Laurent Simons, between the wonder of a physics degree at 11 and the warning from a university: “It’s too much pressure”

Laurent Simons recently hit the headlines for completing the physics degree in just nine months, when stipulated to be performed in three years, at the age of 11.

The “genius boy” as his friends know him, was born in Belgium in 2010 and from an early age he began to show high intelligence traits. It was his father Alexander who told the BBC in an interview that Laurent’s grandparents were the first to notice that he was special.

“But all grandparents say their grandchildren are special, so we don’t take it seriously,” said Alexander Simons.

Later, it was teachers at the boy’s school who confirmed that their son definitely had a gift. When they began to notice that he was bored in class, the teachers sought to anticipate him: “The teachers gave him extra homework, extra tests, and he solved them very quickly,” said Alexander. There, they discovered that he possessed photographic memory and a high IQ (intelligence quotient).

His coefficient is 145, only fifteen points lower than that of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkings. The normal average is 90-100 for reference.

At only 4, he entered primary school and graduated at 6: “He did everything very quickly. At Primary school in Belgium lasts six years and he completed it in two”.

His parents thought he would take his time in high school due to the amount of subjects, but he finished it in just a year and a half. Faster than primary school. “It didn’t jump out, it just made it faster: while the other children went paragraph by paragraph, or page by page, he went book after book ”, his father said.

“I did the first year of my elementary school and then it just got faster and faster. I did the remaining five years in one year. I did my high school in a year and a half. And at the university I advance a course every week, ”Laurent commented on the BBC. He also added that he found the school “boring”.

At the age of 9, he entered the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands to study electronic engineering. Laurent hoped to graduate before the age of 10, taking one subject per week. “My goal is really to extend life, to replace human parts with technology, like artificial organs and robot arms, robot legs, things like that,” he said.

DIFFERENCES WITH THE UNIVERSITY

Laurent’s parents wanted their son to graduate from university before he was 10, on December 26, 2019. To do this, he had to finish your three-year engineering career in ten months.

But Eindhoven University of Technology told them it still has too many exams and it was impossible take them before this date, what Laurent was not likely to graduate before the age of 10. “If we speed up the course, its academic development will suffer,” the institution said.

The university also warned of the danger of putting “undue pressure on a 9-year-old student” who has “unprecedented talent”.

Simons’ parents did not like the college’s response informing them that the boy graduated in mid-2020 and, therefore, decided to take him out. After negotiations with universities around the world, it was Israel and the United States that were considered for the continuity of studies, but it was ultimately the University of Antwerp, in her native Belgium, that won. an iron hand.

BACKGROUND

Ophelia Morgan-Dew is 3 years old and an IQ of 171. “It was really 8 months. Began saying colors, letters and numbers quite early compared to most children“, explained the mother. When she was two years old, she added, Ophélie the alphabet was already known.

It was then that Ophelia took the Stanford-Binet test, which is used to assess children from the age of two in areas such as spatial awareness and verbal and logical skills. There they decreed that he had a high IQ.

Chehab Gharib He was born in a town in southern Germany. When he was still young, he moved with his parents to the state of Florida in the southern United States. According to her father, “Every day I would come home and say, ‘Today I read three books, today I read four.’ In the first year, all the volumes of “Harry Potter” were read.

Shahab graduated from a gifted school, finished all of his subjects with the best grades, took additional online classes, and finally finished high school last year at just 12 – an age other kids didn’t even know. not started high school.

Shahab will likely graduate with a bachelor’s degree in about two years, at the age of 15, from Pace University in New York.

When he’s not studying, he enjoys playing with Lego or Playmobil, talking on the phone with his Florida friends, or watching movies with his parents. He also usually accompanies them to the Metropolitan Museum, for which he has an annual pass, a gift of his high school graduation.

MYTHS AND TRUTHS ABOUT PRODIGIO CHILDREN

The psychologist and creator of the Gifted Children Study died in 2000, leaving one of his colleagues, David Lubinski, in charge, who completed the work and came to some very enlightening conclusions.

One of the study’s first statements is that it’s not dangerous to be a genius. Before, there was a conception that improving intelligence from an early age could cause long-term damage.

Another of the main conclusions of the study is that there are different ways of being intellectual. “All gifted children are not the same, like the others, they are different; Perhaps these differences are not valued socially like other boys, but they acquire knowledge easily, but they don’t have to be destined to be confined to a trade, but they can be what they are. want, artists or mathematician ”, declared the psychoanalyst.

Psychologists have also demolished the belief that being gifted makes everything easy for them, making it clear that people with this type of intelligence must fight like everyone else for what they do.

“There will be cases where boys with intelligence superior to others will need professional support and other cases it is the parents who need it”, The specialist responded whether it is necessary to have professional help due to the expectations and social pressure of people with IQs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a gifted person as someone who has a IQ greater than 130 and it can be changed throughout the life of these people.

KEEP READING: