NotNoNever

So, who mentioned abuse? Did anybody ask for a break in the lesson to facilitate this genius? No, didn't think so. However, the good teacher does arrange things so that all levels are covered in a class instead of running all kids like little automatons and getting them all to the same point at the end of the curriculum - otherwise known as mediocrity. Curiously, small schools and their teachers manage this perfectly well, where there are more than one age group in a class. I think it's called combined year group teaching. Unfortunately, that's the sort of patronising paternalistic attitude that got teachers into a mess in the first place. We are the teachers. Teacher knows best. You cannot possibly hope to know anything because you are not a teacher like me. You are an uneducated, unthinking moron whose opinion on all things information-passing is worthless. Brings to mind a classic song by Pink Floyd Actually, it's not a thankless profession. I have yet to find a human being alive who is not grateful to the teacher that treated them with respect, humanity, and care, and who inspired them to understand and love at least something about a subject. Furthermore, the teachers I really remember were the ones who facilitated my learning according to my learning style, but who, curiously, were also very good disciplinarians and held a class in the palm of their hands by sheer dint of personality. We were not frightened of them, but we were scared witless of stepping out of line in a bad way. We knew that stepping out of line in a good way would always be valued. For instance, I was in a primary class once, bored out of my mind, looking out the window, because the whole class was doing oral spelling, which I was immensely good at. I was staring out the window, and the teacher called on me to spell prison. I turned to him, reeled it off at high speed, turned back to the window. Instead of being pissed off at me looking out the window and giving me withering 'pay attention' commands, he called the whole class to watch as we repeated the whole thing, because he was amazed. He did not flip out and demand his rights as a teacher to be centre of my world. He valued the obvious ability and demonstrated it to the whole class as an indication of what could be done - I was no teacher's pet, by the way. Generally I was the teacher's pest! But he was a great teacher, as were a couple of others, and I'll be eternally grateful to him. Who knows. Who cares. We're breeding kids here, not assessible widget makers. Although, based on his ability, one can assume that his English is excellent (have you ever read a learned journal written in reading range for a normal 12 year old?) He's doing great things for society, so his social marks are probably indisputable, because he clearly understands the issues. His other classes marks? Pft. What do you know about, say, economics, or engineering, or computing, or art, or physical exercise? If you know a lot about all these things, good on you. But I suspect there's one or two you're excellent at, and all the rest, meh. Picking a couple of things he might not be brilliant at does not make him hopeless, it just makes you patronising. If you'd care to explain to me how he managed to get to where he is, along the route he outlined in the video, by knowing nothing beyond cancer cells, I'd be very amused interested to hear it. This is true. However, what he illustrated was where the teacher stopped him; where 11 out of 12 researchers rejected him; where he won $75k; where he got the support he needed. It may indeed, as you imply, be possible that the teacher did take him aside after class and support him. But given his even approach, why would he not have mentioned this. But more amazingly, why is the school not bobbing up and down claiming credit and shouting 'look what we did, look what we did!'? Hmmmmm! By the way - it's 'than' not 'then'. <wonders what Wildone's English grades were like> You are right, of course. We should value teachers more. But believe me, in the UK, at least, they get paid enormous amounts of money eventually, for generally not so fantastic results. And they imply they are worth ten times as much because of their philanthropic ethos. Yeah, right, that computes. If it takes heaps of money to convince a philanthropically minded human to convince them of the value of passing on knowledge and thinking, then it's time all the teachers went back to school, because their social marks were obviously pathetic.

