Posted on 04/22/2009 7:17:46 AM PDT by DFG
It's Friday at Florida International University, which means a few things for Sky Choi: physics lab, Calculus II -- and a trip to the game room.
For this 12-year-old, the youngest student ever to attend FIU, college is a long-awaited challenge and a daily adventure.
''We have fun here,'' he said as he prepared to start a work sheet on pistons, gases, and pressure with his lab partners.
Welcome to the world of Sky, who is taking a full course load of physics, calculus, and Chinese language classes at the university -- and still finds time to play pool and table tennis in the game room at the West Miami-Dade campus.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Without reading the article, I am going to assume this boy was homeschooled. Someone correct me if I am wrong......
Gosh I hope not. Can you imagine having a resource like that sitting next to you for a spelling test?
Thank goodness for Asians. All the other 12-year-olds in Pembroke Pines are skipping classes to sell drugs and break into cars.
Barack Obama did that...honest...would he lie?
Correct.
But can he play basketball? FIU just hired Isaiah Thomas as their coach, thus demonstrating mixed (at best) priorities.
He was homeschooled, but apparently because schools could not keep up with him.
I will take that as another failed public school. Most times its becuase the kids cant keep up and so they are left behind, but dragged through anyway so we end up with illiterates, however, it is just as much a failure if we cannot keep up with our kids and offer them enough to be our next successful generation. I have a feeling there are many of these kids out there, but they are beat into submission by rules and regs in the schools, like the other crabs that reach up and pull the one crab trying to get out back in. Thank GOD this crab escaped the pot.........
You’re right.
As a mom of an exceptionally bright kid, I can tell you that teachers apologized about not being able to challenge him. They knew he was smarter than they were.
It’s tough, really, when those kids live in such rarified air to know what the heck to do with them. I was really touched in this story to hear that Sky wanted to leave a birthday party to go home to study math when he was 4. I’m still hitting myself over the head with rubber chickens for insisting my kid go to a birthday party when he was 2-1/2 and didn’t want to go. I thought I was socializing him. Didn’t work, and he’s still mad at me. LOL
He's only half Asian, but your point is well taken.
If he’s so smart then why is he going to FIU? :P
I bet he’s not smart enough to know how to take off a bra....with his teeth like can!
I bet he sucks at beer pong.
Basketball and their coach are hardly a priority at FIU.
MR. Thomas could not get a job even at a community park as an unpaid coach after his last gig.
He’ll forgive you, he’s pretty smart it sounds like. Make sure you are challenging him theologically as well. Sometimes these kids get less attention there, and they have the brain capacity to be able to make a convincing arguement for things like intellegent design, pro life, and other important topics. They just need to be exposed to the situations and let loose on them. Good luck with him!
Just curious why you consider if to be a failure of a public school system that they were not equipped to handle such an advanced student? How high would my school taxes have to be to be able to appropriately teach every student?
If I were the parent of such a truly exceptional child (not just one flagged “gifted” to make the moronic parents feel good) I would expect to have to supplement what the public school offers (friends and socialization, guidance, competitive sports/music/pe/facilities) with advanced tutoring and other resources that can challenge him or her. Besides, a student like that would be approached by others willing to sponsor his education.
The public schools are challenged enough trying to derive plans for educating or at least training those less gifted or intellectually/physically/emotionally challenged. Those families are usually under many challenges trying to deal with those special needs children, prepare them for whatever degree of function and self-support they can reach, deal with their other children all with much less support from others.
The public schools are doing all this while trying to meet the needs of the vast majority of average adolescents who for the most part haven’t a clue to what they want out of this taxpayers gift of a fine education.
I am the proud product of public education (NYC) and parent of three students who attended public (suburban NY) schools for k-12.
Oldest graduating NYU (with honors!) in 3wks, trained as a Latin/Greek/Classics teacher. She started her Latin studies in the 7th grade in our public schools.
Youngest graduating our local HS a few weeks after that and joining the US Army.
Middle one is a successful (history) student at my alma mater (Catholic college) where she continues to pursue her passions of soccer and art, all of which were discovered and nurtured at our local public schools.
I may complain about my local school property taxes ($8,000 this year for just the school tax! another $6K for city & county). But when I see a kid walking from the projects to the HS lugging his musical instrument or in her sports attire, or at the honors ceremony, mingled with the kids form the well-heeled families in the North end of town, I know public school education is the key to a strong community and country.
Private school first, then homeschooling.
Wow, just wow. I can’t even begin to say what I think here. You, ma’am, are either in a very small minority that actually has some semblance of a public school education possible, or you are a liberal propagandist spreading the PC bull crap that subjects such as history and science are being taught, accurately and without bias in our public schools, or maybe perhaps proud of the fact that you personally are paying, by your own account at least 14,000 per year in taxes, much of which is ending up in NYC public school teachers unions, which has nothing to do with actually educating the children.
