Gifted Children Then and Now

Besides an attention-grabbing designation, what special features do exceptionally gifted children have in common? How do they see themselves? What is it like for them once they grow up? In order to take a closer look at these remarkable young people that have been called "the best and brightest" among us, a Sinorama reporter talked to gifted children Su Yao-ying, Shan Chung-chieh and Chen Hsin-i in Taiwan and traveled to the United States to visit three "former gifted children" who are often cited as role models for others: Yu Ju-kang and Yang An chung, currently graduate students at Harvard University, and Yang Po-yin, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Gifted children are usually highly motivated, and they'll do well if given the chance. They seem self-centered and wrapped up in themselves sometimes, but that depends on their individual personalities." The person speaking is beaming, checry-faced Su Yao-ying, who skipped a grade each in middle school and high school and is now a third-year physics major at National Taiwan University.

Su Yao-ying describes herself as very self assertive, as always wanting to be number one--and she always has been. "In the beginning my classmates rejected me, but after a while they all got used to it."

Nonetheless, she doesn't think of herself as an exceptionally gifted child. "I just have a good memory and go all out, that's all."

Hers is an odd example, she thinks. "When I was in elementary school, there weren't any classes for the gifted, but I had very broad interests, especially in art and literature. Whenever we had an art, calligraphy or speech contest, I was always on the winners' list, although my math was atrocious." She pauses for a moment. "But in middle school they didn't recognize noncredit courses like they did in elementary school. I made some accommodations and was lucky enough to meet up with a good teacher who saved my math--and I went right on from there."

The eldest child of Hung To-kui, a member of the Legislative Yuan who holds a doctoral degree in education, Su Yao-ying can't recall receiving any special "home tutoring" when she was little, but she could read by the age of three, and the bookish environment helped her develop the habit of reading.

If Su doesn't consider herself a gifted child, who does she think is worthy of the name? Shan Chung- chieh, in her words, is "a real whiz-- a truly gifted child."

In the eighth grade, when he was in a class for outstanding math students, his math had already reached college level. He's crazy about computers, and his English is good enough for him to work as an interpreter. He can also play the violin and compose: he was a special guest as an elementary school student at a conference for Asian composers.

Shan Chung-chieh's talents revealed themselves early. His kindergarten teacher found he was out of the ordinary, and he was admitted to elementary school a year early after being tested by the Special Education Center at National Taiwan Normal University.

His mother, Lin Hsiao, who teaches nursing at National Yang Ming Medical College, doesn't think she and his father gave him any special training. They just looked after his needs, and his precocious academic achievements all came about naturally.

From a tender age, Shan Chung-chieh liked to listen to his father explain math to his older brother and sister. Seeing his quick reactions, Mr. Shan, who teaches math, let him constantly move on to higher level textbooks. When his brother and sister were about to enter middle school, they went to a cram school to study English, and his parents, worried about leaving a four-year-old all alone by himself, let him tag along. And when his mother wanted to learn how to use a computer, she brought him along, a second-grader at the time, to study with the class, which included graduate students, and it didn't slow things down at all.

"He isn't as emotionally mature as other students in his grade," his mother reveals. When he was in elementary school, he didn't pay much attention to trivial details and he was sometimes looked askance at by his teachers for forgetting his assignments or failing to remember his classmates' names because they thought he was just trying to strike a pose.

Now in middle school, Shan Chung-chieh seems to have come to realize the importance of having friends. His teachers laud him not only for being outstanding but also for his willingness to help others, for volunteering to show the whole class how to use a computer to keep track of their grades, for instance.

He himself says, "Now I try to do things other people like too." What, for instance? "Like playing baseball with my classmates in gym." Before, he didn't like sports much.

He also says earnestly that he wants to do more "bad things," like not telling the teacher on his classmates, "because good students are discriminated against and nobody likes a saint." A brief few words that seem to be facetious child's talk in fact reveal the common desire of gifted students to receive the approval of their peers.

Of course, there are also some gifted children who are free and easy and take things in their stride.

Chen Hsin-i, who is in the ninth grade at Min Tzu Middle school, skipped fourth grade at the school's recommendation because she "was always sitting there with a blank stare once she had mastered the lesson," and she hasn't had any difficulties adjusting.

Her mother, Chang Chin-ying, who teaches at Hung Tao middle school, describes herself as a liberal parent, and her daughter is very cheerful, friendly and normal in her behavior.

"She doesn't like taking intelligence tests. If the questions are too obscure, she slips up sometimes, but she's got the stuff."

It takes all kinds. Bottled up inside or outgoing and extroverted, gifted children each have their own special features and can't be stereotyped.

(Liu Yung-fang/tr. by Peter Eberly)

Yu Ju-kang: Born in 1968. As a high school student, took first prize at the R.O.C. National Science Fair three years running and won two first prizes and one second prize at an international science fair in the United States. Now at Harvard University, has passed the qualifying exam as a doctoral candidate.

Yang An-chung: Born in 1967. Entered National Taiwan University a year early, now studying physics at Harvard University.

Yang Po-yin: Born in 1969. Now studying math at MIT, has already earned a doctorate this summer. Graduated from National Taiwan University at the age of 18, making him the youngest graduate of a university in Taiwan ever.

Q: Please tell us about your schooling in Taiwan.

Yu Ju-kang: When I was in middle school in Tainan, they found I was good at math and had me take a province-wide high school math test. I came in fourth out of more than a thousand, but you couldn't skip grades back then.

I graduated from high school in 1987. I had applied to skip elevenths grade, and the school had looked favorably on it and nominated several others to go with me, but the Ministry of Education only allocated one spot, based on overall grade average, and I wasn't chosen. Fortunately, I used to take part in science fairs a lot then--half the time was outside of school--so it wasn't so boring. At NTU, where I'd tested into the math department, I took 146 credits in three years and graduated early. I went to the Institute of Mathematics at Academia Sinica for a year, and then I applied to Harvard.

Yang An-chung: When I was in the eleventh grade, two other students and I were allowed to take the joint university entrance exams a year early, and I tested into my first choice, the physics department at NTU.

Yang Po-yin: I was out in front of the system, you might say, instead of just taking advantage of it. When I was in eighth grade, I was in a class for gifted students at Hoping middle school, and they let me skip a grade and enter high school without taking the joint entrance exams, which was fine with me. I skipped twelfth grade and got pretty good scores on the college entrance exams, good enough to study medicine, but I chose physics at NTU and graduated early, in three years. (Editor's note: When he was an eighth grader, Yang Po-yin came in second in a nationwide math test, and his father, a mathematics professor at National Taiwan University, asked educational authorities to let him enter university. It caused quite a stir at the time, and he was finally allowed to skip into high school under treatment as a "special case.")

Q: What do you think about the practice of skipping grades? Are there problems in adjusting?

Yu Ju-kang: If a student has the ability to skip, if he's mastered the material, then he'll be bored to death in class, which really isn't much fun.

It's better to let him enter the next phase a little earlier and pick up some more positive influence. There's a limit how far a gifted student can go with an ordinary teacher.

Yang An-chung: Skipping a grade didn't affect me much. I studied the twelfth-grade curriculum on my own outside of class, and it wasn't very hard. So I think the system can be carried out, to let some people start to take part in research a little earlier.

Yang Po-yin: It's not right that people who skip should have to take the joint entrance exams. There should be a more flexible system. But a year's less suffering at school is a good thing for students with creativity and imagination if they can save a few more precious years for research.

As for the question of adjusting, I didn't have any problems with the coursework when I skipped ahead in high school--I used to read other books in class a lot because I couldn't stand just sitting there doing nothing--and I developed evenly in all the courses. But I was always the youngest. I couldn't compare with the other students in strength. The only reason I didn't flunk gym was the school's lax standards--the same in college.

I had almost no friends in junior and senior high though, and I sometimes felt lonely. I'm the type of person who's suspicious of authority, who acts on his own and doesn't care much about what other people think, so other people always looked askance at me. It was a pretty lousy feeling. A lot of people who had never even seen me had this prejudice that I was weird or something, which really wasn't fair. In college I was much more mature and better at dealing with people. I made friends with some of my classmates and got along much better. I think gifted students should be put in one class together to prevent them from being looked askance at and students with lesser abilities from feeling frustrated.

Q: What's it like studying in the U.S., and what are the special features of the educational system there?

Yu Ju-kang: Harvard is able to attract famous professors from all over the world, and their lectures and seminars are all on the cutting edge. It's shown me a lot. Half my classsmates are non-Americans--from Britain, France, the USSR, Taiwan, mainland China--they're all very outstanding, although I'm just as good, of course.

It's very common to finish college in three years here. Very few of my classmates are as old as I am. They encourage the math students to take a crack at the doctoral qualifying exam as early as they can. I passed it as soon as I came, and now I can start writing my doctoral dissertation.

Yang Po-yin: No one pushes you here, but the competition is intense. You have to take responsible for yourself and learn how to do research on your own.

It's not all that unusual in the U.S. for a 17- or 18-year-old to study graduate school. I think it's a question of the system. Americans aren't any smarter than we are, but students in Taiwan are used to being pushed, and if they aren't pushed, they let up and take it easy. I cut class something terrible in college, but as long as you make the grade there aren't any problems. If you want to learn, you'll be responsible for yourself, but a lot of people can't take on the responsibility.

There are still a lot of constraints and limitations on the education of the gifted in Taiwan, and improvements will really be hard if the goal is still the joint entrance exams. We each have our own goals in life, which shouldn't be confined to just one way of thinking, or else society will pay a price some day.

Q: Did your families have any influence on you?

Yu Ju-kang: I wasn't affected by my family much at all. My parents don't understand anything about math. (Note: Yu's father is a professor of Chinese at National Cheng Kung University.)

Yang Po-yin: You can see that from my taking physics. (Laughs.) But my father is a real know-it-all, you know--at least he answered enough of my questions to be one.

And we've got all kinds of books at home. I grew up around stacks of books, which is where I came out ahead.

[Picture Caption]

Su Yao-ying: "I don't think of myself as a gifted child. I just have a good memory and go all out, that's all." (photo by Pu Hua-chih)

Shan Chung-chieh was a special guest as an elementary school student at a conference for Asian composers.(photo by Pu Hua-chih)

Yu Ju-kang: "If a student has the ability to skip a grade and is bored to death in class as result, that's a real bummer." (photo by Sunny Hsiao at the Harvard University science center library)

Yang Po-yin: "Americans aren't any smarter than we are, but students in Taiwan are used to being pushed, and if we aren't we let up and take it easy." (photo by Sunny Hsiao at the MIT student activity center.)

Shan Chung-chieh was a special guest as an elementary school student at a conference for Asian composers.（photo by Pu Hua-chih）

Yu Ju-kang: "If a student has the ability to skip a grade and is bored to death in class as result, that's a real bummer." （photo by Sunny Hsiao at the Harvard University science center library）

Yang Po-yin: "Americans aren't any smarter than we are, but students in Taiwan are used to being pushed, and if we aren't we let up and take it easy." （photo by Sunny Hsiao at the MIT student activity center.）