Rock on, Cia. Exactly. Here in UKland we have a ridiculous system that beats teachers over the heads if they're not meeting key stage 99.9768 at hour 14329 in the child's curriculum. Letting teachers think for themselves has become a thing of the past. That said, it's oyr fault for whipping up stupid furores which have encouraged politicians to be frightened all the time. And teachers did nothing to help themselves in the late seventies early eighties when they went on endless strikes for more money and pissed the whole blooming world off. I think for me, and it's the reason I used the tag I did, I just love the boy for his iconoclasism. If he recognises a problem and sticks a finger up @ the systemos in order to further his solution and his own outcomes, yay for the boy. I do appreciate your comments as an adult wishing for respect for rules. However, one of the things that is not taught in schools is learning how to learn. This boy has clearly got that cracked and needs little teaching supervsion. UKland's insistence on facts facts facts, and never mind the principles principles principles would defeat this boy all too often. Once you know how to learn, learning anything is a dawdle. If all you ever learn is how to memorise, you're stuffed. Learning facilitates connection and thus development. Memorising facilitates storage and thus stasis. Respecting the rules would be to give up on learning to learn, I fear.

Hmmm ... indeed, he is a Prince, and as such is just a commoner like the rest of us. How is a prince supposed to behave? Differently to us? More 'well behaved'? Seems like we like to get our kit off, but not so happy when he does it! Tsk tsk. (Unless you're a panting puppy of course ) (Oh, and meeeee)

Goodness, look, he's got arms and legs just like the rest of us. Unlike some, though, he also has a personality and a life. Unlike the idiot that betrayed any implied trust. You Americanos have a good word for such people - douche bags

Oh, Danno, hissy fits are not going to help. lol. Though I can see your point, right enough. But, actually, I have done quite a lot of teaching in my time and know the hard headwork it is. However, when some kid in a biology class is reading about carbon nanotubes and cancer cell genetics, some credit needs to be given - oh and a lot of encouragement and support. Hauling the learned paper (i.e. a paper many years advanced from this learning stage) sounds more like didactic fascism, and insecurity that the teacher never got the child that far ahead (or themselves, for that matter). It also sounds like plain stupidity. After all, that could have been a paper of great importance that could have helped save many lives. Oh, no! Wait. It was. Andy ... what is it makes you think the kid was not learning? It was a biology class. He was dealing with a subject closely related. One could actually take your argument and use it to support the boy. He could have sat there bored titless and learned nothing, cos he'd quite obviously learned it already. Or, he could have done what Oh wait! He WAS already doing it. Learning, that is. Now he is at an internationally respected university, having earned the place, a large sum of prize money, now grant funded, and about to make diagnostics a whole lot easier, cheaper, and better, in order to save the lives of grumbling jobsworths who can't see past the end of their own laser pointer and red correction pen. You ask how far he is going to get if he doesn't get his exam results. HUUUULLLLLLLLLLO. He doesn't have the exam results and he's still in university, not just learning with the other drones, but working with the ... ehm, oth er droney things - but he's getting paid for it. Just think of the money he will earn on the patents. The Euromillions will look like seedcorn! Honestly, the British preoccupation with bloody exams - exasperating! It takes only one bad boy with dreadful behaviour such as this to help save or extend literally millions of lives by applying naughtiness in a quiet corner where he was doing no harm. Or it takes one egomaniac fascist with a superiority complex and pockets full of chalkdust to leave things as they are and maintain a system of premature death and decay. Not sure I really recognise the choice to be honest. 'mon e boy!

So this kid reads something far more advanced than biology in his biology class and his teacher takes it away from him. The thing is - he's dreaming up ways to save lives and proving to be very good at it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19291258

Well, duh! You're a bloody puppy, for gawds sakes! ;P

I'm not sensitive to all this stuff, but my family is. My mother dreamt of her brother being attacked when it was happenng. She also got a visit from my dad one night when he was far away. My father has been contacted and touched by several things. My sister has seen a little girl's feet on the landing, and a dead WW1 soldier with only half his face. We had the house blessed twice when I was a kid. My father recently revealed a new one, where he had been walking home (countryside) one night and saw blue hazes all over the place. It has come to pass that where many of these hazes were, there are now houses. He's also seen funeral processions a week or so before they happened, and he's seen the grey dog of meoble twice before the requisite deaths (that one's also been seen in Canada). Thank goodness I'm only attached to the here and now. I'd be seriously disturbed by that if I knew it was happening (although everybody says that, but are able to cope fine when it does happen, apparently).

