Slashdot Mirror
11-Year-Old Graduates With Degree In Astrophysics
Gotenosente writes "11-Year-Old Moshe Kai Cavalin has graduated from East Los Angeles Community College with a degree in astrophysics. 'At a time when his peers are finishing 6th grade, this only child of a Taiwanese mother and an Israeli father is trying on a cap and gown preparing to graduate with a 4.0 from community college.' The article continues with a quotation by the boy, hinting at his modesty, 'I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way.' Daniel Judge, Cavalin's statistics professor, says, 'Most students think that things should be harder than they are and they put these mental blocks in front of them and they make things harder than they should be. In the case of Moshe, he sees right through the complications.'"
I could barely tie my shoe laces when I was 11 let alone come out with: "I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way." That's a very special comment right there.
"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way."
Clearly he has never read Youtube comments.
Brilliant little kid, I must say. And I am very glad that he is given the recognition he deserves.
However, I'd like to point out that every time we see an extraordinary case like his, there are countless other examples that are half way there. What I mean is that why do only the "super-genius" kids get to advance faster in schools and colleges? What about those people that are smart and dedicated enough to pass through say high-school in 1-2 years, rather than the usual 5-6. Instead these people are forced to stay 5-6 years doing highschool. Same thing with college.
Not everyone is meant to fit into the average of society. That is why we allow people to repeat grade levels and university subjects. So why not go the other way and allow above average students, or students with above average dedication to finish faster. Sounds like a double standard to me.
"I don't consider myself a genius because there are 6.5 billion people in this world and each one is smart in his or her own way." That's a very special comment right there.
It's also an incredibly shallow triumph of an Olympic grade platitudinous pandering politically correct aphorism. The kid's teacher says he can "see right through the complications," but he's still been brainwashed into thinking that he's not unusual. What a shame. And how typical.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hum, being so precocious, he is probably very intelligent. Why then go to community college? I am not entirely familiar with US education system, but I was under the impression that these places were considered much less challenging.
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Appreciating others' skills doesn't make it impossible to recognise your own . . .
I think as we grow more aware of the extraordinary talents and focuses of those that are on the autism spectrum, we will see more of these fast-track through college kids. People with autism spectrum disorders tend to develop intellectually much faster, but when it comes to dealing with the real world, are usually way behind their peers. One big clue is that he sees no purpose to games. The unpredictability is probably overwhelming to him at this point in his development. If he has motor-coordination issues, that could also make him dislike sports.
So, we'll come to accept people like this for who they are, give them an outlet for their early intellectual development, and also provide a society that supports the fact that emotionally they may be far behind their peers. That sounds like a much better world than one that treats ASD's as a disease or freakshow. While is IQ may qualify as genius, I hope his parents realize that he may very well be disabled in other areas of functioning, and give him the proper support. Too often, people like this feel enormous pressure, and get no support for their weaknesses.
Sorry this is off-topic but this makes me boil:
Saying "I'm not a genius because there are 6.5 billion people" is not humility, it's selflessness. He's 11, I don't blame him, but why does the article extol this as some kind of virtue. There's nothing virtuous in making deliberately biased assessments against oneself. Humility is about objectively acknowledging fallibility. Saying "Indeed I am very precocious and I do qualify as a "child prodigy", however, you should refrain from drawing too much conclusions as many geniuses were late bloomers, etc". That's humility. Self-dissing isn't.
\u262D = \u5350
Why is it a shame? If he was raised to think he was very different from everyone else he might have feigned stupid to fit in. Regardless he'll probably discover in his teenage years that he lacks peers and seek to remedy the situation somehow. Actually with his current ambition to be an actor he may end up facing just as much difficulty as anyone else - and it's not a shame to waste a genius mind on acting. Everyone is entitled to attempt to succeed at their own dreams.
Didn't your mother ever teach you to not use a $20 word where a $5 word will do? ;)
Our social peers? Allow me to laugh derisively. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Being different in school SUCKS ASS. At least in college people are sufficiently grown up to not be assholes 100 percent of the time.
Social peers is all to often a nice waying of saying "hang out with the half wits". There is a lot of value being put on "functioning well in groups" that for certain people mean they get to learn that they really don't want to be part of any group that they haven't selected for themselves.
