[Applause]
well this is so interesting
he was just a baby in diapers when he
started correcting other people's
grammar sounds hard to believe i thought
it was hard to believe too but by 18
months
this child could add and subtract 18
months and by the time he was six he was
smarter than his own parents and his
parents knew it and in one year he went
from second grade to eighth grade
and he flew through high school in just
22 months but that's just the beginning
this genius child started college he
just did and he's only 10 years old take
a look
he knew the alphabet by the time he
could walk
he could tell you the history of the
dinosaurs before he was two this is the
jurassic period greg smith has been on
the fast track to college from a very
early age he graduated from high school
at nine after completing grades nine
through 11 in just months and he did
that with honors this is for
participating national honor society
this is for being in the top 10 of the
class at the tinder age of 10 greg is
now the youngest freshman ever at
randolph-macon college in virginia his
application was a shock our reaction
actually to be honest was this must be a
joke but this is no joke i'm taking five
courses 17 credits
there's physics stronger
and calculus for starters
a one times x
plus a zero there's a number of books
for my warfare and antiquity course i
use
a couple other literature books and
french as well as western civilization
teachers are impressed with what they
see it's wonderful to combine the
intellectual ability of an adult with
the sheer unbridled curiosity joy and
enthusiasm of a ten-year-old a typical
student will say well i really like this
class and i'll do this class greg just
wants it all and he wants it all now
greg's classmates are nearly twice his
age i think he might have
a difficult time because there's times
in class when people are talking about
things that aren't appropriate for a 10
year old to hear so far he has all my
respect so i'm going to ask him for
study help if i can we'll see with 28
books to carry this boy wonder is
getting a little help from his mom
bye sweetheart have a great class i love
you i love you
wow so if you were wondering what this
10 year old genius does at home so were
we take a look
greg at home
looks like a typical 10 year old i love
sports love basketball football soccer
tennis track he even gets an allowance
like other kids he gets five dollars a
week but how many children do you know
buy oriental china for their mom greg
used his christmas money to buy gifts
for me and get this he likes browsing
for antiques it's chip and dale his
favorite toy hmm
my favorite toy in this whole room
honestly i don't call it that but i
would say my favorite thing to play with
is my computer it's hard to decide
between my computer and my civil war
figurines
this is
a battle that mimics fredericksburg
don't even think about punishing greg by
sending him to his room to study that's
a reward for me i love to study greg's
idea of a good time is to curl up with a
good book one of the books that i'm
reading is
is by plato right now i'm in the apology
section oh yeah well greg has big dreams
so he's getting an early start i want to
get three phds a phd in biomedical
research phd in aerospace engineering
and a phd in political science
hopefully i'll become our president
somewhere between 40 and 50. greg
we believe you
we believe we believe so when did you
know that you were somewhat different
than other kids
well i always had a feeling that i was
with people that i was that i knew that
i was
had a little more intellectual ability
but i didn't really
i couldn't really tell until i was
around a larger environment in
kindergarten where i could realize what
level everyone else was on so you did
you actually ever go to kindergarten yes
i did i went to kindergarten for an hour
or what
so really how long did you stay there i
stayed half a year you did yes and then
i moved up to first grade aha so when
you moved to the first grade was that
more stimulating for you it was it was a
good adjustment for that time
and
yeah and that helped me just to get a
little bit but i knew i needed more okay
and so then did you go you went to
second grade
yes i went to second grade the next year
but
the school that i was at wouldn't allow
me to
to move any fa faster so we that's why
we moved to florida well you moved to
florida and then you went from second to
eighth that is correct that is correct
so were you doing anything in between
what were you doing were you at home
reading did you
did you were you using flash cards
no my mom and dad didn't believe in
flash cards or in that respect
when i was interested in something they
would get books on they would get toys
on we would go to the museums to learn
about it they facilitated my needs they
did
i know people are
are somewhat laughing they're not
laughing at you you know that because
it's just kind of amazing yes now i
understand you like discussing
philosophical what i want to know is how
does this work with your other do you
have friends your age yes i do i with
the friends my own age i like to play
sports
such as basketball football soccer
tennis like we saw on the tape that's
correct yeah and you have friends who
are 10 9 8 12. that's correct i
and that's what i do with them like we
play board games we
go to the movies we i do lots of things
with them that normal 10 year olds do
you do now what do you like to talk
about though with them you talk about
regular 10 year old stuff that's correct
i i try to bend to what they like as
long as it doesn't break my beliefs okay
and your beliefs being i i am very
passionate about non-violence having
high morals and a good education i
understand i've read that you like you
know philosophical conversations why do
you think that you are the way you are
so smart i think i've been given a
special gift from god i don't know why
or how i've been given this gift but i
want to use this gift to the best of my
abilities to help mankind oh janet and
bob say they knew the time would come
when their son's intellectual ability
would surpass theirs they just didn't
dream it would be when he was six years
old
uh when did you first know he was
different this is your only child yes
and um every day is a learning
experience but from
infancy he was just developing so
rapidly and i was buying the books that
you could find in the stores about what
they're supposed to do at three months
and six months and well he can already
do this you know what do we do now and
so we've tried to
um ad-lib the best was there a moment
when you said uh to bob i think i think
he's
you know more advanced or something's
going on here or that you said to her we
knew that from the time that he was a
baby because of his focus on things he
just seemed to be able to concentrate
and focus more than the average infant
yeah we knew there was something else
there
but i think probably when he learned to
read
so young and he went through a reading
program teaching uh reading skills how
old was he when he actually learned to
read two
by two he was reading
regular children's books and by three
and four he was reading children's
classics such as journey to the center
of the earth and
the last mohicans and around the world
navy days was there something you did or
