Nine year old starts university course in Hong Kong

While everyone’s bemoaning the loss of mathematical skills, China’s March Tian Boedihardjo hasn’t been waiting for puberty to arrive. He started at Hong Kong Baptist University yesterday.

Xinhua relates that having completed his UK General Certificate of Education, and done some courses at Oxford, he found a place at the University in between his Spanish lessons. The University says it can adjust the course, if he finds it too easy, which seems to be the case so far. March said he did the subject of his first lesson two years ago. The main problem which concerned the University was whether March could communicate effectively with the other students, and how he’d adapt to campus. The issue of age groupings for gifted children is a perennial debate, which leads to some doubt regarding whether it is an actual issue. Good reasons for keeping bright kids plodding along the 12 year dusty track seem to be few. Apart from an unnecessary delay to their education, and the equally unnecessary use of resources which might be better used on those who need them, not much seems to be achieved. If a kid can get a PhD by the age of 14, why not? The “socialization” argument doesn’t seem to realize what pure misery hanging around a pack of infantile idiots can be, for intelligent kids. Looks more likely to damage their socialization skills than anything, to me. It’s more than a bit specious as a reason to incarcerate people in inferior standards of education. All keeping them at lower levels is likely to do is bore them out of their minds. Another very obvious thing about this story is that we have here a nine year old who somehow hasn’t been prevented from becoming proficient in math. What went wrong? I knew things were tough in England, but I had no idea it was so bad that kids could learn mathematics. In our enlightened society, where gerbils are multimillionaire celebrities and any manifestation of intelligence is “nerd” behavior, to be reviled endlessly by media hacks, I’d have thought it was impossible. What would human life be, without morons? Where do these vainglorious educational exercises start? What useful purpose is served by allowing kids to become “educated”? Everyone knows how David Beckham invented the steam engine and Paris Hilton did the Theory of Related Articles, and Beyonce’s pet alligator invented the airplane. Nobody is in any doubt that America was discovered for merchandising reasons, and that before myspace everyone ran around killing dinosaurs with spears. Kids have every reason to object to these self evident truths being undermined in the name of “education”. Things just happen, and when they go wrong, you call a publicist. Clearly the UK, and now China, are in breach of the basic ethics of child welfare. This irresponsible, unprovoked, unconscionable attempt at willful education of a minor must cease. It sets a terrible precedent. What if other kids find out, and also want to be "educated", however accidentally?