I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it -- Groucho Marx
Daniel Judge, Cavalin's statistics professor says, "Most students think that things should be harder than they are and they put these mental blocks in front of them and they make things harder than they should be.
I've heard it before. It's not the teacher's inability to teach, but it is the student's fault. The "Fear of Math" syndrome. People need to wake up to the reality that success is largely based on environment. If people, for example, don't have access to astro-physics books, then they are unlikely to be astrophysicists. And educational attainment has more to do with one's parents and up-bringing than with one's own inherent intellectual ability.
I'd be more impressed if this child didn't have access to books and preferential treatment from parents and teachers and succeeded on his own to become an astrophysicist. I would also prefer to see professor Daniel Judge fired from his job for his inability to teach students.
The option to advance faster is available, but recommended against. School isn't just about mental development, it is social development as well, and that is something that seems to be harder to accelerate.
When I was going in to first grade, my parents were offered the option to skip me ahead a grade. Whatever test it was I took showed I was far enough ahead to skip a grade. Apparently it actually showed I was far enough ahead to skip more than one, but one was all they offered. However my mom (a teacher) decided against it for social reasons.
I'm glad she did. I'm sure I would have done fine academically, school was never all that great a challenge for me. I probably could have skipped grades a few times and graduated at a young age... but to what end? I had enough trouble with socialization, as many geeks do, that wouldn't have helped at all. Especially since one valuable lesson I learned in school is yes, maybe you are smarter than many people, but that doesn't make you better than them. Don't look down at someone just because they aren't as smart as you.
Also, what do you do if you graduate early? University would suck. You'd be practically the only non-adult there. Just loaf around the house for a few years? That's not a good idea.
So really I think it makes sense to keep kids in school until a regular graduation time. Instead, just offer opportunities to learn more. My school was pretty good about there. There was advanced placement classes in some subjects, plenty of extra curricular activities and so on. I think that's a much better idea than trying to rush through school and then be a minor, yet be expected to enter the real world. The growing up part is important too. No need to rush it. You've got lots and lots of time to be an adult.
As for university, I dunno about where you went but where I went you could complete it as fast as you could handle. You can CLEP a lot of stuff, and with a dean's permission take as many units as would fit in your schedule. Completing a degree in 2 years would be an amazing amount of work, but perfectly doable if you could handle the load.
You see this happen all the time they push kids who are really smart so hard they fizzle out. I went to a special school for "gifted" children and most of my friends were burned out by their mid 20's. Not to mention depressed because they didn't make their first million by the age of 25. I "gave up" dropped contact with all my smart friends and got a "civil service" job. Ignorance truly is bliss, if your not freaked out by the state of the world you probably don't understand what is going on. The world doesn't know what to do with gifted people and gifted people are sideswiped by the fact that even though logically and by all reason they should succeed they don't. The world just doesn't work that way.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
Bull. Shit.
He's spouting off what his teachers and parents feed to him.
I can just picture a middle-aged english teacher complaining about kids not reading anymore, and then having "film fridays" for her class.
Remember, it's educational if you call it a film, it's deplorable trash and a waste of time if it's a movie.
I am not sure why this is newsworthy. When I was a freshman in college, one of the kids on our floor was a 14 year old starting his PHd in Computer Science. He already had his bachelors from UC Berkeley. He fit in ok, and we properly corrupted him, and he had his PHd by 17. I know other kids who did similar things. The academic work is not THAT difficult for lots of younger kids. Socially it is a bit harder, but many of the kids who decide to go to college do so not just because they are academically ready, but because they have trouble fitting in with kids their own age. Hell, I took many college courses while I was in middle and high school. We even talked about skipping grades, but I liked the social and athletic aspects of middle and highschool too much. Sure, the work was easy... which gave me more time to mess around and be a kid. For these kids, they clearly do not enjoy the social experience of highschool, so they skip it. It isn't like the kid is some sort of mad genius.
Being smarter than the vast majority of the population does not mean you have, or ever will, accomplish anything. Better the kid learn humility and challenge himself than become the kind of person who whines about political correctness on the Internet.
