[hatsubishi]

The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer.

Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12.

And more at Wikipedia. Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

[ckastner]

> Point is geniuses learn way faster by themselves than going to a class. It's a huge waste of time to sit in a lecture of someone speaking at turtle pace, I would fall asleep. Sorry if you went through that.

You're generalizing from some poorly taught class, whereas it's unlikely that a genius would remain in such a class, and also unlikely that the education would not also be supplemented with other forms of teaching.

Terence Tao was a child prodigy the likes of which are rarely seen, and his bio is full of classes/teachings.

[Mezzie]

Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

I was a child prodigy (I'm a much less impressive adult), and since I was from a rural area with divorced parents without much time for me, I spent plenty of time in 'normal' classes in addition to supplemental classes and educational opportunities.

The difference between me and my (non-prodigy) siblings was that the teachers normally didn't expect me to pay attention/I was allowed to do pretty much whatever I wanted after I finished the assignments. I have to agree with hatsubishi to a degree: It IS boring as hell to be in a classroom setting made for people behind your level, and this is especially likely to happen at early ages.

I don't think it's schools alone that kill the creativity, though. It was interesting going to events/being around other prodigies, because often I was the only kid there whose parents/adults didn't have a career already picked out for them by the time we hit middle school. The expectations of perfection, the sense that you're public property (with great gifts come great responsibility), and the social isolation of child geniuses does more to stunt them than the education system, in my opinion/experience.

[ckastner]

> Eh. It depends on the kid and their circumstances.

Absolutely, hence why I phrased it as "unlikely". The wrong environment will kill anything.

[Mezzie]

It's hard to know whether my experience or Tao's is more representative. There's selection bias going on with regards to people's conception of a typical child prodigy since people are going to be more aware of successful/properly educated prodigies than the others.