The Last Samurai

Ms. Thompson rejoined, ‘Well, the fact is children develop at different rates, Stephen, and a lot of children would find those subjects rather off-putting. Any school system has to set priorities, so we concentrate on the things that everyone is going to be able to use. We can’t take it for granted that everyone is a genius.’

I explained that Mr. Mill thought that he was not a genius but that he had accomplished a lot because of getting a head start. I said I had not even done as much as Mr. Mill and anybody who read the book could say what was in it so I did not think I could be a genius.

Ms. Thompson answered, ‘The fact is, Stephen, that while your degree of articulateness would not be so surprising in an educated person, the reason it is not surprising is that the average educated person has developed their mind over the course of their education. It is not so common in a boy your age.’

I thought that this was probably a fallacious argument. It was quite hard to explain things to Ms. Thompson. I said, ‘In my opinion this argument is completely fallacious. How can you say that you will not let a stupid person start something until the age of 12 and then say the reason you know they are stupid is they do not know something another person knows because they got to start at the age of 3? In my opinion this is completely preposterous.’

Ms. Thompson asserted, ‘Be that as it may.’

At this point Sibylla returned to the room.

‘It’s all set!’ she exclaimed. ‘I talked to the head and he said they could probably squeeze one more in and that the school always treats every child as an individual.’

‘Obviously we make every attempt,’ began Ms. Thompson.

‘But it looks as though he won’t be in your class.’

‘What a shame,’ regretted Ms. Thompson.

‘Anyway, we won’t take up any more of your time. Come along, David. Everything’s going to be all right.’

MY FIRST WEEK AT SCHOOL

13 September, 1993

Today was my first day at school. I thought maybe now that I was old enough to go to school Sibylla would tell me about my father but she didn’t. Sibylla walked me to school and I was very nervous because if people did not study any languages until they were 12 they must study some other thing and I was a whole year behind.

I thought maybe other people studied more mathematics and science and I had not even finished Algebra Made Easy.

When we got to school Miss Lewis explained that school had started last Thursday. Sibylla said she was sure she had started school on Monday when she was a child.

We didn’t do any science today so I could not tell if that was what people had been doing.

When I got home I started reading The Voyage of the Beagle. This is an excellent book. I have worked out that Charles Darwin could not be my father, because he died in 1882, but I am going to finish the book anyway.

14 September, 1993

Today was my second day at school.

We started the day off by painting pictures of animals. I did a picture of a tarantula with 88 legs. Miss Lewis asked what it was and I explained that it was an oktokaiogdoekontapodal tarantula. I don’t know if there are any real ones, I think this is just something I made up. Then I did another picture. This one was of a heptakaiogdoekontapodal tarantula because the first one got in a fight and lost a leg. Then I did a picture of two monster tarantulas fighting, each one had 55 legs and it took a long time to draw all the legs. Before I had finished Miss Lewis said we should put away our drawings because it was time to do some arithmetic. We were supposed to go to the addition positions and work at our own speed. At addition position 1 you do a worksheet adding 1 to a number and at addition position 2 you add 2 to a number.

When I finished all the worksheets I was the only one at position 9 so I decided to do some multiplication. Addition takes quite a long time to get anywhere unless you are adding big numbers and all the numbers at the positions were quite small. I practised multiplying 99 × 99 and 199 × 199 and some other interesting numbers. I like numbers that are almost some other number.

I read three more chapters of The Voyage of the Beagle tonight. I was too tired to work on Japanese.

15 September

Today was my third day of school. I was still at addition position 9. I decided to practise using the distributive principle of multiplication. The distributive principle of multiplication is in chapter 1 of Algebra Made Easy but it was my own idea to use it with 9 because it is almost 10.

999999 × 999999 = 999998000001

9999999 × 9999999 = 99999980000001

99999999 × 99999999 = 9999999800000001

999999999 × 999999999 = 999999998000000001

9999999999 × 9999999999 = 99999999980000000001

99999999999 × 99999999999 = 9999999999800000000001

999999999999 × 999999999999 = 999999999998000000000001

9999999999999 × 9999999999999 = 99999999999980000000000001

16 September

Today was my fourth day of school.

17 September