Read up on John Von Neumann.
At six years old, he memorized pages out of phone books faster than most people could read them as a party trick. As an adult, he invented modern computer memory architecture, made foundational advances in quantum mechanics, invented the entire field of game theory, and helped work on the nuclear bomb.
No, no. You're assuming he actually means it. More likely is the possibility that when he says "I'm not a genius because there are 6.5 billion people with unique gifts" he knows it isn't true, but is a good way to keep the other 11-year-olds from kicking his smart ass.
No. He is simply smart enough to know that no one will like him unless he is modest about his accomplishments.
What do you think people would say about him if he said "Im the greatest of all time. Divide like a butterfly, add like a bee. Your all stupidheads!"
> he'll probably discover in his teenage years that he lacks peers
He seems to be doing better with relating to girls than many slashdotters:
http://www.daylife.com/photo/076m3k4g056Fe
So maybe his social skills are OK.
A whole pile of degrees, and zero real-life experience.
School ain't the be-all end-all of a person's career.
Here we go again with the "real world" paradigm. Would you rather he did pot, get drunk and have all sorts of cool stories to tell at parties? Or get a few dozen year-long dead end jobs before settling into his permanent cubicle? Although, you are correct in one respect - he should learn as soon as possible that the real world has too many idiots in it (not referring to parent since I don't know his views on this matter) who will devalue any of his intellectual accomplishments unless it can be made into a Lifetime movie while deifying pseudo-celebrities whose only contribution to society is an entertaining way to dig themselves out of shit holes of their creation.
Much better that he finds something he really likes, work really hard at it and build a career for himself. Just because most kids can't make up their minds until they are old farts who think they are still young doesn't mean that this budding genius should deliberately feign indecisiveness so that his peers feel good about themselves. (this last part was a response to several comments thrown around, NOT to parent).
Appreciating others' skills doesn't make it impossible to recognise your own . . .
But being unable to differentiate between varying levels of insight, discipline, practiced skills, quick-wittedness and such, or being unwilling to admit that you can tell the difference - that doesn't say much for the ol' critical thinking skills, or for how much one values honesty. Telling every under achieving glue sniffer that he's just as smart - in his own way, of course - as an 11 year old with a degree in astrophysics is... a big, fat, culturally corrisive lie. And telling the kid who could become a well polished beacon of reason once he matures a bit and learns to apply himself that, never mind, in his own way he's already just as smart as the kid in question? That's poisoning the well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think he probably knows he's special. But he probably also wants to be a kid and enjoy life with his friends. He probably knows that some of them play sports quiet well and others are incredibly adept socially. He understands that we are all different.
When I was going to high school my best friend at the time couldn't read or write very well - and as for math - he was terrified of it. At 17 he had already pulled his first complete engine and transmission apart and rebuilt them without a single book. He went on to build a business out of rebuilding transport truck transmissions and has about 30 employees under him. He specialized in this because, with his reading skills, he would never be able to become a licensed mechanic. In school, he was always teased as the 'stupid' guy because he, well, from a school standpoint, was.
We've also all met people who are smart as hell but socially inept. Can't make friends and have no idea of what to talk about or how to keep a conversation going. And conversely, people who you like and feel like you are friends with 5 minutes after you meet them. You feel good every time you talk to them. They just make it work and you don't know how.
Skill sets are varied. And he knows it. And for you to call him shallow because he appreciates that and is modest is - well, you said it best - Shallow.
Didn't your mother ever teach you to not use a $20 word where a $5 word will do? ;)
Nonsense. There is absolutely nothing wrong with improving the vocabulary of preliterate Slashdot readers, and the practice should be actively encouraged.
We see far too much of the "This is Spot. See Spot run." type of narrative in most text these days (actively encouraged by MBAs with an excessive tendency towards Powerpointisation and the attention span of a flea), and there is no reason to apologise for enriching others' lives with interesting language.
In fact, I would suggest that it would be beneficial to everybody to spend at least an hour or so every so often reading some really great poetry (John Donne comes uppermost in my mind, but whatever rocks one's boat). And no, I don't mean as part of any school curriculum (unless you want to): if it isn't done for "fun", there is absolutely no point in it.