While I do not expect the schools to teach to each individual, perhaps if they bothered to teach the truth instead of rhetoric endorsed by the liberal left, stopped re writing the history books to make America the villain of all for being industrious and proud, stopped force feeding the THEORY of evolution taught as fact while it is against the law to even suggest there might be other theories such as ID, a child must have a doctors note and parental permission to take an aspirin or they can be STRIP SEARCHED for contraband, yet be ushered off for an abortion without parental consent in the same school, and God forbid you mention God, a moment of silent prayer to whatever God you deem the one, or any formation of moral turpitude via the very commandments our rule of law was based on.
These schools have been hijacked to dumb down the last several generations, because only a liberal dependent population ignorant of the truth will be willing sheep in an oligarchy.
And one other thing, a Catholic Alma mater says little to me any more. Notre Dame, Georgetown, et al, have bought into and now provide the same drivel as UC berkley, only its worse. We all know what to expect from UC Berkley, we get blindsided at these catholic colleges. They, along with the public school system as a whole have wasted their clout with the American people, and if another country had done to our schools what liberals have, we would consider it an act of war.
Someone said on the comments section of the article that ivies won’t take students who haven’t played the game — gone to high school for four years and taken AP courses. So, a lot of bright kids go the route this kid is. However, we did have a homeschooler in my state who was valedictorian of her class at the NJ Institute of Technology at 18. Majored in biomedical engineering and on her way to medical school.
I don’t think this kid will have a hard time getting into any graduate school he wants to.
I am certainly no liberal propagandist and have very little patience with that PC bull. Our city school district (not NYC, but a suburb just outside of it) is certainly not perfect. I have withheld consent on a field trip that I thought was a waste of school time and questioned certain teacher’s opinions when I heard one of the kids repeating it (global warming!!). I won’t argue that occasionally teachers cross the line and inject their opinion, but in the middle & high school setting, in an area like I live in, the students themselves bring many varied opinions into the discussions. I believe independent thought and challenging conventional wisdom are what will keep us on the “edge” of knowledge and learning. That is probably my biggest hesitation about supporting home or charter schooling. Are the students being exposed to enough different ideas? Can we produce competitive, innovative designs and ideas from that environment? I honestly don’t know the answer. But I won’t dismiss the importance public education because in some areas it is badly managed.
I’ll never be found spouting about “diversity” for it’s own sake, but we are certainly not afraid or against seeing and being exposed to different ideas, cultures or religions.
My kids have been exposed to all kinds of opinions, thoughts, theories and beliefs. I am not a left wing nut case, I’m about as conservative as they come, but I have absolutely no problem with my kids being exposed to a microcosm of the world in their schools. In fact my oldest and I were at Boston College while she was selecting a colleges 4 yrs ago and remember her laughing as they were talking about how “diverse” they were. (”Yea mom, sure. White Italian Catholic, White Irish Catholic, White Argentinean Catholic... Real diverse!”).
The gay lifestyle is not our cup of tea, but my daughter who was big into theatre in HS was certainly exposed to it in that circle of friends. Is that a bad thing? It certainly is a reality in the world we live in, for better or for worse.
The religious angle is even more interesting. I would say that we were fortunate that our school district is not afraid of religion, like so many others are, and for that I am grateful. Our public school winter concerts have always included Christmas and Hanukkah songs, both religious and lighter fare, and because we have one single albeit very large (over 3,000 students ) high school and only 2 middles schools the populations are always ethnically, racially and culturally mixed. A grammar school family that we knew were Zoroastrian (how many are even in practicing that in the world?), my middle kids’s prom buddy was a Mormon and my son kept questioning his Quaker buddy; he was very curious about him.
The chorale’s signature song, that the returning alum always jump out of the audience to sing is Handel’s Messiah. Its quite a blast to see Muslim girls with headscarves and Jewish guys with yarmulkes segregated by what part they sing belting out the Halleluia chorus. My daughter sang (lead!) in the high school’s first opera, Amal and the Night Visitors. I gave the music depart kudos for not being cowards about performing a religious themed show. Of course the hs theatre dept has also performed Hair, Cabaret and Gypsy. Was everybody happy? Of course not!
I hate the rap music my son & his friends like, but its his iTunes money, not mine. He was in the minority being a McCain supporter during the election season, but he made his case and was fine. His sister worked in Hillary (spawn of Satan) Clinton’s and Obama’s campaigns. (Argh!) His other sister, unfortunately, didn’t give a rat’s a** and I’m not sure she even voted for president.
My kids are not shocked or suprised by much; they are kind and curious about all kinds of things. I hope that will help them, particularly my son as he goes off into the the military in July and God knows where in the world he’ll wind up. I hope he will appreciate his roots in a suburban American city and maintains his ability to observe, learn and be wise and fair. I have no doubt he will end up in parts of the world where he will be feared and hated for the very qualities that make him and all of us stronger.
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