in Chicago when he was 9. He graduated magna cum laude in 2003 at 12, and was admitted to the University of Chicago Medical School. He is in an M.D./Ph.D. program from which he will graduate at 19 or 20.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Well, it is Korea, so perhaps the cat got eaten.
Bert
I went to university on my 8th birthday, started in computer science.
I taught at teachers college when I was 12.
I was a CA (Course Assistant) for many years inbetween,
and a TA (Teaching Assistant) for many years inbetween too.
I "ran" the whole department for an entire term one year.
I was labelled "borderline genius/insanity". the IQ test registered me at an
insane (literally) level of "497". I was labelled emotionally unstable.
I was in and out of psych groups for many many years, even in the hospital with various doctors, etc
I never had a childhood, I never really had friends. I have been completely inept socially. I have no idea how to meet people, how to make friends, etc.
I don't understand feelings or emotions at all. I don't understand basic humor even.
My university records were destroyed by the chairperson of the university, because her son was in the same classes as me (he wasn't smart - she just put him there, he was the same age), but he couldn't do it, always failed.
I also took psych in university, although only for a year or two. I got a score of 78 on the final exam even though I had missed about 2.5 years of classes.
I feel the psych course has hurt me more than it has helped. I over-analyze everything.
I am rational to the point of hair-splitting.
I don't "get" basical linear concepts. I can't wrap my head around them. But complex non-linear things, wow those ae easy!
I understood the nature of black holes when I was 8. I really "got" it. it was all so simple really.
I've spent years unemployed. I've been on welfare more than once.
I've never known what to do with my life, what I'm supposed to be doing, or why...
I've never fit in anywhere, in any situation.
I'm an introvert, quiet, shy, bashful, etc.
I don't know how to talk to people. i don't "muck" or "mud" or do online games.
I'm not fat, i don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs. But I've known a LOT of prostitutes...
When I was in high school (I went to high school AFTER university), although the first few years of HS I was doing both at the same time.
I wrote my HS exams remotely via computer from the university. I crashed the HS computer systems writing my exams - it wasn't intentional. No one had done this before, or since, they really weren't designed for it.
During high school, the owner of the pinball place across the street also owned a strip joint, I knew the owner, got in free (due to constant visiting of the pinball place), a guy from school was a cook in the kitchen at the strip joint. so free entry and free food, plus lots of naked women, what more could a young geek want?
Strippers would sit at my table, in large groups, and talk about their problems, some about their boyfriends, but mostly about their "female problems", like their periods, even hysterectomies (so I can't spell it), within a few months I knew more about female anatomy than any man had any right to know (or desire for that matter).
and yet, I am still a stranger in this world. I really feel like an "alien", I don't fit in, I don't belong. I don't have friends, I have no clue about how to make friends, totally completely socially inept.
I spenty decades, literally with counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, you name it. I never got anywhere. I was always told they can only help people who can help themselves. I can't help myself.
And being a psych major from university, I know all the common answers, I know all the questions, I over-analyze what I'm asked and what I say. it really doesn't help.
and I can't turn it "off"...
And I have no idea what to do about it. or how. etc etc.
I'm SCARED! yes, scared shitless. Because I don't know. and I don't know if I'll ever be able to relax, and be stable, and happy. I know being normal is over-rated, but still I need SOMETHNG...
so I really don't know what to do. so here I post for help. maybe someone out there has the
The CIA has a habit of assasinating really smart Koreans that study nuclear physics, and make it look like automobile accidents. You know that it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't doing nuke work. If someone at the CIA thought he was, then other people like George Bush, Sr. were ready to have him "eliminated."
"In South Korea, the physicist is popularly perceived as a theoretician who writes the laws of the universe in mathematical language rather than as an experimentalist who discovers or measures. In fact, since 1948 South Korea's governments have supported physics as an eminently practical route to the development of a nuclear arsenal, improvement of nuclear power plants, and the growth of South Korea's semiconductor industry. This article attempts to answer how and why this strange conflict between the image and role of physics emerged and continued in South Korea during the last half of the 20th century."
Dong-Won Kim, 2002
Software freedom...I love it!
Maths can be sped up 50 fold
Come to think of it, this could be the best possible thing for an aspiring string theorist. The kind of mathematics he'll need to understand string theory could completely replace the standard K1-12 curriculum, at least the one I went through anyway.
