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.

Comments

Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

He's so nerdy that he won't be getting laid at all in college.

OK I give up

[guardiangod]

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.

Re:OK I give up

[tct25]

Hang on, explaining or regurgitating what his parents told him? All this smacks of publicity stunt... both for the anxious parents (it'll help junior in our hyper-competitive society) and a middling Korean university (at best).

Re:OK I give up

[servognome]

It's a good point, the difference between intelligence and wisdom. It's relatively easy to learn something, even Schrodinger's equation. It's far more difficult to try and explain the implications, or to formulate your own perspective. Breakthroughs in knowledge come from experience and creating your own version of the universe, not what is taught.

Re:OK I give up

[SnowZero]

and a middling Korean university

Prodigies usually attend universities near home, so that they can still live with their family. The quality of the school is secondary, as they can always move on later if they outgrow it. My university won't even let students live on campus below a certain age, and they probably aren't socially ready for it anyway. One of my best friends from undergrad started taking classes at 12 and entered as a freshman at 14. She wasn't allowed to live on campus until sophomore year.

In a way, I'm glad to not be in that category, as its quite difficult for such students. Their intelligence at school is well advanced of their social development, and nobody treats them normally anyway. Our society is set up so that things only line up for regular people.

Re:OK I give up

[crmartin]

I *was* one of those 8 year olds in college. Feel a little sorry for him, 'cause he's caught in a hard place: as someone else observed, he will stand out and have to deal with all sorts of issues in his college as a result; on the other hand, it's not like he can have anything like a normal life in a normal school, either.

But if his experience is anything like mine, he's *not* regurgitating --- which if you think about it woulldn't work anyway. (Think about the Chinese Room Problem.) If he can "regurgitate" well enough to read what he needs to read, answer questions, and pass tests, how is that *different* from having "really" learned it?

Re:OK I give up

[colmore]

You know, I had a chance to start College at age 14, not quite 8, but still. I'm really glad I didn't take it.

Sure, highschool sucked. But highschool sucked for a whole lotta people. I read a lot on my own time, and I don't think humanity was deprived of any potential fruits of my intellect while I was spending my efforts avoiding football games and vainly attempting to figure out how to talk to girls.

When I started college at the normal age, I had a blast and did well academically.

I remember reading an article about what prodigies were up to 20 years later (looking at what happened to a bunch of kids who'd gone into college before puberty, which apparently there was a rash of in the 70s) and none of them were doing anything *that* earth-shaking. All smart men and women, sure, but no nobel prizes.

Think of it this way: You're a professor starting a new research project. Which early PhD student do you want to be your research assistant, the 24 year old with an apartment and a settled life, or some kid who'se just started the roughest years of puberty? They both have the same amount of education, and the kid is way more impressive *for his age* but what the hell do you care about someone being impressive for their age? You want work to get done. I really suspect this kind of thing happens more to stoke parental egos than anything else. It just doesn't make that much sense to get so far off of the clock that your society expects of you.

There are a whole lot of square pegs out there, and the standard education system is nothing but round holes. Some parents give their kids pills or push them onto the chearleading team in order to make them round pegs. Some parents look around frantically for square holes for their precious square pegs. I personally am a big believer in the value of spending a few years getting whacked in the head by a hammer as society tries to cram you down the damn round hole. The adult world isn't that much different, and you learn to deal with it without developing a massive ego or the belief that nothing is right if it doesn't feel like a special magical little cradle created just for unique little you.

Blow Job

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Blow Job

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really have to tell us what your mother gave you as a graduation present?

Re:Blow Job

[Hognoxious]

It's no secret - she gives the same to everyone.

Bit early

[ivan kk]

8 is too young, the liver hasn't fully developed yet.

with all due respect

[dermusikman]

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.

Re:ah well

[MoonFog]

Is this worse than drafting or buying a very young sportsman? Whether you play soccer in the English Premier League at the age of 16 or you get a PhD at the age of 16 you will not be able to grow up in the same way as others, but with that kind of talent comes certain issues. If they hold him back and force him to "be his age", it will most likely severly hurt his intellectual growth.

Re:In Korea only old people?

[marcello_dl]

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.

That's a really intersting question

[SuperKendall]

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?

Re:That's a really intersting question

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can find it, "The Prodigy" by Amy Wallace is an excellent one, though out of print now. It details the life of William James Sidis, who lived around the turn of the 20th century. This guy was smart beyond all fucking belief. Among other things, he was speaking at 6 months, had taught himself Latin by 3 years, spoke 7 languages fluently by 7, lectured about 4-dimensional bodies at Harvard at 11, and graduated from the same at 16. And a shitload of other such feats.

He wrote some academic papers and books under pseudonyms that went wholly unnoticed and un-cared about, even with such topics as postulating black holes well before anyone else. He never had a girlfriend. Never had sex. Never really had much in the way of friends at all. From his twenties onward he completely denied any special intelligence and only worked in manual labor types of jobs, most notably as a calculator operator, wherein he would do all of the calculations in his head and so have most of the day free. The press would openly mock him whenever they could find him.

