VietNamNet Bridge – How to treat child prodigies to nurture
their talents for devoting to the country remains controversial.
Local newspapers recently reported
a lot of cases of children who could read and write at the very early ages,
describing them as “child prodigies” and calling for the society’s support to
develop the talents.
However, the children later did
not show any special talents. Though they were admitted to prestigious schools,
their learning records were normal. In some cases, the learning records were so
bad that no one could imagine they were once called the child prodigies.
As a result, educators now keep
cautious when talking about “child prodigies.” Especially, some people believe
that the so called “child prodigy” does not exist, and that one can gain high
achievements only after a long period of tens of years in his life to work and
learn hard.
In 2007, Tran Phuong, a freelance
math teacher, who is now the Chair of the Vietnamese Intelligence Lightening
Club, became very famous, because he dared to open a “center to train child
prodigies.”
In that year, five sixth graders
were chosen by Phuong to be trained at the center. Just after a short period of
learning there, the excellent students could easily solve the mathematics
questions designed for university entrance exams.
In 2007-2010, four of the five
sixth graders successfully solved math questions of the university entrance
exams, namely Nguyen Minh Thang, Le Nguyen Vuong Linh, Ngo Dang Hai and Pham
Tien Long won the gold medals at the 2009 Mathematics Olympiad, and then
obtained full scholarships from the world’s famous schools such as Singaporean
ACS, Raffles, South Korean Science and Technology Academy.
Meanwhile, Cao Hai Nam got the
gold medal at APMOPS 2009, came the first in the gameshow “Than dong dat Viet”
(The Vietnamese child prodigy), the second in the 2008 information technology
competition.
Phuong said he wanted to show that
reasonable education methods would be able to develop people’s talents, and
that the students with good intelligence need a specific education environment,
where they can learn and communicate with other talented students of the same
ages.
President of the Le Hong Phong
High School for the Gifted in HCM City Vo Anh Dung recalled a case he met seven
years ago.
Dung then was asked to test the
capability of an eighth grader, before the HCM City education department made
the decision on whether to allow him to exceptionally be admitted to the Le
Hong Phong School.
The boy was then very good at
mathematics. Therefore, he was allowed to skip two grades. And though having to
learn with older students, the boy was still better than them at mathematics.
However, his problem was that he
lagged far behind the classmates in other subjects. Finally, since the boy had
to spend too much time on other subjects, his math talent could not develop.
Therefore, Dung said, as an
educator, he does not think that skipping grades would be better for students.
In general, people have to study all of their lives, and finishing high schools
some years earlier would not have much significance. Meanwhile, if skipping
grades, students would have to learn very hard, which would “burn” a lot of
their energy.
A survey conducted by the
scientists from the Middlesex University in the UK, has also come to a
conclusion that very few (6/210) child prodigies could show their talents when
they became adults
Lao Dong
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