Intelligenzbestie March Tian Boedihardjo

Mad Minerva has the story about nine-year-old March Tian Boedihardjo, the youngest ever student to enrol in a university in Hong Kong. You go, boy! Well done! And all the best for your future.

In the German news, they used the term Intelligenzbestie to describe March. The English term is "brainiac", but the word Intelligenzbestie, literally Intelligence beast, is so telling. An intelligent person is a problem and a threat to society, as is a beast.

Btw, the press conference with March and his father had a very nice quote of the latter (my emphasis):

"I will advise parents in Hong Kong there's no need to know the IQ of your children. Just try to do your best to nurture them and give them space to develop," Tony Boedihardjo said.

That's it. Nurture and space. Education is easy.

Is China going to dominate the 21st century?

From "Learning to Keep Learning" By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times, December 13, 2006:

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Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google — which for me is a proxy for curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K-12 education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it wants to be a truly innovative nation.

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Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay Americans to do highly skilled work — if other people, just as well educated, are available in less developed countries for half our wages?

If we can’t answer this question, in an age when more and more routine work can be digitized, automated or offshored, including white-collar work, “it is hard to see how, over time, we are going to be able to maintain our standard of living,” says Marc Tucker, who heads the National Center on Education and the Economy.

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Tomorrow, Mr. Tucker’s organization is coming out with a report titled “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” which proposes a radical overhaul of the U.S. education system, with one goal in mind: producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can think creatively.

(...)