Congratulations to Shrinidi Prakash, who won the final of the Child Genius 2013 competition run by Mensa and broadcast on Channel 4 last night. She is a worthy winner, excelling at mental arithmetic, reasoning, spelling, memory tasks and (last night) debating. Even more impressively, she is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents whose first language is not English. All the other competitors had English parents. Shrinidi was already an under-12 international scrabble champ. Her extraordinary command of English must surely be down to her love of books (which she enjoys sniffing as well as reading!). Continue reading “Channel 4’s Child Genius: why the losers are the real winners” →