Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 6 April 2007:

The Slippery Slope between Prodigy and Tragedy
by Colin Goh

It’s terrible, but when I read about how Sufia Yusof, the mathematics prodigy who was admitted to Oxford at the age of 13, had been found prostituting herself in London, the first thing that popped into my head was an old BBC comedy sketch.

It was from the radio show Knowing Me Knowing You, where the idiotic host Alan Partridge (played masterfully by Steve Coogan) was interviewing “Simon”, a child prodigy, who at 9, was Oxford’s youngest ever Fellow. Partridge set the tone for the entire programme when his first question to the prodigy’s father was, “When did you first realise that Simon was abnormal?” To which the father replied, “Gifted, you mean,” only for Partridge to concur, “Abnormally gifted.”

I find Sufia Yusof’s story tragic, but I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. I had the same feeling some years ago when I attended the New York premiere of a documentary on perhaps Singapore’s most famous GEP student: Grace Quek, better known as Annabel Chong. For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Chong, she rocketed to worldwide notoriety with The World’s Biggest Gang Bang, a pornographic video of her having non-stop consecutive sex with 251 men (later revealed to be actually “only” around 70).

“Annabel” turned up for a post-screening Q&A session, which I thought she fielded deftly, and I was left with the impression of someone extremely smart, but so full of hurt and rage that she felt compelled to respond in an extreme way.

Some have suggested that the entire exercise was a way to exorcise her trauma after being gang-raped while studying law in London, while she herself has said it was an artistic statement questioning the unfairness of lauding men as “studs” for having multiple sex partners, but not women. I guess – though while watching the documentary, I mostly remember thinking: how uniquely Singaporean of her not to be content just making porn, but trying to break a record while at it.

I’m not suggesting in any way that the pressure of excelling academically automatically leads to risky sexual behaviour, but I do think that growing up in artificially-constructed circumstances can really screw you up.

The Wife, an assistant professor in the field of education here in New York, says that quite a number of her fellow academics are increasingly ambivalent about ‘gifted’ programmes. While the goal of helping each child develop his or her own gifts at his or her own pace is laudable, often the kids are assessed on very artificially-drawn criteria, and set up with expectations that can never be realized when they eventually leave their hermetic existence and rejoin the real world.

Also, the benefits of (1) exploring different possibilities rather than committing to one path at such an early age, and (2) mixing with people of diverse abilities and backgrounds, invariably receive short shrift whenever we talk about “giftedness”. What does it say about us that we aren’t as worried about creating elite, uncaring sociopaths as we are about Boy-Boy not being one up over our neighbour’s children?

Here in the US, there’s definitely an industry devoted to stroking parents’ egos about how Junior is actually a genius, and playing on their status anxieties to sign up for expensive programmes to help him get a notional leg up over the riff-raff. It gets even more ridiculous when this competitiveness is taken to early childhood (Baby Einstein DVDs) and even pre-natal stages. (BabyPlus Womb Songs, anyone?) According to Alissa Quart’s book, Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child (Penguin Press, 2005), “Designating children as gifted, especially extremely gifted, and cultivating that giftedness may be not only a waste of money, but positively harmful. The overcultivated can develop self-esteem problems and performance anxiety.” She cites the case of Brandenn Bremmer, who entered college at 10, and then committed suicide at 14, after complaining of having “perfection” demanded of him.

When the news of Sufia’s admission into Oxford first broke, I met a gentleman who said he wished his son could be just like her. “Isn’t it be great to have such a head start over your peers?” he asked me.

I thought back to my hormone and alcohol-fueled undergraduate experience and said that for a 13 year old far away from home and mixing with much more mature people, it could be both terrifying, disorienting and lonely. Being great at sums doesn’t mean much then. What’s the hurry anyway? I asked him. Is it worth the psychological trauma just to get a few years’ seniority, which is ultimately meaningless in the working world? He didn’t seem to understand then.

I wonder if he still wishes his child were like Sufia.

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