Pre-School and Kindergarten could introduce little kids to logic and set theory. Concepts like 'true', 'false', 'and', 'or', and 'not' should be fairly easy to teach to children of this age group. It might even be possible to do this indirectly through other actities.
Elementary shool math could be replaced by an gentle introduction to number theory and abstract algebra. Getting kids familiar with the concept of fields (i.e. Q, R, and N p) by K5 sounds like a reasonable goal since in the classical K1-K5 classes, the topics covered in math would include addition, multiplication, division, exponentiation and roots anyways. Why not do them a favor and give them more precise definitions? It'll come in handy later.
Middle school math is basically an introduction to polynomials and planar geometry, and the current high school curriculum struggles to expand into higher dimensions. Why not replace all of this with a proper introduction to linear algebra? Teach kids how to work directly with inner products and cross products instead of bothering with angles and classical trigonometry. Introducing high school students to calculus and statistics seems the current standard, but wouldn't college level physics classes benefit from a freshman class that was already familiar with differential geometry and probablity theory?
An math education up to this point would be sufficient to start teaching high school graduates M-theory, especially if the physics program was accelerated at a similar rate. If this is where Song Yoo-geun is at 8 years old, I am thoroughly impressed.
I'd guess that Song Yoo-geun's math education was sped up about 64 fold commared to the public education system in the US, so a 50 fold increase sounds like a reasonable goal.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
"consider how it would feel to be sitting in a classroom of monkeys being taught by a monkey."
Sounds like some kids at my school:
*Kid is staring at teacher.*
Teacher: Next, you do this...
Kid: Wait, what do we do next?
*Kid attempts math problem.*
Kid: Hey! We never learned how to do this!
Me: Um, yeah, we did, last year. The point of school is to remember what you've learned and learn more.
This is a school on the north side of Chicago that's supposed to be so good that it causes young couples to move here.
At 8 years old I was building flying cars. Out of big cardboard boxes.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Languages - well , the whole language can be broken down in 1 4hr lesson into a massive 1 foot sized flow chart and rules, the rest are just like learning C++, all the verbs and nouns and functions.
This shows how little you understand the complexity of human languages. Grammar is a more-or-less coherent fiction invented in the eighteenth century to try to freeze language. Fortunately for us, languages are living and break elitist notions of "grammatical usage" every second of every day.
In fact, the complexity of human languages is so great that while child prodigies can master and pioneer mathematics, music, and physics by their twenties, literary masters are rarely so young. Communicating to other sentient beings (basically, a 24/7/365 Turing test) practically guarantees that what you think you know about language in that "1-foot sized flow chart and rules" is next to meaningless.
blog
I'm one of those kids who always got 100% on tests in math/science classes. I never skipped any grades and am happy about that: the best thing about primary school was that it took up so little of my time that I had the freedom to actually develop interests and learn things (on my own). At university, I foolishly got myself into a program that was sufficiently time consuming that it became very difficult for me to learn anything at all! For me, learning answers without having the time and freedom to come up with and play with questions simply spoils the fun and kills interest in a subject. The hardest thing in science is not learning facts or techniques, but maintaining excitement and motivation and figuring out what is worth doing. I don't see how putting a young kid in university is going to help with this.
There are ways he could keep his mind stimulated intellectually while giving his
social skills an opportunity to develop.
Just because he is going to college at age 8 does not mean he can not have a bit of a social life with others his own age. There is no need for him to even take a full college load.
There could be plenty of time for other extracurricular activies such as baseball, soccer, music lessons or other activities that have
nothing to do with your ability to explain Schroedingers equation.
... Ender.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
per capita the 130-160 IQ bracket (98% percentile to genius level) is much more successful than the 160+ IQ bracket. That's a fact. [I think that answers all those questions I was seeing before about genius level accomplishment]
Reading this article reminded me of the valedictorian of my father's graduating class at Bronx HS of Science. Graduated at age 15, committed suicide at age 18.
It takes more than raw intelligence to get something done. Why do you never find kids that are prodigious at analyzing poetry? Because it takes perspective and maturity of mind, not intelligence. A computer can be taught to describe all of physics and mathematics, but you can't teach it how to make progressive research. And you certainly can't teach a computer to analyze Shakespeare. It has no insight whatsoever. While this young boy has more perspective than a computer, and his encyclopedic memory will give him a leg up, it doesn't mean he'll win the Nobel prize.