His life's passion was collecting streetcar transfer tickets.

And the scariest part: it's non-fiction.

Like many other kids...

[Dark Coder]

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.

Re:Like many other kids...

[HappyEngineer]

Being socially well adjusted is overrated.

Hah!

[msormune]

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.

Something Missing?

[mosb1000]

"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. . .

Re:Something Missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

In South Korea, one language dialect is used to speak to peers and another to speak to those who are older.

And it is much more difficult than simply injecting a 'sir' into the sentence.

I visited South Korea for about a decade when I was a kid and can still speak fluently to peers--but I don't dare speak Korean to elder Koreans because I'd end up royally pissing them off by not using the proper dialect.

Isn't it amazing how the phrase "lacking in his ability to communicate with adults" takes on a whole new meaning when given the context?

This reminds me of a similar situation we have with lack of context regarding the words and phrases used in the Bible or other religious texts. Yet people try to infect others with their misinterpretations and start wars when others disagree with them.

Hmmmm

[Jesus IS the Devil]

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.

Re:Hmmmm

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends. Some go on to lead lives of great note. Mozart would be one. He was truly a prodigy in the classical sense of the word, that is a child (meaning pre-teen) that can truly excel in something at an adult level. Many don't, and you never hear about them because of that, unless you dig through psycology jounrals on the topic. Also probably depends on if the kid is really a prodigy or not. There are all kinds of precocious kids that perform well above the norm and develop quickly. However it's very rare to find a child that truly and fully not only performs at an adult level, but excels at it.

In fact I'm not really sure that there ARE any child prodigies on record that aren't a prodigy in mathematics or music. Admittedly this isn't something I've given a lot of study to, but whenever I've been shown a prodigy in another field, they don't meet the criteria. It's a teenager or young adult that achieved something eairly, or a child that's exceptional, but not up to excellent adult standards.

I imagine that will play a role for this boy. If he's just very smart, he may find that being thrown into the adult world is simply too much for him. If he's a true prodigy, then it shouldn't be any problem, intellectually at least. If that's the case, teh big factor will be emotional development. Growing up is hard for most of us, and he's going to have it much worse. It has to be amazingly difficult to have the intellectual capacity of an adult but the emotions and needs of a child.

Re:Hmmmm

[yeOldeSkeptic]

I took a course in BS Physics and I had a classmate like that. He entered University at the age of 10 direct from grade 5. His teachers noticed him sleeping most of the time in classes but when tested he knew more than his teachers. He was accelerated to a special science high school for above-average kids but after 6 months his teachers told his parents that they have nothing more to teach him. He was then sent directly to university where he was enrolled in the BS Math, BS Physics and MS Physics courses at the same time! He is good! He can compute sines and cosines in his head and can sum a taylor series without writing anything down. When he became my lab mate, we would use him as a calculator because he can compute much faster than our electronic calculators. During the time spent entering numbers on the calculator he would be able to tell us the results. We just decided to call out the numbers to him rather than have the calculator do it for us. He is a walking calculator. That was more than twenty years ago. Ever since graduating from university I have sought to find out if he has somehow made a significant contribution to physics commensurate with his abilities. After scouring newspapers and the university newsletters, I have found none. It was a disappointment. I don't know if going to university at such an early age was the right thing he did. Obviously, he was far too advanced to stay in grade 5. However, I doubt it if being forced to study in the university at his age was the right approach. He was interviewed by a newspaper once when he was my classmate. He was asked how he felt about being accelerated from grade 5 to university in less than a year. I can't forget what he said in the interview. He said he felt lonely because he has no friends in the university. All the others guys want to talk about is their girlfriends while all he wanted to do was build a paper airplane and sail it across the classroom.

Re:ah well

[HappyEngineer]

Why do so many people think it's so awesome to be a kid? Being a kid sucks! Life doesn't get good until you get into college. It sounds to me like this kid is skipping the crappy parts of growing up.

Re:Annoying

[arvindn]

I'm from India, and we have kids doing this a lot back there, especially in math. I once talked to a math professor who's met some of these kids and who actually knows what he's talking about, and he says most of the time they are not even remotely qualified to be enter university, even though they might be somewhat precocious. Usually the parents make the kid do it because they are publicity whores, and the university plays along for the same reason.

I see..

[deep44]

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.

Re:Annoying

[addie]

As an English teacher in Korea, I can assure you that this isn't unusual. Most of my students go to school from 8 am to 8 pm every day, and come home to study. Missing out on developing social skills and never learning how to have fun is the norm, rather than the exception. That aside, you're absolutely right that putting this child in University is not at all the best thing for him. Until Korea's voracious appetite for over-education calms, there will only be more of this. Someday they'll notice a correlation between time spent learning/working to their suicide rate.

