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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?"
He seems to learn enough on his own.
You could possibly fit the entire American school system into him.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The plural of Lego is 'Lego' damn it!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
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.
You could possibly fit the entire American school system into him.
Except that he's highly focused on sciences. How about some history, art, music, or languages for a few years? Heaven forbid the kid learn something besides science.
Speaking as someone who works with a lot of very smart people focused in very narrow fields: the kid's going to be a lot happier if he has at least some general background.
Didn't any of you read Ender's Game? Remember how, among other things, Ender often longs to just be a kid?
Please help metamoderate.
Whatever he does, make sure there are plenty of girls around. A kid like this needs to have some experience being around them, before hormones hit and he realizes he has no idea how to talk to them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I remember graduating with a couple VERY smart individuals, at least according to school measurements. However, once they entered the "real world" they got quite a shock learning that their high IQ and 4.0 GPAs meant almost nothing because they had very little street smarts. They spent all of their time trying to please their parents and teachers but they had not learned what it takes to actually survive.
My point is, we need to make sure kids like this learn how to do things that translate into a means to not only make a good living for themselves, but also contribute to society in general.
giggity
I took college classes from 9 to 13, then my parents pulled me out entirely. There were good and bad aspects to my path. At 13, actual graduate math classes were a bit over my head, and I felt a lot of pressure and feelings of failure because I couldn't quite hack them. Also, being isolated was hard, and it wasn't until I came back to grad school at 22 that I felt I developed my social skills properly. But being allowed to focus on intellectual pursuits was really nice in a way, and I actually look back on that fondly. Now I have my PhD and work for Google, and I do geeky things for fun. As one example, I'm noodling on keyboards, and, being me, I'm writing a DX7 synthesizer emulator. Most people consider the math of it to be impenetrably difficult, but, I'm like, "oh, _Bessel_ functions, I can dig that shit!"
I hope he does well and finds a path that makes him happy. One thing my parents did was keep me out of the newspapers (and off the front page of Slashdot, although we didn't have that then). I'm not sure whether that was entirely good or bad - publicity is valuable coin in today's society :)
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And he kind of burned out. He lives with his brother (my good friend) now and hasn't ever really had a real job. After he completed college, he decided to independently pursue his own interests and sort of realized that the whole educational path he had taken was really him just quickly absorbing other people's works. Striking out on new ground was far too uncomfortable for him. What was worse was that this totally destroyed his confidence. He's never been unhappy with his life but outside of his mother's reach, he's really just kicked back and played video games. I think the greatest work of the last five years of his life has been editing TVTropes -- a site that he became obsessed with after he discovered he could spend all day watching television with no consequence. Jay has never had peers really aside from his brothers. I'm no child psychologist but I think it has had a devastating effect on his understanding on society and also his work ethic.
The other person was a coworker, Tom, who was a very talented software developer. I met him when he was 40 and one time he told me at lunchtime about his childhood. Tom had burned out as well but in a more problematic way. Tom also completed college (Physics) at a very young age but upon having difficulty his senior year, he became depressed and had suicidal thoughts. So his parents flipped out and brought him to a psychologist who diagnosed him with Asperger's Syndrome (which he clearly did not have when I met him) and gave him a bunch of drugs. He discovered he was great at programming software and decided to make a career out of it. He still said his mother's disappointment that he didn't "cure cancer" or discover a universal filed theory was probably the most regrettable thing in his life and it was ever present in their interactions.
"He'll probably find a cure for cancer," Sleight said. "Or something bigger."
I think a more positive statement would be something along the lines of "He has accomplished so much and already done such great research that even if he stopped studying now he would be an accomplished academic." Not to suggest that he should stop studying but to relieve a bit of the pressure. What if he doesn't cure cancer or something bigger? What will this news do to Gabriel the person then? Haunt him?
I would advocate trying to keep him involved in school as much as he desires with external stimulation to help his specialties. Why must geniuses be removed from society? Was Einstein removed from interacting with children his age? What exactly is the hurry? Is Gabriel asking for more time to study -- time that regular schooling is interfering with? Does he have a network of friends to rely on? Is he expected to live a short life like Ramanujan?
My opinion is to let him excel at school and take a more normal path than complete removal and its unavoidable isolation.
My work here is dung.
You don't learn in school. School is about socialization and indoctrination.
I see this parroted often, and I think it's misguided.
School can and does teach - there are lots of teachers out there that are passionate about teaching and really want their students to learn. Yes, there are also those teachers that don't care.
