Alriyadh News Paper
Where are the smart kids?
Einstein, for instance, failed the Mathematic test; Darwin preferred chasing rabbits; Newton’s skills did not qualify him to join Priesthood College; Michael Faraday (inventor of Generator) did not pass the primary education and Thomas Edison was expelled from school on the ground that he cannot learn.
Nowadays, how many times you heard or read about kids with supernatural intelligence that makes them enter the college? When they are ten or eleven years old then you hear nothing about them? What’s wrong?
This proves that genius depends on suitable circumstantial, historical and intellectual factors not supernatural intelligence isn’t it?
Not only that, I think, personally, that intelligent kids (we heard about them in newspapers now and then) are experiencing a temporary mental leap which ends later with no genius or genuine creations. The proof is that no one of these (special) kids did any outstanding creation which deserves Nobel Prize after age of twenty.
For example, Jan Louis (1719-1726) the French kid who learned to read Latin, French and English in the age of four. In the age of six, he can discuss history, politics and law; however, there is no genuine accomplishment in his history.
As for William James Seeds, he was a unique educational case. His father was a psychology professor in Harvard University and was trying to prove that kids can be geniuses if they received special education. So, in the age of two, his son William can read; in the age of eight he was graduated from high school and mastered seven languages; and in the age of eleven he lectured about geometric models for Harvard Association for mathematic scientists. But in the age of thirteen he committed suicide.
As for the Korean Kim Wong Yong (1963), his IQ increased more than 200 points before the age of ten (the IQ average for normal persons is 110 points), and like his mates he mastered four languages in the age of four. And in the age of five, the Japanese TV showed his ability to solve complex mathematical issues, but when he became a teenager he traveled to Germany and disappeared.
As for the Dutchman William Kline, he could extract the third square root to a number that consist of hundred digits in 1 minute 29 seconds. This supernatural experiment was made in the universal physics labs in Tsucuba, Japan. But what’s next? Now he lives as any normal father.
As for the French kid Maoris Wagburt, he appeared in a special French TV show (1976) and solved many complex mathematics issues created by mathematics scientists. He was able to solve the issues faster than the studio computer. But nowadays he is an ordinary teacher in a primary school.
These are examples of mental leaps which end to be nothing despite of its early appearance. These examples proved that “sharp intelligence” is a phenomenon which differs from creativity or genius (that requires many factors like genuine thinking, criticism skill, search desire and the ability of overriding the ordinary).
So, I don’t advice you to be optimistic if your kid shows supernatural intelligence in childhood, and don’t be angry if he doesn’t excel his mates in school because Einstein, Edison and Newton were the same!!
