Child genius on tonight

[Emochild]

Change of quiz master this year

Hopefully the parents are a bit more media savy this time round

I was aghast when Simon smirked at Mog's disastrous round

I very much doubt that's what happened. It's all in the editing. They are focussing on making Simon look like a twat. They probably looked through the footage of him smiling like that and put it with Mog's round for effect.

I thought he said, well we can use that to our advantage, in response to mog's bad spelling test result.

I really dislike the competitive attitude, with talk of smashing the opposition, and the way the parents let the attitude either go unchecked or else encourage it. Learning is there for everyone and your own ability is neither increased nor decreased by another's ability to learn. I have tried to bring dd up with the attitude that if she does better than someone else it is perhaps because she has had more advantages than them, not an innate measure of her superiority in comparison with other.
In todays society, the lone genius is largely a thing of the past.
I am not critical of the attitude of the children, but, as a parent, it is not how I would chose to bring up my child.
I would, if dd had wanted to go in for this, have asked her if she realised that spending time learning sheets of obscure words and spelling handed out by the organisers would be pointless hours out of her childhood. and was not the NVR and NR of the 11+ not enough of a waste? That's without getting good at mental arithmetic and pretending it was maths.

I said after the previous episode that if Christopher went out, his dad would just enter the little brother in a few years. I was half joking! But to actually say that in that way, when Christopher had just been knocked out... ugh.

I'm glad it's not just me who was shocked at the competitiveness between Stephen and Georgia. I'm an only child so I never really know what's 'normal' in terms of sibling rivalry. I have 2 DCs myself but they're younger. To me these two seemed extreme, and I did feel really sorry for Georgia having her needs put to one side all the time :( it reminded me of Hugo from a couple of series back, they said his interests dominated all the day trips etc.

I remember the old style series. Yes those 11+ people have always stuck in my mind! I'd love to read that thread.

Cagilo i was that competitive (and more)with my sister. A state of affairs encouraged by our mother, as a way of spurring us both on. I suspect Stephen and Georgia's parents are doing the same. It didn't work out well and our relationship has suffered into adulthood as a result. But that's a thread in itself.

That's a shame Dylan :( I do find it baffling raising two children but I really try and keep them 'together' rather than against each other IYSWIM. I do get comments quite a lot about how close they are so hopefully it's going ok so far!

I just googled Shrinidhi, the winner of the first series. It was easy to find as I remembered she was from a similar area to me and I figured she must've gone to the same (grammar) school as me. I'm glad she has as it's a very academic school and I think she would be able to be herself there. Found this!

It was with great pleasure that we learned this week that Shrinidhi Prakash (9S) had won the Stiglitz Essay Prize. The prize is an international competition in honour of Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University and 2001 Nobel Prize Winner. Shrinidhi submitted a 5,000 word essay on the theme of Global Economic Inequality which was read and judged by Joseph himself. The competition is open to any student in full time study so for Shrinidhi to have achieved this in Year 9 makes it even more amazing. The prize will be presented to Shrinidhi in Mexico at the next International Economic Association World Congress in 2017. We are immensely proud of her achievement and look forward to hearing about the trip to Mexico in due course.

How awesome! :)

Gosh Cagliostro that is amazing! That school isn't far from me - it was one I would have considered for my daughter if she turns out to be academic (she is only 6 so it is a long way off). By the looks of it, with students like Shrinidhi there, it must be a lot more academic than I had even realised!

I don't understand why they give them specific words to learn for the spelling and comprehension rounds: it means it's a memory test, not a test of either their spelling or comprehension. It would be much better if they gave them no prior warning but less obscure words, and marked it in the same way as other rounds, not on a sudden death basis.

I thought so too Judy! I'm not sure if it's definitely the case though - the papers used by the families didn't all look the same, so I was wondering if they'd made lists themselves. If it was a level playing field with the same standard list, I'm surprised they didn't all do better TBH - that sounds mean, but what I meant was that they all seemed to have excellent memories so I would've thought memorising words and spellings would be a veritable walk in the park.

Yep Frozen it's a very very academic school. Not sure about now but when I went it was a 'superselective' (ie entrance test only - and it was basically an IQ test, they didn't even do English and Maths, the reason apparently being because those could be 'crammed for' although I know plenty of kids who certainly did cram for VR/NVR tests!). I was lucky to be able to go there - while not quite Shrinidhi-level in my eccentricity, I was a very academic child - and odd (I have ASD although didn't know it at the time) and frankly I would've been eaten alive at the local comprehensive (going on friends' experiences). I ended up leaving in year 10 as I had a breakdown (due to childhood stuff) - but I think if that hadn't happened, I would've had a very happy 7 years there. Although my best friend, who stayed for sixth form, refers to it as 'the bubble' - the school was VERY focused on exams/achievement (or at least it was when we were there) and so it was in some ways a bit of a narrow experience, and in all honesty pastoral care wasn't great. But that was around 15 years ago, I'm sure it's a whole different place now!

I did find myself wondering though when I had my DD whether I'd let them try for schools like that. As it turns out though my DCs did not inherit my genius. :o They did inherit my ASD though! :)

Difficult though it was to watch Mog get those questions wrong, it is never to early to learn a bit of humility and grace, i think he really needed that to realise and to bring him back to reality.

Yes, aeroflot I can imagine at that age, discovering that you are fallible and that other people are better at something you've been hailed as a 'genius' for must be quite a blow. I can only hope that in the longer term that the experience of realising there are other bright (within a very narrow definition of brightness) children out there might be healthy for Mog and some of the other children on the show.

At first I thought his parents were amongst the better adjusted, but the awe stuck manner in which they talk about his accomplishments doesn't seem to have done him any favours and doesn't prepare him well for a world where he will be employed by someone who he may consider less 'gifted' than him.

I know likeDylan they have probably fuelled his inflated feeling of superiority, and have done very little to help him in other areas.

Funny how Christopher's dad has dropped him in favour of 'fresh Prey' for next time!

Harry yes he is 12, but is also going to be an adult in a few years time, he is old enough to act in an appropriate way, and to be taught well humility. He will need it when he starts entering the big wide world, my 4 year old would not behave like this, if he did, he would get a bollocking.

aeroflot and if I were Christopher I'd be breathing a massive sigh of relief.

I also wonder how the children are picked for the show. Is it genuinely the highest achieving children that make it into the televised competition or those with nightmare parents or quirky personalities who are put forward? Or does the coverage just foreground the more extreme examples

LikeDylan I agree, some just seem average, with parents who are really pushy, like the nightmare ones who convince the teacher their little darling is the next Einstein, when he/she is clearly not!

I really liked Christopher, a really lovely boy, and I bet he is relieved its over, his poor brother though . There were some very natural talent, like Mog, and Reah, but some just average with pushy parents. Like the Brand lady last week, and mabey Christopher.

This isn't about trying to diagnose individuals on the programme, but I can't help thinking that the show designed to be an Aspergers test rather than an intelligence test as almost every round so far has been a test of either maths ability or memory.

DD had an ed psych assessment via school, and one of the things that I do remember from the whole experience is that the two 'testable' qualities that seem to have the closest association with overall ability (and yes there are all sorts of problems with that, but not as many as there are in this show) are non-verbal reasoning and language - knowing the meaning of words in context.

Whereas there is much more correlation between good memory and AS than there is with memory and IQ (with all the same reservations, etc).

So they've set up a show which is basically testing children for AS and then pointing at them when they (and their parents) don't behave as we expect.

LikeDylan - this might explain why so many of the quirky ones get through.

Poor Georgia

Her brother had a very narrow subject though, with lots of the answers involving ants!

I feel so sorry for Georgia. The dynamic in that family is horrendous, I hope it's just the editing that makes the parents seem so laid back about the competition between their children.

What is Christopher's dad doing there?
Trying to get a few more minutes on tv?