CHILD PRODIGY GROWS UP.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 March 1924, Page 4

CHILD PRODIGY GROWS UP.

GENIUS AS;A BOY AND A CLERK ' ; .J” ' ’ AT 23.

Y. V „-NE\V YORK, January , 3.1. The career of William (fames'Sidis., whoso name and fame ten years ago v.eid;bated by every idle American Schoolboy, is the. subject of widespread discussion among educationalists. He is the son of the lato Dr. Boris. Sidis a- celebrated authority on psyeho-patliol-logy, who reared him in accordance with his own theories. The result was that young Sidis became a brain prodigy. History records that when ho was aged. .Two—He- could read and write. Seven —He had mastered arithmetic and passed the Harvard Medical School examinations in- anatomy. Eight—He possessed a knowledge of Latin and Greek, could speak French, Russian, English and German; and passed tho entrance examination /. Massachusetts Institute of ’Technology. Ten—He entered the Tufts College; Eleven.—He entered Harvard Univercity, and lectured before an amazed gathering of professors and mathematicians on tho Fourth Dimension. Sixteen. He received his bac-elcr of

arts degree. Eighteen.—After two years spent in the school of arms and sciences and at the law school at Harvard, be betaine an instructor in the Rice Institute, at Houston, Texas. Nineteen.—He was arrested with eleven others at a Socialist demonstration at Boston, charged with assaulting a police officer and with rioting, and was sentenced to eighteen months in the House of Correction. Ho appealed and disappeared, two warrants being issued for bis arrest.

Twenty-five—(His present age). He was given employment, as a clerk in a New York business concern at a salary of £5 a week. HIS ONE AMBITION.

When William Jams Sidis entered Harvard University at the ago of 11 bis father published a. brochure, entitled “Philistine and Genius,” in which be furiously assailed the modern system of education, saying:

We regard the child’s mind as a tabula rasa, a vacant lot, and empty on it all our rubbish and refuse. Our educators are owl-wise, our teachers are pedants, and all their ambition is the turning out of smooth, .well-polished Philistines. It is a sad case of the blind, leading the blind. Wlni't can be expected of a nation that entrusts the fate of its young to the care or carelessness of young girls, to the ire of old maids, and to petti-fogging officials, with their educational red tape, discipline, and routine?

Young .Sidis was discovered a few days ago by a newspaper interviewer engaged in bis humble clerical duties. He was working an adding machine. The interviewer quotes him as saving that his chief ambition is to “earn a little greater margin than 1 have, so that I may put something aside for a

rainy day,” The former prodigy of youthful learning was clad in a, “cheap brown suit, much too tight- for his ilesliy frame.” His mopi of moose coloured hair was in need of trimming and lie was unshaven. Ho tolls his friends that lie wants work which does not require thinking.