Among child prodigies, Michael Kearney, now 24, is often cited as the world's youngest college graduate, having earned a Bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of South Alabama at age 10. [Photo/IC]

Wei Yongkang, a child prodigy who could recognize about 1,000 Chinese characters at the age of 2 and who graduated from Xiangtan University, Central China's Hunan province, at 17, was recently persuaded to withdraw from the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the age of 20. On hearing the news, his mother who had accompanied him during his studies, allegedly shouted at him to commit suicide. The Beijing News commented on Monday:

We should interpret the reaction of Wei's mother properly. No mother would like to harm her child. Yet it might be too late as from the very beginning the parents didn't treat their son as a normal child.

Even if a prodigy, a child is first of all a normal person. If we adopt the concept of taking children as ordinary human beings first, no matter how young or old they are, we may hold a realistic attitude toward their potential no matter how talented they seem. We should realize that children have their own perceptions about their lives, which may differ from that of their parents.

And we should be aware that education is more than just schooling, even if most Chinese parents regard higher education as the only valuable education in life, real life experiences are also important education for children.

Children living in a small world controlled and managed by the parents cannot interact well with the outside world and lack common sense. So at the end of the day they have not learned the lessons they need to live their own lives.