In 2014, the Lifetime channel took a break from airing movies about women in peril. Instead, they sponsored an intelligence contest called Child Genius that offered a coveted prize of a $100,000 college fund along with bragging rights for being the smartest kid of the year.
The show followed 20 gifted kids from around the country as they prepared for the competition. They were given 16 rigorous tests on subjects like math and geography. They were tested on memorization. And, of course, the show featured a lot of "hovercraft" parenting, sobbing children and high doses of performance anxiety.
The winner was 13-year-old Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, who was also headed to the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the fourth straight year.
Kids with an IQ approaching that of an Albert Einstein or a Stephen Hawking are often known as "child prodigies," or kids whose brains function on a level equal to or better than most adults. Last year, in fact, Paulius Zabotka, a 14-year-old in the...
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