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

Why fit in?

[Hentes]

He seems to learn enough on his own.

You don't

[cjcela]

You do not 'fit' a kid like that, but rather do your best to understand what his needs are, even if these are unconventional. In terms of learning, he will do well on his own, you just need to support him with the appropriate resources. What he will likely need help with is with developing healthy social interactions and integrating to society. It you focus just on his intellect, he will suffer later on.

There is no American Public School System

[davidwr]

There are 50 states, each with their own rules, not to mention Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and other territories and possessions.

Within most states there are dozens to hundreds of local school systems with varying degrees of autonomy. Then there are private schools.

In some school systems education quality varies widely from school to school. Even within schools you can get wide teacher-to-teacher variation and even class-to-class variation with the same teacher, same course, and same grade-level.

Re:How about something besides science?

[NatasRevol]

Sign him up for sports. Make him play for 2 years. Make him learn to be a teammate. Make him learn to be a human.