didn't do that caused this do you think
i think that we have an environment of
we love to read as a family and i've
always made reading fun and we
he would sit on our lap and we would do
creative ways of reading we'd play with
puppets we'd make the story characters
come alive and when we did read to him
we pointed to each word as we read it so
he would very quickly associate with
those words and before long he knew what
they meant before he was a year old he
could go and get a book and bring it to
us and open to a page and start saying
what was on that page
and
he would hear once and be able to recite
it back to us
so we knew that he had extraordinary
learning abilities we just didn't know
how much and then is there the issue of
how you then handle this constantly yes
constantly even today yes it's a
constant worry constant concern are we
making the right choices are we doing
the right thing as a parent to to make
him have a happy life and and we worry
about it because because were you
worried about the college decision
obviously he had the the mind the
intellectual ability to major as as late
as probably april we weren't certain
that he'd be able to go to college
because we could not find the
appropriate environment we lucked out in
finding randolph making college which is
a small college
which uh has a policy of nurturing each
student and we needed that for a
ten-year-old whose special needs and
small in terms of population small
population very small
1100 1100 small
student-to-professor ratio
were you worried as i imagined a lot of
parents that were talking to about the
socialization
about his socialization and as one of
the students said
you know kids in college talking about
things that might be inappropriate
for a ten-year-old and he knows more
than the average ten-year-old
about areas that we perhaps would not
expose him to at this point but
luckily he has
more wisdom than the average
ten-year-old too and i think he's been
handling it pretty well not just
knowledge but wisdom so you had to have
the birds and bees conversation early a
few weeks ago
but you know we we really but did you
use birds and bees or you know
very quickly he was answering for me as
i was
right describing and so i knew that um
you know if i did you have any anxiety
about that birds and bees conversations
yeah and i would say it's your job to
tell us about it i would pass it but
we've had it's been a real struggle for
us as a family because
we want the best for our child as all
parents do and when they would come when
you'd come home from school and we'd say
how was your day at school and he'd say
well i sat in the closet and read my
work by myself while the other children
were working on different things or i
sat out in the hall
because i'm working on fifth grade work
and they're still doing
the first letter of the alphabet
we knew that that wouldn't work and we
did not want him to feel
embarrassed because he had this special
gift we wanted him to be proud of him as
you should be i was saying to uh greg
during the commercial break those of you
saw the beginning of the show and that
what we all heard here really profound
statement that you want to use your
talents you understand that this is a
gift you don't know why but use it to
the best of your ability to help mankind
i think you have the power to do that
thank you do you feel that yourself that
you can really make a big difference in
the world
yes i believe that you can make a big
difference in the world and i believe
that the way to make this difference is
through education
and especially
because the first step to peace is
through education because education
brings understanding and understanding
leads to alternative solutions wow
i think you're right about that
i think you're really right tell me why
you came up with the idea for your iem
nonviolent program and how does that
work well you look around and you hear
about all the sad
things the bombings that go on
all the hate crimes and it's all because
someone doesn't like another for certain
reason
and i'm
i'm starting this program so i can
so i can figure out why they do this why
do they want to hurt these people
and figure out a way to reverse this
and so your program will do what
specifically all right uh first i
believe that the
that peace will also start with the
children and that if we can get the
children to lose the hate we can get the
world to stop hating and with that we
can make the world a much better place
[Applause]
congratulations
that's a big goal but i begin it's i
believe too that it starts with each
individual starts what's your favorite
period in history
it's hard to say there are two very uh
there are two periods that i really like
the
the city-states of ancient greece and
the roman age the greco-roman age four
of
how much
civilization and how much technology
they thought up
and we don't know much of it today
unfortunately the libraries were burned
the books were burned but
they had such a
very wonderful civilization of how they
could make those monolithic sculptures
and
had all that technology
and the second period i would say is the
renaissance for how they revived this
pure that period of
of wonder and the mediterranean world
and brought back the splendor of what
the world was
what do you think is the best invention
of this century a lot of people are
talking about that
this century
probably the
the preparations for colonization of
space because that's where we're going
to lead we have to go
out to find
because the resources of earth will
someday be
very low and
and in space the resources are
maybe an even an infinite amount and
there's so much to know and so much to
explore
thank you thank you yeah uh how do your
other classmates in college
relate to you
see they're very nice they're very
sociable do they ever ask to see your
homework
and no no no no
what are your fears for him
well we've always been afraid that uh we
look back over the years and find that
there's been gaps in you know in a
normal child's experience
and we've constantly uh debated amongst
ourselves about that and even talked to
greg about it as as late as a few weeks
ago we were trying to talk him out of
going to college
because we just weren't sure it was
appropriate why did you want to go so
much so badly i have a passion for
learning and i believe that every moment
that i spend
to the pursuit of knowledge is time
worth spent to help mankind
and so you'd already outgrown high
school and you knew it
yes and you want three different phds
that's correct i would like a phd in
biomedical research
a phd in aerospace engineering and a phd
in political science
because
with my first phd in
aerospace engineering i'd like to design
space stations as well as colonize other
planets and mine asteroids with my
second phd in biomedical research i
would like to find cures for diseases
such as cancer and aids as well as
figure out a way for the regeneration of
cells in humans and the reduction of the
aging process
with my third phd in political science i
would like to become the president of
the united states as well as
maybe
our
appointee to the united nations and try
to
find a way for world peace and to stop
world poverty
i hope i'm still around to vote for you
i really do thank you so much thank you
so much
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