Posted on 08/28/2005 3:49:53 AM PDT by voletti
London, Aug. 27: An Indian whizkid has become the youngest student to clear Britain’s school leaving exams at age 6. Armaan Genomal cleared his GCSE with a ‘B’ in information and communication technology, completing the course in just nine months — less than half the time it takes 16-year-olds.
“It was quite easy. Actually I came out of the exam with a smile. I really liked spreadsheets and things like that. I checked my answers 19 times in the second exam,” said the young pupil of Ryde Teaching Services college in Bushey, Hertfordshire, which is fam-ous for churning out child prodigies. Armaan has clear ideas about his future: “I want to be an inventor so I can invent things like clocks that never stop or rain that doesn’t make raindrops. Maybe I could touch clouds, I have always wanted to do that.”
He has already achieved one of his other ambitions when he was invited to open his results live on British television with his classmates. “I always wanted to be on telly,” he said with a smile. And his next big aim? “To be knighted by the Queen,” declares Armaan. His proud mother Kavita added from the family home in St. John’s Wood in north London: “Learning comes easy to him. He could read when he was two.”
GCSE results for an estimated 650,000 students were announced across England and Wales on Friday. Among tho-se who passed out was Shabina Begum, the British Muslim teenager who won a high court battle against her former school over its refusal to allow her to wear a head-to-toe traditional jilbab. The 16-year-old passed six GCSEs and completed two years of studies in just one year at Putteridge High School in Luton, Bedfordshire.
(Excerpt) Read more at deccan.com ...
You wrote my thoughts! He may be able to parrot back the answers for the test, but he is not big on logic. Touch the clouds! Sheesh! Mum, take him to London during a fog. He'll not only be touching a cloud, but walking around in it. Apparently his reasoning is already touching that cloud.
I have a feeling that this kids reasoning abilities my be way beyond yours and mine!
That is part of the wisdom of children. They are not yet disadvantaged with "truths" that are no more than accepted myths. All thought is an association of ideas formed through experience. "New" ideas are just new associations of old ideas. This child was able to bring imagination, probably developed through the normal childhood stories, into early plans for the real world.
Most of us have never considered rain without drops since that is the natural way condensation occurs and condensation is what causes the water to fall from the sky.
His desire to touch the clouds is in harmony with his new idea about rain. Drops are the result of the natural surface tension of water. Some seed clouds to try to create condensation, and therefore rain, so why not seed them with something that will break the surface tension so that drops don't form? The result would probably be no rain rather than rain without drops but, heck, who knows?
I think it is more experience than logic he lacks. He is, after all, only 6.
I think this is interesting on points. First, the kid is undoubtably brilliant. His imagination alone tells me that he'll go far. The second thing, that in no way diminishes the first, is that I'll bet my last dollar that the British exams are abysmal by nearly any standards of the past. Publik skoolz just aren't what they used to be.
I thought hippie environmentalists watered those things. :-)
Einstein as a child used to try to imagine what the world looked like if one could travel on a light beam!
The bushy haired one did horribly in school. Book learning is one thing, life experiences are something else.
it truly is a pity when ones mind has become numb...
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"Parrot back"? Did you miss the part about spreadsheets? You might want to work on your reading comprehension instead of looking to find the faults in a six year old's incredible achievement.
No one who was 'big on logic' ever went beyond the established paradigm. All great inventors and industrialists have always gone against established logic. Their visions have always seemed quite illogical to the larger part of humanity, that is until they go ahead and do just what they said they would.
Ask Enstein about his daydreams about riding on a streetcar that was a lightbeam, heading away from the clocktower at the speed of light. Or Tesla, when at the age of 5 he designed and built a 'bladeless turbine,' something that at that point was thought ludicrous.
The ability to see beyond established logic is an amazing blessing. Otherwise people become 'normal.' And while most people have no problem with being normal (the vast majority), others would consider being average as their highest downfall.
A lot depends on the point he was getting at...what does he define as "rain"...
Without drops, we can have droplets that remain suspended...is he talking having them fall? If so, it just means that drops are smaller than now.
Or we have humidity, if it is in vapor state.
Or..if he's talking about the water condensing but not having to fall as rain drops, then it's called "dew"...
It all depends on what he's getting at. And perhaps it's some entirely new paradigm, or just the fact that this kid doesn't truly understand the complexity of nature. After all, passing those tests doesn't mean one has a doctorate in meteorology.
Someone should buy this kid a plane trip, open cockpit
take him up to touch the clouds!
Wonder what'll happen to him when he turns, oh, say, 20.
He might save the world, or he might become obsessive about saving bottle caps. You never know with these types.
If you are referring to Einstein, you must remember that he was a Jew in a largely anti-Semitic Europe. The thing about him doing "horribly" in school is an often abused "fact" about Einstein.
Einstein's theories often involved very advanced mathematics and physics at such a complex level that only a handful of people could even understand what he had proposed. It would be ludicruous to even think that these could come out of a spectacular school failure.
He will probably have learnt that being good at math or science is seen as nerdy and in fact might make you less popular. The school system would probably frustrate him and he will decide he wants to do what will fetch him reliable income...
sorry if that seems jaded..
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