Cradle of Genius

by Simon Andrew
photo by Niu Xiwu

The prospect of working with 13 other colleagues to teach only 70 children would represent an ideal working environment for many teachers.

The teachers at Beijing's only school for gifted children, however, do not have time to chat about soccer scores or discuss which groceries represent the best buy. They are too busy trying to keep up with the perplexing questions posed by their intensely inquisitive students, aged 11 to 13.

When the teachers at the Gifted Children Education School are asked difficult questions, they have to assign themselves homework to try to find out the answers. If an answer still cannot be found, the teachers refer the child to a university textbook or suggest the child wait a couple of years to enter tertiary education.

The school for gifted children, established in 1985 as part of the Beijing No. 8 Middle School, accepts only 35 11-year-old children for enrollment once every two years. The 70 students at the school are divided evenly between a high class of 13-year-olds and a low class of 11-year-olds. Students at the school are ready to enter college after only four years, half the time required for other students.

The school is located at the periphery of a muddy sea of construction where old buildings and narrow lanes are being rapidly pulled apart to make way for the shiny new edifices of Beijing's Financial Street. This environment of demolition and reconstruction reflects well the rapid cognitive process taking place in the children's minds as they acquire new knowledge pell-mell to form their own new pictures of the world.

You have to feel some sympathy for the teacher who recently filled in for the 11-year-old class homeroom, or form, teacher, who was also the class's English teacher. The replacement faced considerable consternation when his class decided to conduct their regular class meeting in English. He was forced to ask the students to translate for him to allow him to follow the discussion at the meeting. The children had started learning English only last September.

One of that class's students, Lisa (otherwise known as Zhou Yueyi outside her English class), said in clear, precise English, "I enjoy studying English because it allows me to speak to when she grew up.

Her classmate Tom (Hao Chunliang) said he wanted to be a doctor. A common characteristic of the children at the school, apart from their obvious intelligence and feverish thirst for knowledge, is their high ambition. When asked what they wanted to do when they became older, the children's responses ranged from engineer to pianist, and astronaut to prime minister, with no mention of the more humble professions of nurse or postman.

Of course, all children possess their own dreams about what sort of people they want to be when they grow up. The difference with the children at the special education school is the stronger likelihood that they will realize those dreams. Teachers at the school said all of the school's graduates had gone on to enter universities, most of them starting from the tender age of 15. Most of the students had gone on to enroll in master's degree or doctorate programs, mostly in the areas of math and physics, and some had also pursued fine arts courses. The vice-director of the school who's also a teacher, Wang Zhuying, said 30 of the 152 children graduates from the school had enrolled in postgraduate courses in the United States. About half of the 70 or so students who had already graduated from college, either in China or abroad, were engaged in research work, and many of the others had begun careers related to science.

Lisa and Tom, however, said they were no different from other children. Both said they enjoyed playing after school. The teachers are quick to point out that their protogenes are no different from other children in terms of their maturity or emotional development. The school is by no means an education hothouse where the children are injected with vast amounts of information during the day and then given lengthy homework assignments.

According to the teachers, classroom time and the amount of assigned homework is less than at other schools. Every Friday afternoon, the students take part in distinctly non-academic activities, such as hiking, boating, swimming and skating, which are designed to bring the children closer to nature and develop their co-operative abilities. The students are no more diligent in their studies than other students of their age, the teachers say. The difference arises from their highly developed innate ability to absorb and analyze knowledge quickly.

Thousands of children apply to enroll in the special education school during its three-yearly intakes. Wang said it was becoming increasingly difficult to ascertain the most innately intelligent of the young applicants from those who possessed a wide knowledge of academic subjects.

"Children in China have more knowledge than before because they are given so much attention by their parents," Wang said. "Even though children are becoming more knowledgeable, this does not mean that they are becoming increasingly intelligent."

In selecting its students, the school is increasingly making use of psychological methods to test the children's innate intelligence, such as using abstract tests, rather than relying on examinations and IQ tests alone. Math and logic tests are used to screen 1,200 children. A different variety of tests whittle the number down to 50.

These children stay on the school premises for a week to enable the teachers to monitor the children's intelligence, personalities and communicative abilities. Hopeful children and anxious, proud parents will have a chance next year to apply for a ticket on this fast track education system. Meanwhile, the present students of the Gifted School Education School will continue to study and play, going about both activities in a similarly noisy fashion.