Collegio Online

Issue date: 1/21/10 Section: Campus Life

Media Credit: Hunter Peterson

A glimpse of Alex Jaeger's intelligence showed at 18 months of age.
First, it was getting out of the crib - only a regular bed with bed rails would do. Next, it was numbers. The clock face caught his attention every time the family went to the Tokyo train station.
It was in kindergarten that Alex's intelligence was validated. He scored above the 98.2 percentile in reading and above the 99.9 percentile in math on the Stanford-Binet test.
The scores didn't lie.
"… 'This kid is different. This kid is different,'" Alex's kindergarten teacher, Lori North, kept saying to the school psychologist.
And she was right. Now, at 11, Alex is enrolled as a freshman at Pitt State taking a full-course load that includes biology and chemistry lectures and labs, piano, choir and calculus.
And it all started in kindergarten, where his outstanding test results placed him in the gifted program.
In third grade, Alex's father, Wesley, saw a change that needed to be made.
"I went to pick him up at school and while the rest of the class was running around, yelling and screaming, he was quietly sitting at his desk reading," he said. "I made the decision then he wasn't getting what he needed in the public school system, so we withdrew him and enrolled him in home school."
With the help of the A Beka homeschooling materials, Wesley helped Alex finish grades four through 12 in three and a-half years.
Alex's success has a simple answer.
"I just try and do my best," Alex said.
Day after day, he continues to test his intelligence and its speed.
"For him, he wants to learn a concept quickly … He wanted to know it in the first five minutes and if he didn't, it would be a major crisis," Wesley said. "He would sit there and push himself until, 'Hah, I got it!' OK, then, next concept."
His uniqueness has caused some flurry of attention at PSU.
Alex says he tries to keep focused.
"I try to not let it bother me," he said.
Ideas of "a kid should be a kid" and socialization problems are likely to spring up when thinking of an 11-year-old attending college.
Alex goes to activities like karate three nights a week or piano workshops that include kids his own age.
Therefore, Wesley doesn't see a problem, though he admits to being confused by the efforts of public educators who see fast-tracking bright students as risky.
"... They say (gifted students) will miss out on high school. Like smoking and drinking and other perverted activities? When he could be finished with college while his chronological-age counterparts are experiencing teenage pregnancies and drinking and the drama of high school," he said. "Drama in high school does nothing for you in life."

Continued...

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