Huh! Foot Fetish Federation is just talking a pile of .... No, not, never, is defo a good answer. But damn your eyes if samurais is lost in bad translation.

Ehm, which bit is causing you trouble? lol

Napoli (Italy)

I KNEW IT! I asked you and you denied it. You foot fetishist beast you!

Bit confused here WL. Are these stories in a series?,in which case you can use the Book option to collect them. If it is just an explanation use a Prologue. If it is just a simple link indicator, use a Description. If it's a lengthy explanation of terms (glossary), use a Prologue. I think I'd suggest the book option, and make Book One the glossary (call it Introduction, or The World or something like that. The other option is to code in hyperlinks on the first two uses of a term, opening in a new tab, taking the reader to a bookmark in a story (could be done using the chapters for term or letter groups). However, this sort of thing might have conflicts for GA background formatting, so could go wrong. I think I saw something about that in Anthology guidelines the other day.

Yeah, keep writing. I know that might not sound helpful, but it is actually the only thing that will work if you don't have a plan. Eventually you'll get to a place where you are dissatisfied with what you do have, and you will be able to see what's wrong, which is half the battle for putting it right. Just accept the tedium that is going to be writing rubbish for a while.

While I agree with everything that's been said, I have to point out that you'd probably only edit once if you did much of that. No writer would want to come back. Writers ask for these services for support (some muuuuch more than others) not for a kick in the chuckies accompanied by a poke in the eye. That said, authors could take some advice on the reverse of what Cia has said. Sometimes they need to be able to take the criticism. However, there's one thing I feel is important. As a beta or editor, once you've said it, that's it. If it comes back for a second edit and it's still there, it should largely be ignored, unless it's blatant spelling / grammar. When I edit I actually convert the text into a three column table. Col 1 is the original; Col 2 is suggested ammendments, formatted so it is easier to read as a piece; Col 3 is explanatory notes if necessary. This method is very easy to read, easy to incorporate suggestions - which is more difficult with comments, and very easy to convert back to normal text layout.

Ooooooooooooooooooooh, that's .... tempting!

Great story .. if you weren't such a bitch to poor Jeremy Seriously, though, it was very good. It touched really well on teenage inability to connect the body with the brain with decisions with consistency, and all that with hormonally driven thinking. If anything, it's a bit unreal for sixteen year olds, but who cares. It's great.

If I'm not mistaken, gynaecologists are vastly more likely to be male. Anyway, I am not bothered if it's a guy or a gal doctor. If they're gonna handle my bits, they're all gonna have a job. I'm a grower, and a doctor / penticle visit has a worse effect than a cold shower in an open field in midwinter in Alaska! They're gonna have to work for their money with meeeee lol. Talk about microsurgery - and that's just my zip

My head's spinning ...

Is that a long bow or a cross bow?

Well, it sure as hell ain't me, given that there is nothing in the quote that could really be a delusion. More yabbering.

Rio has no challenge at all! It can't be topped - not unless they get that big statue to animate itself into the thing it represents. If the world is amazed at L'12, just think how the Btritish feel. Absolutely astounded. We were sure we were in for two weeks of demolition by press. They tried, but they were overwhelmed by excellence in the end. As for the ceremonies, they are what they are - fabulous bits of entertainment till it is all slowed down by 10,000 marching ants athletes

Anybody who thinks men are scarier than women has never seen a mother react to a threat upon her child. Men are naturally better equipped to be violent, but women are naturally better equipped to be absolutely bloody terrifying. Which (I believe) is why they are better talkers, because if they didn't have the talking gene, there would be no walking men! lol

Yeah, it's 10,000 sq miles of pumice stone from a sub sea volcano somewhere close to New Zealand. Would be quite a sight to see.

Teenagers! Can't live with them. Can't live with themselves. It zips along nicely, perhaps a bit too nicely - or perhaps a bit too zippy, not sure which, but it's really very well written. It has a naturalness too it that's very translucent. I wonder about this car accident, though. Was that laziness, or a two fingered salute to tired tropes, ironic stylee?