Find me a prodigious philosopher, then I might give the kid some credit. You'll never find one though, because philosophy is outside their intellectual realm. Yoo-geun might be able to explain Schroedinger's equations, but ask him to propose an original stance on the problem of Schroedinger's cat and you'll get nothing, no matter how many more IQ points you bestow onto him. That takes maturity of mind, something that prodigies rarely attain.
"Man, I am so unbelievably stupid."
In South Korea, only old people attend college. oh wait ...
I find it amazing what a human infant can learn in just 8 years of life. There is no need for the parents to dumb down their children, just guide them and see how far they are willing to go.
I really hope though that this kid was not pressed by his parents to sit home and study instead of playing. The activity of playing is essential to a child's mental and bodily growth. Whilst playing they realize how the world works and build layers and layers of fundamental knowledge about it. It would be sad if this kid has just missed out on all those, and is pressed to experience the world through theory until he graduates and is left to relax... What if he's pressed by his society to start working right after?
For the parents I would have to say, be careful what you wish for
And for the kiddo I'd have to say, live a little boy, life is not what you read from books alone!
> At eight years old Song is already talking about building flying cars and defying Newton's law of gravity while others his age are attending the first grade.
I'm no genius, but where I grew up kids in first grade were all 5(ish). They start 'em late over there?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
but to be fair, it's also possible that he got scooped up by some secret government / military / illuminati type organization, and is currently reading your post and giggling insanely. the fact that you can't find anything out about him doesn't indicate a damn thing!
---- I was woken up this morning by a face full of fur. Damn cat thought my head made a good pillow.
Is it really that this kid is unique or that his parents just didn't let him watch TV all day?
Maybe we all could have been like Song Yoo-guen if only our parents we able to help us learn at a young age.
From a young age, Einstein loved to play the violin. He was never really good at it, however, and one might imagine what it would have been like for the brilliant mind of this child to be challenged by a piece of wood and catgut. Though I'm no scholar of Einstein's life, I'm sure that somewhere in-between skipping school to play the violin and the various odd jobs he took before becoming a physicist, he learned the value of failure, a crucial skill for anyone who aspires to be someone great.
Unfortunately, this kid will probably be forced to study what he's good at and will never be challenged to learn anything else. Seeing how the adults in his life are treating him, as if raising him with latex gloves, I doubt he's been pushed into an area of study where he'd be bound to fail. Then, one wonders, what will happen when he reaches his mental limit? I fear he will crash and burn.
Not because he is letting his kid go to college (though I would probabally not if I were in his shoes) but because the attitude of "I think it's good to let my son do whatever he wants,". Sometimes you have to force a kid to do something they do not want to do because they need the experience. Usually parents have to force their kids to study and work hard, this father has a duty to make his kid play 'kid games'. Take him to ball games and give him as much as a regular childhood as he can..
They tend not to do well in university however as they usually have not developed the abilty to think critically and independantly.
Oh, man, I needed a laugh. Since when does taking college classes have the first damn thing to do with thinking critically and independently? Having helped an ex out with a marketing class, I can assure you that it is entirely possible to slide through college under the radar, just as one can slide through high school.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In Korea only old people go to first grade.
No comment.
60 minutes recently did a show on this little girl who's impressionist art is going for thousands of dollars. They were exposed. They took a hidden camera and placed it near where she was drawing and low and behold , Dad was barking out directions on how to paint. Yeah ,her dad is a painter.
Most of these kid geniuses never turn out to be what their parents were pushing them for.
Why does this sound like some apocalyptic anime story in the making? Let's see:
- Young genius, probably never connected with peers his own age
- Placed among adults he has no emotional bond to at a time when emotional bonds are essential to social growth
- Plans on making futuristic machines
- In an Asian backdrop
TETSUOOOOOO!!!!
In Korea, only old kids enter first grade.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
All this talk about his developing social skills make not difference. Right now I'm enrolled at a major State university and I personally know that graduating from High School has no bearing on how good your social skills are. At a school of twenty something thousand college students many still don't know how to communicate with others and relate. In my opinion you have to be a willing participant in high school in order to get the social stuff. Many of the computer or science "geeks" in high school never developed their social skills and no one complains when they enter college. Developing your social skills in high school is much of a choice in high school as joining a sports team. You have to be willing to put in the effort.
