Nine-year old Wunderkind in HK

[horas]

*

March Tian Boedihardjo ( 沈诗钧 , Shen Shi-jun ), finds university (HKBU) beginning course on Math too simple and boring.

Son of an Indonesian Chinese and a Chinese mother, his older brother has enrolled in Oxford University at 14 years of age.

I read in a newspaper that the genes of human beings consist only 98 - 99 % of the same DNA, the rest are DNA variants that make every human being really individual.

http://fisherwy.blogspot.com/2007/08/march-boedihardjo-youngest-university.html

http://hk-imail.singtao.com/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=11&art_id=52004&sid=15078566&con_type=3

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&art_id=52059&sid=15088329&con_type=1&d_str=20070825

[skylee]

It may not be the best arrangement for him IMHO. His mentioning of kindergarten friends (several times as reported in the news) is worrying. His father had to take him to the school on the first day.

But we certainly hope that he is not another example of "小時了了，大未必佳".

[simonlaing]

In the US, a couple of times I had classmates who were 2 or 3 years younger than their appropriate grade level. They had such a hard time socially I felt sorry for them.

I had other classmates who had most of their classes with their own age group and went to the local University for advance math classes twice a week. I think this worked out much better. (They still had social issues but at least they were with their age group most of the time.)

Their parents were usually mathmaticians or Scientists and so you could see where their drive came from. If you had a Genius 9 year old would you push him into University early?

I wouldn't. Adolescence is where you learn to be sociable and work and play together with others. Skipping all that will majorly mess him up. What do you think would you let him go, would you want to skip middle school and High School?

Have fun,

SimoN:)

[gato]

Most of these cases don't pan out. Let's see what he's doing in another ten, fifteen years.

See this article for a case of a child prodigy who actually did accomplish great things.

http://www.spotlight.ucla.edu/faculty/terence-tao_fields-medal/

Terence Tao, Fields Medal Winner

* Published Aug 22, 2006 8:00 AM

Terence Tao is UCLA’s first mathematician to receive the prestigious Fields Medal, often described as the "Nobel Prize in Mathematics.”

Tao, 31, was presented the prize today (August 22) at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. The Fields Medal is awarded by the International Mathematical Union every fourth year.

"Terry is like Mozart; mathematics just flows out of him, except without Mozart’s personality problems,” said John Garnett, professor and former chair of the mathematics department.

A math prodigy from Adelaide, Australia, Tao started learning calculus as a 7-year-old high school student. By 9, he had progressed to university-level calculus; by 11, he was already burnishing his reputation at international math competitions. Tao was 20 when he earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University and joined UCLA’s faculty. By 24, he had become a full professor.

[skylee]

There is another girl who has started going to medical school here in HK at the age of 14. She is much more mature than the 9-year old but she keeps saying that she expects her classmates to be understanding of her situation (體諒她) which I find irritating. And I wonder if there is a legal age for a person to operate on / give medical advice/ prescription etc to a patient (not sure if she could do these being houseman ... well probably she won't be able to make it before she turns 18 ).

[rob07]

There was a profile done on the Tao family in an Australian newspaper recently. They are all pretty fascinating. One of Terry's brothers overcame autism and now works as a research scientist and was a master strength chess player as a teenager. The other brother "faced the difficulty of being merely exceptional" - there was nothing unusual about him, his IQ was "only" 180. He works for Google now.

The article says:

"For Snyder [director of the Centre for the Mind at University of Sydney], the Tao family raises fascinating questions about the way a brilliant mind works. Contrary to popular belief, he points out, it’s rare for a child prodigy to blossom into a fully fledged genius; in fact, Snyder ventures to argue that an average kid is much more likely to become an exceptional adult (see box on page 31). What made the Taos an exception to this rule? ...

A lot of what Billy Tao [Terry's dad] has to say runs counter to the accepted wisdom of “gifted education” experts, with their emphasis on IQ ratings and accelerated learning. “It’s not helpful to learn what they have done,” he says cheerfully. “It’s helpful to avoid their mistakes. I have seen too many situations where the parents did the wrong thing.” A brilliant mind, he says, is not just a cluster of neurons crunching numbers but a deep pool of creativity, originality, experience and imagination. “This is the difference between genius and people who are just bright. The genius will look at things, try things, do things, totally unexpectedly. It’s higher-order thinking. Genius is beyond talent. It’s something very original, very hard to fathom.” ...

“Many parents of gifted children tend to overestimate their children’s ability, they want to maximise speed,” says Billy. “One thing I disagree about with the gifted-children movement is the emphasis on acceleration. Many gifted-education people, particularly teachers who have diplomas in gifted education, are all brainwashed with this idea of acceleration, acceleration, acceleration. What about lateral thinking? What about creativity?”

Billy Tao feels that keeping Terry with his age peers during school to the maximum extent possible was essential to give him the right life experience to think laterally and be creative.