David Robertson. Prodigies don't make it through life's universities

Prodigies don't make it through life's universities
David Robertson

Publication date: August 2, 2000

Prodigies - well, I have to use this rather hackneyed word - are nothing new. The centuries-old history of Western European civilization knows many people of exceptional intelligence, who at a very early age showed the maturity of scientific thinking - some of the great minds of the Renaissance were such miracle children in their time. In common parlance, prodigies are usually referred to as teenagers who are admitted to university at the age of 12-13 after they successfully pass advanced school exams in a very limited set of science and science disciplines.

Instead of waiting for their child’s 17th birthday, when he can already be considered more or less an adult, parents come to an agreement with the university enrollment inspector and condemn their very smart offspring to continue to study the same limited set of disciplines, only in a quasi-university environment . As a result, the child prodigy graduates from university - usually with brilliant results - at the age of an ordinary applicant; then he defends his doctoral dissertation when his peers graduate from university; exits post-doctoral training when they begin writing their dissertation, and usually no longer appears outside their professional environment. (Only some, like Ruth Lawrence, who studied at the college where I was dean, then return to normal life, just to prove that they are normal people and can also start families and have children.)

It is not surprising that sometimes this ideal course of events is disrupted - society one way or another is unable to support an attempt to immediately make an academic career. More precisely, sometimes things don’t work out so clearly that society notices. One can only guess what is going wrong on a deeper level.

Since ordinary students are faced with a huge variety of problems and are not immune to the constant pressure from the aggressive environment of a prestigious university, is it possible to imagine a child prodigy who would not secretly suffer intolerable torment?

Those who are not involved in the university environment cannot even imagine how much money and effort is spent and people are attracted to carry out educational activities - and all this so that a student can graduate from university at 18 years old.

Prodigies, in fact, are able to complete their studies only if they hardly appear at the university. They do not know what student life is: spared the joys and sorrows familiar to any high school student, they are then deprived of another important life experience. They make the leap from an impression-poor childhood straight into the adult world of highly educated professionals. That's the problem.

The common idea that child prodigies manifest themselves exclusively in the field of exact and natural sciences is in fact incorrect: every intellectual field has its own prodigies. I see two reasons for this misconception. Firstly, the not-so-rare ability for very abstract areas of knowledge (and deeply intellectual pursuits like chess and music) is associated with self-absorption: it does not require communication with the real world, especially with the world of people. You don't need any life experience to become a brilliant mathematician or chess player. A prodigy historian or sociologist is almost a violation of all logic.

Secondly, only in very rare cases can the theory of educating child prodigies provide any convincing answer to the question of why such young people should be sent to university at all. Not a single enrollment inspector in the departments of history, literature, or even economics will allow a 13-year-old to study, because there is little that can be taught to him - namely, to teach, not to train him.

I myself am a specialist in judicial control in the field of legislation. I don’t think I could explain to a 13-year-old the problems of judicial power in the legislative field, even if his analytical mind and eidetic memory allowed him to choose one hundred percent correct answers in a test on constitutional law. In fact, even a very bright 18-year-old student can only get a vague idea of ​​what, in fact, is the essence of the great judicial decisions known to political history.

University is not just the next stage of the educational conveyor after school. This is both a qualitative and quantitative leap; it is a completely new experience. Yes, of course, you can take gifted math students, set aside a special area on campus for them, recruit talented teachers, and get those students to pass their final exams. But the same effect can be achieved (despite the fact that distance learning can work wonders) even if the child prodigies remain at home - they still do not attend university.

Yes, of course, at one time a university could (with a very slight stretch) be equated to a boarding school. When I was a student, even in my final years at eleven in the evening we were actually locked in the dormitory building (and this was during separate studies). Those who studied before us had to come to prayer every morning. Now, although life at the university is different from usual, the campus has ceased to be a protected enclosed territory, and students are no longer guarded, herded or guarded. The law recognizes them as adults, and they assert this right in every possible way. We treat them accordingly. Even if the law did not require this of us, we still would not act differently. Otherwise, three or four years of study would only retard students in their development, make them completely unfit for anything and (I return to our main topic) incapable of forming their own judgment about modern society - and this is exactly what we, teachers, are trying to do. teach.

So why do parents send 13-year-olds to a pseudo-university instead of giving them the opportunity to receive a well-rounded education alongside their peers? Is it because our schools are simply unable to create an intellectual environment suitable for a gifted child?

Translation by Olga Yurchenko