It's not hard at all to spot. The U.S. system uses a highschool / 12 year system too, not counting pre-school and kindergarden. So it should have been obvious to any /. editor in the US that for a system where people typically graduate from highschool at age 17 or 18 that they don't enter first grade at age 8. Perhaps it requires math skills that many educated in this country (the U.S.) no longer have.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A couple of things. First it's been tried and it failed, miserably. There are many complicated reasons for why it failed as badly as it did, and of course the failure of New Math doesn't mean some sort of reform of the math syllabus might not be beneficial, but I think it shows you really need to be rather careful about all of this.
...high school curriculum struggles to expand into higher dimensions. Why not replace all of this with a proper introduction to linear algebra? Teach kids how to work directly with inner products and cross products instead of bothering with angles and classical trigonometry.
As a mathematician I can tell you that there's something I would call "mathematical maturity" - it's a hard thng to pin down and different people develop it at different rates, but it tends to amount to an ability to really grasp various abstract concepts at a deep conceptual level (rather than just as surface definitions). From my experience teaching math, and those of people I know, I would suggest that large chunks f the program you outline require a little more mathematical maturity than is generally deevloped by most people at the required age.
Secondly:
So you're worried about the inability to expand into hiher dimensions and you want to teach them cross products? Tell me how to take a cross product of vectos in anything other than 3 dimensions. I think what you're after is Geometric Algebra which defines a vector product as a combination of inner (dot) and outer (wedge) products. As soon as you have outer products and exterior algebras working early in the piece then generalisation to hgher dimensions becomes easy.
Next, that doesn't obviate the need for trigonometry in any real way. In case you hadn't noticed trigonometric functions are quite fndamental for a great deal of mathematics.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
There have been prodigees before. Does anybody have info about how they turned out? Did they burn out early? Are they mostly just memory machines without many original ideas? Does skipping grades make a difference?
Table-ized A.I.
When I was little, I believed that I was this kind of child wonder.
The reason was probably because of my experiences with many cultures, and that it took me less than one year to learn a new language fluently.
I also used to know the contents of a couple of encyclopedias by heart, and worked on many electronic/programming projects while the other kids crawled in the mud.
Obviously, time came to teach me that I wasn't really special...
A lot of kids are at least as capable as long as their mind gets put into the correct use, they just did *other* things.
Later, when I was 7, my parents put me in school with other children who didn't know how to read and write even in one language, nor did they know physics, maths or programming.
It only annoyed me for a very brief time, as soon as I got used to it, it didn't really matter.
Those years in school taught me an entirely different facet of the world, social behaviour.
In my books, social competence is the only thing that has brought me this far in life.
I firmly believe that; if it wasn't for the social life and good friends I've had throughout the years, I would have committed suicide during one of the more depressive episodes in my life.
My point is, if you believe that knowledge in one area is more important than another, then it is probable that your understanding of that area is insufficient. Thus, I don't know if skipping him up to higher education is such a good idea, entirely based on the fact that he may miss the opportunity of developing a healthy social life.
If this trend continues and 75% of children are entering university significantly early, the ones that don't will be the abnormal ones. And the heart of the problem is having an upbringing abnormal to the society. It would be difficult to argue that there is some absolute form of normal upbringing.
Spending all that time with your peers in order to learn to socialize is only important in a society of peers who learned to socialize.
I think people are missing an important point: what would have happened to this kid if he wasn't allowed to move as quickly as his mind would take him through school.
IMO a really intelligent person who's held back by society on account of their chronological age and forced to waste years of their life, surrounded by people who aren't nearly their intellectual equals, working on a curriculum that they could do in their sleep, and generally fostering a brooding hatred of mankind, is far more dangerous than if they were allowed to fully occupy themselves on whatever they wanted.
What would you rather have: this kid sitting around reading about super-string theory and flying cars while doted on by his parents / professors / society at large, or sitting in a classroom someplace thinking about how best to build a fuel-air explosive out of household materials and punish the school and society that has kept him back?
