How Do You Educate a Prodigy?

Nethead writes "When he was 8 years old, Gabriel See got a score on the math part of the SAT that would be the envy of most high-school seniors. When he was 10, he worked on T-cell receptor research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He's built a Genomic Lab Liquid Handling System out of Legos. He's studied chaos theory, string theory, quantum mechanics and nuclear science. He's 13 now. How do you fit him into the American school system?"

Comments

Davidson Institute

[Rakishi]

Contact this place, they can probably give you better advice than most anyone on slashdot or anywhere really:
Davidson Institute

They're funded by the Davidson family who after making a mint in education software (enough to buy Blizzard in the 90s) moved onto more directly charitable endeavors. The institute runs a school for the gifted in nevada, provide nationwide help for gifted children and also give out a yearly fellowship. Probably other programs as well.

Basically, they know more about all the options that exist than anyone here and are very friendly people. The last one is key, btw, since some programs are run by bureaucratic cretins who actually consider it a waste of their time to help people. These people aren't like that.

I could try to summarize the options I know of but, frankly, it'd be an incomplete and a waste of time compared to what people who deal with this full time can tell you.

Re:Normal School will work fine

[turing_m]

You raise some good points. It is certain that as your own intelligence increases to where you find yourself smarter than all but a fraction of a percent of the population, the ideas you have will be mostly correct but most other people won't be able to understand you. This can be incredibly frustrating.

Other than restrict yourself to using only your mundane ideas, you need some way for people to take you seriously. This means credentials (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer, MBA), and/or it means making enough money that you can afford to hire and fire until you find others who will take you seriously. Or living with other similarly smart people who can understand you. Sucks, but that's the way the world works.

Also, be very careful about uncovering the BS that the average Joe believes in. You will find a lot in life that everyday folks believe which won't stand up to scrutiny. However, think long and hard before you argue against it publicly, as you either face breaking taboos or interfering with the interests of powerful people.