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Yesterday's Whiz Kids:
In the press box behind home plate, spirited men put down their hot dogs and sodas, and start typing on their laptops. Rex Barney, the famous "voice of the Orioles," announces that Ripken has made his first home run of the 1997 season. Seated next to Barney, in the middle of the paparazzi, glitter, and cheers is a tall, pale, redheaded man. He picks up a black pen and writes "__7" on the official scoresheet. In an authoritative radio announcer's voice, he then reports through a microphone, "For Cal Ripken, that was home run number one on a 1-0 pitch."
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Mark Jacobson is an official scorekeeper for the Baltimore
Orioles. Like the people around him, he loves baseball. He
attends most games, keeps score for about half of them, and does
some freelance radio sportscasting on the side. Few if any of his
press box buddies and clubhouse acquaintances realize that there
is a certain irony in Jacobson's being here. Jacobson is a former math whiz kid. When he was a child, he was doing algebra when his friends were struggling through long division, calculus when they were battling algebra. He devoured math games, baffled teachers. He started college when he was barely 15. Now, for his "day job," he does math in a high-security role for the Defense Department. But for at least half the Orioles games, Jacobson sits in the front row of the press box, eyes glued to the field, jotting down every hit, run, and error. It's a task, most days, he adores. Jacobson was one of a select group of mathematically precocious children who, with the assistance of Hopkins psychologist Julian Stanley, speeded up the pace of their education and enrolled in college at an early age. Under Stanley's purview, many "radical accelerants" skipped one, two, three, or more grades to attend college at an early age. They included Chi-Bin Chien, the youngest student to graduate from Hopkins, who received his diploma at age 15 years, 7 months. Stanley's radical accelerants were part of a grand experiment, which came to be called the Study for Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). Though the design of the experiment would evolve, its objective remained the same: to identify mathematically and scientifically precocious students and find out how best to educate them. The subjects: 12- and 13-year-olds who had achieved high test scores, especially on the mathematical reasoning section of the SAT, the college board admissions test normally taken by high school juniors and seniors. The method: to accelerate the pace of their math and science education. For example, instead of learning algebra I in the normal 135 hours, students in intensive accelerated summer and Saturday morning programs first at Hopkins and later elsewhere would master algebra in just 90 hours. Many participants would enroll in college at an early age. The results: to be assessed periodically through surveys and questionnaires for the next 50 years. Critics assailed Stanley. "There was every kind of objection," he says. The critics said that gifted children would not be socially mature enough to advance grades, that they could be scarred socially, emotionally, and even intellectually. "Early to ripe, early to rot," was the belief, says Stanley.
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Others, like Eric Strauch, took a bit longer to find their
stride. Strauch attended a SMPY summer program in 1977, and says,
"There were two groups of kids: Those whose parents wanted them
to do it but who didn't really want to. And those who were fired
up, into math." Strauch was in the former group, though being a
good test-taker, he always passed the classes. He entered Hopkins
in 1980, at age 15, and did only so-so academically. He joined a
fraternity, which Stanley implored him to quit. "He told me that
when you join a fraternity your grade point average goes down at
least half a point," he says. Strauch finally became motivated at
medical school, he says, which he entered at age 19. Today he's
an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Maryland
School of Medicine. There were also whiz kids, much like Jonathan Edwards, who started out full speed on the academic track, but ended up taking a different turn.
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Like Edwards, Orioles scorekeeper Mark Jacobson was bored and
frustrated in junior high school. Jacobson, though, did not share
Edwards's rebellious spirit. He was gregarious, and loved
baseball as much as math. In junior high, he was at first allowed
to work ahead in math, but then a teacher prevented him from
going faster than the rest of the class. So after reading an
article about Stanley and SMPY in the New York Times, his
father called the Hopkins professor, who said the teenager might
be a candidate for radical acceleration. In the fall of 1973, having just turned 15, Jacobson enrolled at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. He double-majored in math and mathematical statistics, made the dean's list most semesters, earned awards in physics and statistics, and in four years moved to Stanford to pursue a PhD in statistics. Though he did well at Stanford, he was at odds with whether he wanted to pursue an academic career in statistics. His young age, he says, was not the reason. He just did not feel like he belonged in the academic track. When studying for exams reached fever pitch, he escaped to the ballpark and, at the invitation of a friend back East, began doing spot baseball reports as a stringer for a radio talk show. Four years into his graduate program at Stanford, Jacobson's advisor announced he was leaving for Harvard. Jacobson decided to move too, back to the D.C. area. He told himself that he could always take the train to Cambridge to discuss the progress he was making on his dissertation. "Ha, ha." Jacobson forces a laugh. That may still happen, but now, at 38, he is still ABD. (all-but-dissertation), a fact that bothers him slightly only because it is unfinished business. "But I haven't slammed the door on it," he says. "It's quite possible I will come up with a thesis."