If the kid really is as intelligent as a lot of people seem to think he is -- and I haven't met him so I can't say, but obviously he's got a few people convinced if they're going to let him start university -- keeping him in a normal curriculum would have been only slightly more humane than just giving him a frontal lobotomy.
Yes, by letting him blow through what should have been his "childhood," he'll probably be doomed to a life of social ineptitude and will always be something of an oddity, at least for the next 20 years or so. The alternative, however, would not only destroy any potential he might have for contributing usefully to society, but also involves a not insubstantial risk of having him decide to take his frustration out on the people around him.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Remember that Sarah chick from Ireland that was a "crypto prodigy"? Yeah, she fell off the radar something hard. Never published, never pokes up in discussion forums, etc.
a rticipants/flannery.html
Hey, she's been busy.
http://www.wolframscience.com/summerschool/2003/p
"At present she is working for Wolfram Research."
The latest Slashdot meme.
It's hard not to resent these kinds of people, because there are very few people of above average intelligence who feel satisfied with their education as a child. It's annoying when you get to college and take a course and can't figure out why you couldn't have learned the same thing when you were five or ten years younger. Maybe there was an 'advanced track' at school, but if you could exceed beyond that that there was no where else to go- you weren't a child prodigy, but just a few more steps up and you could have gone a bit further a bit earlier and had a much more satisfying education.
There's a few comments here wondering how people like this turn out, just off pure speculation I would say that people who do end up relatively successful will downplay their prodigy childhood a great deal so people won't be biased against them, and they have plenty of colleagues of the same capabilities who went through school at a normal pace. The prodigies just got a few years head start on the rest.
Perhaps there would be a great savings to the education system if it were more supportive of advanced learning- perhaps many people could go into industry earlier and reduce the cost of the education by being in it for less years and paying taxes for more years before retirement, even if having to support more advanced education would raise costs in the short term. But since the whole U.S. funding scheme for public education is so screwed up I doubt we'll improve things anytime soon.
..this boy, is not going to be able to hold his licour like a propper college student!
I hear Gary Coleman will be reprising his role in the made-for-TV movie.
If he creates flying cars I for one will be on his side. I just hope they are cheap. Prof
Obviously he's the one who gets to decide what happiness is for himself, and whether he has found it. What is more important than that? It is too bad then that Paganini wasn't able to kick his fathers ass.
I'm not trying to speak ill of her. But I'd expect more from this genius crypto prodigy. I mean Dr. Wagner has more publications to his name and he hasn't really had any press the way she has had [he's been cited I think a few times but that's it].
To be fair I think the press is to blame and not her in this respect.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It seems safer to me to send a precocious 8-year-old to college than middle school or high school. Going to middle school at 8 would be suicide for the kid, and high school would be only a little bit better. But I think college students are quite a bit more respectful. Let's be real: what kind of socializing really goes on in the classrooms of a college? And this is physics we're talking about, not Communications. I'm a math major and I can very easily go a day without speaking to a single classmate if I so desire. Just because we take classes from the school doesn't mean we have to get involved in sports and frat parties. If I were a parent I would be completely behind my kid going to college at 8, but I would also very strongly encourage the kid to get involved in extra-curricular activies such as baseball with kids his own age. Being able to immerse yourself in the things you love and not be emotionally abused by sadistic students of the public schools would be an excellent way to build optimism and a strong self-esteem in a kid. I think we're all a little bit scarred by the public education system, and I don't think it's just a part of growing up.
Duh. Sarcasm, learn it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
He completed his elementary, junior-high, and high school curricula in just nine months, something that usually takes 12 years
Have you ever considered what you're taught in primary school? No offense, but it's not that much. I've actually come to feel rather bitter that there was no good route presented to me to skip through primary school at an early point. I wouldn't have done it at six or anything, but certainly there were timeframes of my education that I felt were merely teachers endlessly harping the same points at me repeatedly.
I really ended giving up frequently in high school, mostly in an act of throwing my arms up in frustration at the system. I even got called into guidance to explain why every score on a test outside of my school system (I got high SAT, PSAT, IQ, aptitude... whatever) scores didn't match up with my scores INSIDE the school system ('A' student, but no valedictorian). Simply put, I had been passed over for the gifted program (strangely, since I was in the JHU gifted program), and had not been super-accelerated in math (just accelerated) despite flawless test scores. I felt like "well, what the hell will it take to get where I should be?" for several years, and then I just stopped trying, because the answer was that nothing was going to change things in that system.
I feel really bad saying that, since I had a few exceptional teachers, but in aggregate, public school wasn't that hot. A few exceptional educators are now in charge where I went to school... perhaps they'll make things better, but I think that the entire concept behind the education system is a little flawed.
It's been perhaps the past year that I've managed to get back on track academically. Now I'm definately getting into a reasonably good PhD program.
I think that just about everyone would be more successful if school was about teaching kids what they were ready to know, rather than putting them all in one big room, teaching them at the same pace, and evaluating them as they go. Only people who learn at that pace succeed. People who are faster or slower never catch up. The simple fact is that people are all different. You can't paint with such a broad brush.
I read the article which clearly states that Korea uses a 12 year school system including high school. Perhaps you could at least read the article, or at least refrain from telling those who do what they can't know or accuse them of making assumptions.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Leela: And what's your scientific basis for thinking that?
Cubert: I'm 12.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Beyond being able to hear the different sounds, I really doubt that it's that much easier to learn a language as a kid. Even if it is, I don't think it's a one sided bet. Of the kids whom I've met who for natural reasons were raised bilingual from the start (e.g. immigrants who try to speak English, but end up speaking something else at home), about as many end up having significant problems in one or both languages as those who excel in both languages. But that's purely anecdotal.
You're making several assumptions.
1. Graduating highschool at age 20 is not proper.
2. "first grader at elementary school" in Korea means the same thing it does in the U.S.
For all we knew, there might be 2 grades before "first grade at elementary school," or they might attend school at a later age than we do.
Of course, this website spells out their education system pretty clearly and proves that it is an error in the article.
Elementary School, grades 1-6: Age 6-11
Middle School, grades 7-9: Age 12-14
High School, grades 10-12: Age 15-17
So, if this boy were following the regular schedule for education, he would probably be in 2nd or 3rd grade (depending on when his birthday is and what the cut-off dates are for starting grades in Korea).
What?
...make one feel really REALLY stupid.
The upside of this, he's never EVER going to get laid. lol.
Get that boy a Spongebob pocket protector.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
While I am not personally familiar with the Korean school system, I do know that slightly less than half of Swedish first graders turn 8 by the end of the school year--grades are determined by calendar years, and you start 1st grade the year you turn 7, so if your birthday is before mid-June, you will be 8 by the end of the year.
Sweden also has a 12-year school system, FWIW. But I will stop mocking your typical American assumptions about the rest of the world now.
(Disclaimer: I am also American. I just happen to be very well acquainted with the rest of the world, having lived there for >16 years...)
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
Has anyone watched this series. Geeks or Otaku as they are called in Japan and Korea have a hard time of it. The only time they get noticed is if they become president of a company/self made millionaire at the age of 14 or 16. Once that happens every Japanese or Korean mother will be throwing her daughter to the lucky boy. Remember in SE Asia a successful Otaku can do anything he wants and get away with it.
Fish....More than just sushi
Children enter school in February, not September like in the states. Also Koreans add one year to their age. So this kid is actually 7 and almost 8 at the time of the article. It states that he was born November 1997. And age 8 is when Koreans start mandatory schooling. However some kids start school before this mandatory start period.
... and proud of it!
Seriously though. Final year of school in 1989 (I was 17) achieved 10th place in national science olympiad (About 40000 top students) and amoungst the top 10 that attended the London international youth science fortnight from my country that year I was the only one from a public school. My mom had no money for private tutors or expensive schools. I also wrote a 3D CAD program on my Amiga at the same time... all with only my prescribed math books at the time.
Fortunately I discovered music otherwise I would have been totally without social grace. Music saved me! Yay Goth!
Impressive but they had better hurry and work with this kid. In four years he is going to go through puberty with asain co-eds everywhere. I know at that age and conditions working would be nigh impossible.
- When?
and-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My high school (Adlai E Stevenson) had a similar incident with the football team and bananas. They treated it like it was a PR nightmare and went on the full-court hush-it-up-press. And apparently it worked -- I can't easily Google mention of the story unless I go out looking for stories about hazing instead of stories about SHS football.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
How about New York City?
+++ATH0
Facinating...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams