Child Genius

[Garno]

I'm sat here watching Child Genius on the TV.

I can say, with hand on heart, I have never felt as inadequate as I do right now. :shock: :? :?

 

[thetyreman]

every genius is bad at something though, although they won't tell you that, it's true.

 

[Garno]

Those kids were spelling words I have never heard before, and answering questions with what can only be described as made up words.
No wonder I am grumpy

 

[Marineboy]

The disturbing thing about this programme is the pushiness of the parents. It verges on emotional abuse.

 

[Garno]

100% agree with you there Marineboy,

 

[Noel]

The disturbing thing about this programme is the pushiness of the parents. It verges on emotional abuse.

Yep, couldn't agree more. Never, ever live your life through your children seems apt.
Common sense is more valuable and a better gauge but would likely make less appealing (to some) TV.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

It would be interesting to see one of those follow up programmes showing what happens to them 10 - 15 years on. Do they continue to perform well, of go off the rails ? Most of the tests are memory or arithmetic, but to me, genius is more about creativity - the ability to provide new insight or interpretation - can they move on from being impressively quick learners, to original thinkers?

 

[Bm101]

I have a feeling that maybe these children and their parents should be tested on a broader spectrum.
Like with lions and mazes and stuff.
Get a spelling worng? Welcome the 'Run of The Cheetah'.
Mistake the square root of 576? Try hiding from two dozen ironic Leopards in a small enclosure while smeared in offal.
The possibilities are endless.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

How do you tell when a leopard is being ironic?

 

[SammyQ]

Chris? How many tinnies had you consumed when you wrote that? Smacks of returning to the Colliseum (sp?!!) and all that! :shock:

Sam.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I have a feeling that maybe these children and their parents should be tested on a broader spectrum.

I suspect many of them would be judged to be at the high performing end of the autistic spectrum. As thetyreman said, few people are gifted in every area; the payback is in other areas. In any case, I imagine being that far out of the ordinary makes friendships and school life difficult at times. Actually, I guess many of them are home educated. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

 

[MikeG.]

........I suspect many of them would be judged to be at the high performing end of the autistic spectrum. As thetyreman said, few people are gifted in every area; the payback is in other areas. In any case, I imagine being that far out of the ordinary makes friendships and school life difficult at times. Actually, I guess many of them are home educated. I have a lot of sympathy for them.

I've one of these. My eldest daughter has Asperger's, and was a maths and science prodigy. She's now doing a doctorate in animal behaviour in Sweden, and has had half a dozen papers published in various scientific journals. Nothing whatever to do with pushy parents........we just stood and watched with our jaws agape. "How the bloody hell did she work that out?" was the standard question throughout her childhood, from when she was extracting square roots of 4 digit numbers before she went to school, to her now writing statistics programmes without any training in programming. School wasn't that hard for her because she had a couple of close friends, both with Asperger's, and life after school has been pretty good as she has learned, slowly, social norms, body language, the meaning of idioms, and so on. These days you'd never know she was anything other than "normal".

 

[Marineboy]

Interesting Mike, my eldest son is a bit like your daughter, he was into politics from an early age and by the age of 13 he knew every parliamentary constituency in the UK and their MPs, majority etc. We were similarly in awe of his intellect, but never pushed him, he knew what he wanted to achieve so we left him to it with our encouragement. He has a first class degree, CIPFA, MBA, and is studying part time for a PhD, all the while working as a deputy director in the Civil Service controlling a budget of £1bn. But socially a bit challenged, and also pretty dyspraxic. Even now he struggles to open a tin if it hasn't got a ring pull, and he doesn't fully get sarcasm or irony. But as you say he has become more adept at social interactions and has more friends than me.

 

[Inoffthered]

The disturbing thing about this programme is the pushiness of the parents. It verges on emotional abuse.

True, but if you were to watch a junior football match on your local park you would see similarly pushy parents screaming and shouting at players, abusing officials etc in the (mistaken) belief that their child has the potential to play professionally.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

when everyone other than their parents can see perfectly well it ain't going to happen.

 

[Garno]

The girl who won it this year had been tested by mensa and is among the top 0.1%.
I don't know if that figure is for children only or if it includes adults as well.

 

[transatlantic]

I remember watching a similar program a while back. I didn't really enjoy it, as I felt bad for the children. Most of the parents did seem extremely pushy, and the strict routines they had for their kids for revision and other mental exercises (after normal school) seemed very unfair.

A lot of them would also start crying after they didn't achive the goals they were set, and you could see the look of disappointment on the parents faces. It seemed as though the children were only trying to win to make their parents proud?

 

[Rhyolith]

Ultimately ‘genius’ is a very subjective term, that in reality has very little meaning. Most people labelled as ‘genius’s’ just people who happen to have the right mental toolkit to be very good at something the people around them or mainstream culture happend to value, which really quite arbitrary if you think about it.

In my opinion, pursuit of these child genius’s and prodigies has done an aweful lot of damage to the education system and people’s lives, while doing very little good in exchange... if any. If you look at individual’s who have made truly world changing accomplishments, they are very very rarely one of these ‘genius’s’... there people who have been aloud to be themselves and become the most they can be in their own a unique way.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The point was made somewhere that Asian parents in particular are cared for in their old age by their children - it makes a lot of economic sense to ensure their children are as well educated as possible because it safeguards their own future.
I went to school with some smart kids, but only one would I have called genius. He was one of the nicest people I've ever met. He got kicked out of school for a marijuana offence (nearly 50 years ago) and went to the local tech. to do A levels and I asked him one day what he was going to do. Oh, I don't know, he said, I might be an architect. Or a technical illustrator. Or maybe a surgeon. He was probably the only person I'd ever met that could say that and be taken seriously.
He's a consultant surgeon.

 

[MikeG.]

........pursuit of these child genius’s and prodigies has done an aweful lot of damage to the education system and people’s lives, while doing very little good in exchange.....

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. What do you mean by "pursuit of"? What is the downside to educating people to their full potential? What alternative do you have in mind other than leaving them bored at the back of the class twiddling their thumbs? What evidence do you have that educating the super-intelligent has had a negative effect on schools?