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Instead, he started work as a computer programmer for GW, which
eventually led to his present position with the Defense
Department. Asking him for details about his high-security job
is like playing 20 questions. "I solve math problems. Often there
is a focus to them," he says tersely. Jacobson also continues to do radio sportscasting, which led to his being asked to be the Orioles scorekeeper. Now rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cal Ripken and Brady Anderson, Jacobson says, "They don't know me as a mathematician. They know me as a baseball guy." There really is no pattern to the stories. Some former precocious youth are introverts, whose work is their life, life is their work. Others have varied interests. Many are highly motivated. Some less so. They have pursued a variety of careers. Of the prodigies interviewed for this story, though, virtually all were thirsty to learn. Like athletes craving exercise, they seemed to need to challenge their brains. IN HIS OFFICE in the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, Julian Stanley is encased in data. Files of published papers on the academic lives of the SMPY participants line his office shelves. He has gone to pains to keep a list of all the students who enrolled at Hopkins at a young age. When asked to recall a particular student, though, Stanley rarely refers to the papers. He has the numbers all in his head. With amazing recall, he will tell you a former prodigy's SAT scores, how long the student took to complete college, and (to the day) how old the student was at graduation. Stanley's fixation on statistics can be disconcerting at first. His project appears to be a race or contest. How fast can a student finish college? How smart can someone be? On closer examination, though, it becomes clear that he is simply as avidly interested in his "data" as any researcher is. He did not push the SMPY students, he says, because he did not need to. "It was like pushing a charging bull." In the 25 years or so since he launched SMPY, Stanley has toned down his views on acceleration. "I was pretty flamboyant about radical acceleration," he admits. Over the years he's discovered, however, that while "there are some who are well prepared, intellectually, socially, and emotionally, for acceleration, many kids can't handle it. Some kind of acceleration is crucial, but it doesn't have to be grade-skipping. They need to move ahead in certain subjects," but not in all. "Another danger of starting early is that you may get into the wrong field. If you're good in math and science, you get moved into physics, etc. At each stage, you get moved up. But if you do it too early before you've thought it out, you might settle for a career that you end up not being happy with." To pursue any form of acceleration, says Stanley, the student must be hungry. "A lot of people have a great deal of mental ability and not a great deal of mental energy. I used to sort of worship I.Q. But you can't major in I.Q. A high I.Q. and 50 cents can buy you a 50-cent cup of coffee. There's a lot to the work ethic." So what is the best way to foster early intellectual talent? When Joe Bates first came to Stanley's attention more than 25 years ago, says the researcher, there were few options. Fortunately, he says, the variety of resources for the gifted has mushroomed. In 1980 Stanley launched the Center for Talented Youth (CTY), a residential summer program that today brings roughly 7,000 gifted teens to 16 college campuses nationwide for advanced coursework-- and fun. There's a social component to the program that many participants find just as rewarding as the intellectual challenge. In between courses on algebra and playwriting, the 12-to-16-year-olds take part in talent shows, have dances, and just hang out together. "It's completely unlike anything else that we've experienced," explained one participant. "A lot of it has to do with the fact that we're all equal in this community here. None of us are considered major brains or anything. We're not considered geeks for being smart." CTY now also offers summer programs for children in grades 2 through 6, and since CTY's launch, similar programs have cropped up around the country.
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Researchers who are continuing Stanley's work with SMPY now
recommend that precocious students find ways that allow them to
leap ahead academically, while continuing to develop emotionally
and socially among their peers. In addition to programs such as
CTY, they can take college courses part time; participate in
science fairs; take courses via correspondence or via the
Internet; or do an internship in a research lab or business. The
researchers recommend that students exhaust the options before
they consider enrolling in college early or, at least, before
moving into a dorm. Unfortunately, while today there exists a greater variety of resources for the gifted, most are privately operated. At the same time, for a variety of reasons, public school systems have reduced honors courses, says Stanley. He, of course, opposes the cutbacks. "The fact is that the gifted pay off so handsomely for the country," he says. "The work of the world is done by routine people. I don't want to imply they're not crucial, but garbage collectors don't develop new garbage trucks. Those inventions come from talented people, especially those who have had education to develop their talents. Society develops enormously by capitalizing on their talents." Melissa Hendricks is the magazine's senior science writer.
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