Of course no kid is ever going to get to prodigy level in the US school system, but if a teacher's done his/her job, the seed will have been planted for that potential prodigy to continue learning through his/her life.
If anything, it's the "school only indoctrinates you" mantra that holds kids back.
There are actually a few schools in the country that might be a good fit for a math genius, and would give him the critical socialization he'll need to be a normal adult someday. For example, A.R. Johnson Health Sciences and Engineering school in Augusta, GA, is a school that teaches pre-med and engineering classes in high school, omitting other activities such as art and PE (students who want those classes need to go to its rival school, Davidson Fine Arts.) I'm sure they'd love to have him on the Math Decathalon team.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
1. I was a prodigy...not quite of the same level. College classes at 9, but nothing more impressive than that. Went through the normal system.
2. I have taken over the education of a prodigy. Quite Elementary school to homeschool after 4th grade. I was the homeschool tutor (Like Aristotle for Alexander). A year later, he went to college.
3. I've been in education at almost all levels, almost all subjects since.
Fundamentally, there is no system that will handle all the kids. Allow them to escape.
In 5th grade, at the request of my teacher, I took my SAT's. I scored higher than 88% of college bound high-school students. I was put into an "accelerated program" that took myself and all the children like me (the smartest 0.005% of children age 7-11 from the entire school district) by bus into a single classroom 3 days a week. We were issued a "class project" which was to promote recycling. We gave speeches at places like MIT to push the agenda, and ultimately our class project worked. Prior to us there was no recycling in schools. Now, you can't visit a school now without seeing blue recycle bins.
At one point, at age 12, I was offered a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University when I finished high-school provided I maintained my grades. That was the positive aspect...
Now the negative...
The extra work they forced us to do frustrated and stressed us. They talked down to us when we didn't understand things. It took away our childhoods, as we spent long hours doing extra homework with no pay-off other than to assess our individual limitations. In the end, most of the kids burned out by the time we were halfway through high-school. I kept in touch with most of them for years and none of them did any better in society after school than our contemporary classmates. What it did do, however, is make all of us, and I mean ALL, social outcasts and misfits.
Personally, prior to the program I was in, I had a handful of good friends and was on little league basketball and baseball teams. Dare I say, I was actually popular. After going into the program, it was school work only. While my friends would meet up after school to hang out and play, I was inside doing extra homework. The trend continued for a couple years and by the time middle school came around, when all the schools in the district dumped into one, I was the loner in a much larger crowd. A year or two later high-school rolled around, and I was jumped (group assaulted) repeatedly before, during, and after school at least 3 days a week. Why? Because I scored higher on the tests, because I turned in my homework on time, and because I knew the answers to questions asked in class. I moved schools, but it just continued. I was just a loner nerd, and let's be honest, teens can sniff that stuff out. My parents had long talks with school administrators on all levels, but none helped or even seemed to care. I eventually started skipping classes to avoid beatings, no joke. Ultimately, I dropped out of school in my junior year and got my G.E.D. and started community college while my classmates were still starting their senior year.
I wish someone would've stepped in and told my parents that just because I had more aptitude than the vast majority didn't mean I had to use it immediately. Let the child live his life. With the way that life expectancy is rising, and retirement age is increasing he'll have to work for 80 years. He gets about 10 years to actually enjoy life, let him while he still can.
Get the kid a job as a janitor at MIT. That oughta do it.
I don't think it's entitlement so much as a lack of curiosity and drive. I'm in no way a prodigy (intelligent, sure, but not beyond normal levels), but went through much of the same in high school. In grade school and middle school, most things were new and interesting, so I was almost always engaged in what I was doing and did very well. In high school, I attempted to push myself by taking honors classes or higher level classes. I quickly found out that for history and literature, I just flat out didn't care, and my grades in those classes suffered as a result. It wasn't because the material was tough, because it wasn't; I was just more inclined to actually do the work for my math and science classes. When I dropped back down to the normal level of history and literature, I was still bored, but could largely ignore the classes and still get decent grades. In my senior year of high school, I simply became bored with everything, and just skated by. It was never because the work was too difficult; it was always because it was boring and I just didn't want to do it. Fast forward to college, and things were new and interesting again. I excelled at the classes because I was learning new things, and things I wanted to learn.
The point is, someone can be the most intelligent person in the world, but if they have no drive or don't want to achieve greatness, no amount of pushing and prodding is going make them do so.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
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.
He's obviously the one person best suited to figure it out. He knows more about the range of topics that he has studied than his parents or his teachers. Where he might need help is in getting access to the resources that he chooses to take advantage of, given his young age.
As for extracurricular activities, the article already states that he participates in other non-academic pursuits. I'm not concerned about the need for balance in that regard.
The one concern I do have is that for all the academic and extracurricular activities, the one thing he needs to learn to be HAPPY in life is how to relate to others. That's not something you get while doing scientific research, or by doing sports. It's not something you get by overachieving in any sense.
I didn't learn that lesson until relatively late in my teenage years. I was miserable throughout my childhood and adolescence. I still carry the emotional scars. And the problem is that, for all the compliments that others pay me, calling me "talented" and "intelligent," I feel paralyzed, like everyone is always expecting something great to come out of me, and all I ever do is disappoint when I don't meet those expectations. So I stop trying.
Granted, I'm not saying this kid is going to end up the same way. All I'm saying is that he needs to be given the permission to NOT do something grandiose with his life. He doesn't owe anything to anyone but himself. I've come to realize that the most successful and well-adjusted people in life are the ones who are not only talented, but also have the drive, discipline, and perseverance to continue despite past failures. It's not enough to simply have one or the other.
Is that just because you are smarter than everyone else, doesn't mean you are better. That is an important lesson I learned at public school. I was no prodigy, not even a genius, but I was a bright child, smarter than most of my peers (about 98% of them if the standardized tests were to be believed). Well part of the problem with that is it lead me to be, well, a smartass. Much like a bigger kids feels he can push others around because he's bigger, I felt that being smart made me better. I got picked on a lot in no small part because of that attitude.
In time, I learned that just because I was smart, didn't mean I was better, and that just because someone isn't as smart doesn't mean they don't have plenty to offer. I learned, well, to be a functioning member of society.
That was pretty valuable, and is a large part of why I have my job, which I love, today. It requires interaction with people all the time. If I was a self-superior asshole, there's no way I would have got it.
Also as you note, everyone will hit a wall with their abilities. Everyone hits a point where things aren't easy anymore. It is important to develop some skills for how to deal with that, including working with others, or you are in a world of hurt when it happens.
C'mon, I don't know GPP, and I don't know you, so maybe I'm off the mark. However, from my experience, I'd say you are mistaking emotionally maturity for intelligence. They are not the same thing, and expecting a child who has an IQ greater than most adults to also have the emotional maturity and wisdom of an adult is a recipe for disaster.
I was no child prodigy, but I was at the top end of average when I was in grade school. I ended up in a public schools system "Talented and Gifted" program (which I really enjoyed). In 5th grade, my teacher -- who was new to teaching -- had a brilliant idea to allow us to go as far and fast as we could: math class would be entirely self-paced. She gave us the materials to learn, and a program to follow. We would take a pre-test before starting a new chapter, then we were to read the chapter, do the work in that chapter, and take a post-test to verify that we had really learned the material. We would grade our own work, except for the post-test, which she would grade. Being (slightly) above average intelligence, but no more emotionally mature than anyone else in 5th grade, I quickly figured out that I could blow off all the course work, take a few days to goof off, and take a post-test, then proceed to the next chapter.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out how well that worked. For the first few chapters, I pulled it off, but once we got to the new material that I hadn't been exposed to before, I started blowing all the tests. Several phone calls home to my parents later ("I don't understand why Mike is suddenly having so much trouble in math..."), I realized that *saying* I had done the course work and actually *doing* the course work lead to vastly different outcomes...but by then, I had a lot of catching up to do.
Child prodigies often have amazing intellectual skills (more or less by definition, right?), but they typically *don't* have the experience and maturity to understand how society works. It's unrealistic to expect a child to understand how decisions now can impact their life ten or twenty years later. That's why children have and NEED parents. Sure, GPP could do some community college work now to get his grades up and go on to a better school for a BS, MS, or PhD, but cut him some slack on his decisions as a kid. I wouldn't have done any better in his place, nor, do I think, would most of us.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
No he does not need a special mentor, nor does he need special schooling. He needs to learn to function in the normal world. This means learning to deal with people that might be less smart than he is. How many child prodigies have there been that fizzle out as adults because they simply cannot deal with the real world? No matter how smart you are you have to learn to deal with people to get anywhere - humans are social animals. If he is smart and motivated (and not being shoved by parents which I highly suspect otherwise why take exams?) then he will learn extra things on his own time according to his own interests.