That said, many schools are phasing out school on Saturday over the next two to three years.

How did his parents raise him?

[brian0918]

Did they follow the same methods that produced the genius of William James Sidis? (similar childhood, IQ estimated between 250 and 300)

Poor kid

[Jessta]

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

Where are the older ones?

[p0]

From time to time we hear about such brilliant minds. But what happens when they grow up? Was anyone from here a child prodigy?

Flying Cars? Or rushing Zerglings...

[Mingco]

Give a year, two max. He'll be a master StarCraft player, and all that physics education will go down the drain.

Say what?

[Quiet_Desperation]

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.

Re:Say what?

[Guppy06]

"Worst case is Columbine."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason Columbine made copy is because they were pointing their guns at someone other than themselves for once.

Re:Annoying

[PingPongBoy]

If high school was no challenge why would university be a challenge? After all it's geared to average learning for people who survived public school.

The whole idea is to have an effective algorithm for acquiring knowledge. Bingo, you don't need school. What you need is a bit of time to learn (i.e., run the algorithm) and objectives or problems or whatever. In other words, after a year or two, graduate and get on with life.

Now can we have the 10 DVD set of Educate Yourself This Week by Watching Nonstop? After a person goes through school, how much of that knowledge is ever applied? It all seems so irrelevant. Let me see, the last time I applied the quadratic equation ... Was it that long ago that I balanced a chemical equation?

By the way, we never really explained to you, school is just an IQ test. It seems a bit of a waste of 12+ years. Why not just launch kids straight into university right out of kindergarten - in other words, make graduating really count?

The one thing about university is it's rigor - failure is not tolerated well. The age of the student means nothing in first year. Even someone 80 years old is totally comfortable.

But, you know, starting kids into university young may be a good thing. A lot of people don't know how to communicate well, and first year university would be mostly about communications since 5 and 6 year olds really have no language skills. A university-standard education on communications would do wonders for the world. At any rate, it would cause wonders.

Your question has been studied

[cerebis]

Your question is a good once and it has been studied. I believe that current science believes that the brain doesn't completely mature until around 20 years of age. In that intervening time, between birth and full maturity, there is a potential for one brain to develop more quickly in certain aspects than the average, and consequently produce very high IQ children. However, as everyone's brain reaches maturity, that gap tends to narrow dramatically. That's not an argument that smart kids don't become smart adults, just that extraordinarily intelligent kids don't seem to maintain that same gap on the majority in adulthood.

Basically, people make the mistake of treating the brain's functional power as a linear equation (something like),

P(t) = m t + Po.

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.

Re:ah well

[paul248]

Earth has billions of people on it.

Is it really a problem if a few take an uncommon path? His childhood won't be "better" or "worse" than yours, just different.

Re:ah well

[RedBear]

So much for letting the kid grow up.

I really wish I could fathom why this kind of crap gets modded +5, Insightful. WTF does that comment even mean? You think you know these people? Do you know the kid personally? Do you know the parents? Do you know the society? You think you know the best way to raise such a unique human being, if he is indeed that unique?

But know, I'm sure you're right. What they should have done was give him a lobotomy so he could grow up with his "peers" and have a "normal" childhood wasting twelve years of his life learning how to "socialize". Because God knows socializing is infinitely more important than challenging yourself and using your given abilities to their fullest.

Honestly, what is wrong with so many people that makes them want to tear the kid down and force the parents to push him through the same mold as everyone else? If he passed all the damn tests for the lower grades legitimately what exactly is wrong with letting him (letting, not forcing) further his education in order to work toward his dreams? Yeah, an 8-year-old going to college is going to have a difficult time learning about "life", but as far as I can tell learning about real life is hard no matter what path you walk. As long as he has a good support system and really is super-intelligent he should do just as well as any of us. What is with this subtle (or not so subtle) show of disgust as if he is being used or mistreated somehow, and this seeming urge to stuff the kid back in the box marked "NORMAL CHILD"?

I for one am excited by what this says about the potential for human intelligence, if it turns out to be for real and not just some publicity stunt or fluke of eiditic memory or something. It's really an amazing thing. And I'm so irritated when I think about all the students in this country who could have been done with school within a few years if they hadn't been chained to the almost completely inflexible modern school system, where doing your time seems to be more important than learning anything or challenging yourself to find your potential abilities.

Give the kid a break. He'll either be able to hack it or he won't, and he's either a bonafide super-genius or he isn't. The truth will come in due time, either way. It's not your problem, and it's not your place to be judging people halfway around the world based on one little article. I suppose you'll all be pissed off again when CERN hires him right after he gets his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at age 10-1/2. How awful. Poor kid. What a horrible thing it would be for his dream to come true. Gack. Give ME a break, and get off the high horse(s).

i've never heard of him either...

[Jippy T Flounder]

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!