Child star wins university place

Child star wins university place
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6961865.stmPublished: 2007/08/24 12:23:47 GMT

A nine-year-old maths prodigy has won a place at Hong Kong's Baptist University (HKBU) after gaining two grade As and a B in his A-levels.

He is the youngest ever student to enrol in a university in Hong Kong.

March Tian Boedihardjo told reporters he struggled to communicate academically with his own age group.

March, an Indonesian-Chinese boy resident in Hong Kong, will start his specially designed five-year course at the university in September.

He told reporters that in his spare time he liked "to read books, but on the weekends I like to go out to play with friends".

"We can play games together but academically, we can't communicate," he added.

He said they played chess, Monopoly and cards.

Asked why he was not going to study in the United Kingdom - where his older brother is at Oxford University - he replied in English: "Because my father does not have sufficient money."

March's father said the university had given him confidence it could cope with the demands of teaching a nine-year-old.

"I will advise parents in Hong Kong there's no need to know the IQ of your children. Just try to do your best to nurture them and give them space to develop," Tony Boedihardjo said.

Franklin Luk, president of HKBU, said the decision to admit the boy was based on his excellent examination results and a "commitment to nurturing gifted students".

Dr Tong Chong-sze, Associate Professor of Mathematics at HKBU has arranged several professors to be March's mentors.

"The very first concern of course is - academically can he handle the mathematics at university. So that was the purpose of the first interview and he did very well. He handled himself very well, one against four professors," said Dr Tong.

The admittance of this nine-year-old mathematics prodigy into Hong Kong's Baptist University (HKBU) evinced that no longer is age a limiting factor hampering one’s intellectual development in the modern milieu.

Ostensibly, our current education system has evolved to accommodate talent development. Individuals with exceptional capacity are distinguished and nurtured so as to requite the society with a higher value in the future as a professional – benefiting both the individual and the cultivating community.

By abolishing the age limit hurdle, which stereotypically signifies one’s maturity, a student is enabled to access unbounded knowledge, opening up their horizons from multiplication tables to the possibilities of complex calculus calculation.

With another pebble in the shoe removed, a child with potential can achieve greater distances. Often than not, an precocious child such as Boedihardjo who are set for great achievements is forced to assimilate into the slow-pace curriculum, thereby wasting precious time that can be used to develop his talent instead of revising already-grasped concepts.

A child’s youth is the period of maximum ease of information absorption, when the learning-curve is the steepest and the mind the most malleable. Appropriate utilisation of this timeframe can lead to optimum development for the child.

The debate is whether gifted children should be pushed so far ahead and beyond their physical age.
I personally object to the worry of stunted personal and social development. March, given his young age, possesses the searing curiosity to learn – something that would be nearly impossible in a class of typical nine year-olds. He would face at least two problems if he were to fit in the norms of the education system.

Firstly, he would possibly receive negative attention from his schoolmates (teased or discriminated) for being an anomaly in school. With similar age group yet differing intellect, interactions aiding would be difficult, causing anti-social behaviour instead.

Secondly, boredom might result, causing lost of interest in the subject as well as divulging one’s attention to unconstructive distractions to satisfy his curiosity, having a toll on the individual’s and class’s learning process. One might conclude that work is unnecessary for learning. By extension, complacency might manifest.

However, flexibility of the education system would invite social discontent and jealousy as the disparity of calibre would seem more palpable. Evidently, the education has evolved from inequality (prejudice of female students in the past) to equality. Yet, ironically, we are moving back to inequality.

Hence, we must empathise with the lower rungs of the social ladder for they ultimately make up the majority, bearing in mind exceptional cases are uncommon. I feel while possibilities are explored, we must not neglect the mainstream education. Rare geniuses are but bonuses to the social construct of our community.

I understand that I am in no position to discuss the issue for I am neither a prodigy nor an accomplished educationalist. With the microscopic perspective of a secondary student, I am aware of assumed responses of a prodigy in the alternative case in my argument, which might lead to biasness.

(500 words)