It was Christmas 2015 when James, a precocious kid from Brisbane, got his first two Rubik’s cubes – a 1.0 and a 12-sided Megaminx.
Solving the Megaminx, a dodecahedron-shaped mind-bender, confounded the then-four-year-old. “It took me about a year to figure it out,” he says.
The challenge ignited a passion for ‘cubing’ in James, who now has 23 Rubik’s Cubes – an impressive number for a seven-year-old.
Even more impressive is his proficiency at solving the complex puzzles. His current personal best for a traditional three-by-three cube stands at 12 seconds – not too far off the world record of 4.22 seconds, held by a fellow Australian, 22-year-old Feliks Zemdegs.
James, the youngest participant in the SBS series Child Genius, is now an authority on Rubik’s cubes. “The three-by-three has 43 quintillion possible permutations and combinations. The two-by-two has 3.6 million possible permutations and combinations,” he informs the camera as he shows off his puzzle collection.
When James was four, he completed an IQ test at the suggestion of his teacher at his kindergarten (the equivalent of preschool in other states). The results showed that James was in the exceptionally gifted range, with an IQ in the top 0.0001 per cent of the population. “I think my IQ is higher than Albert Einstein’s,” he says on Child Genius.
It was a surprising discovery for his parents, Tammy and David. James was their first child, Tammy says, and they had no benchmark to which to compare James’ development.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, it was clear from an early age that James was gifted. Tammy, speaking on the phone from their home in Brisbane, recalls a moment on a family holiday when James was 18 months old. David was reading him a book – a children’s encyclopaedia. “The first letter on the page is always in a larger font,” she says. “James pointed at it and said ‘A’.”
David pointed to more letters and, to his parents’ astonishment, James named them correctly too. A few months later, when James was two, he could read more than 100 words. “We think he was born reading,” Tammy laughs.
James still loves to read. “I’ve probably got about 80 books on my bookshelf,” he tells me. His favourite book is Dog Man Unleashed by DavPilkey, the creator of the popular Captain Underpants series. “It’s the only book I have that I’ve read over 10 times that I still like reading.”
When James started school in 2016, he skipped Prep and went straight into Year One. Despite the acceleration, he was ahead of the class. “The work was easy but annoying,” he says on Child Genius.
“He pretty much had Year One covered before he started,” Tammy says over the phone. The lack of stimulation meant James struggled at school. “The first half of the year was difficult for James, and it got to the point when he was getting too upset.”
At the end of Term Two, Tammy and David decided to take their son out of school. “He pulled himself out – he said, ‘I’m not going anymore’,” recalls Tammy. “He was very determined.”
At home, away from the school environment, he rediscovered his love of learning. “He started being happy again and we realised we had to do things differently,” says his mum.
Today, Tammy homeschools James and his five-year-old sister Alice, who is also gifted. “It’s hard trying to be mum and teacher,” Tammy acknowledges. “You don’t want to make your child do something they don’t want to do, but you have to.”
Among the advantages of homeschooling is the opportunity to invest more time in the things James is passionate about. “We let him run with the things he loves,” she says. “We try to do things that he wouldn’t do if he was at school.”
James’ favourite subject is maths, which he currently studies at a Year 10 level. “He has a maths tutor, which feeds that maths brain,” Tammy says. He also loves chemistry and piano, which he can play by ear. He’s less excited about English, spelling, and, he tells me with a cheeky note in his voice, the great composers – their current topic of study.
Tammy expects James will complete his education at home. “We don’t see how he can fit into the current system,” she says. Things might change in the future, but in Tammy’s view, the current education system isn’t set up to cater for kids like James. “There’s no funding – that’s the hardest part.”
She says she was enormously proud of James’ performance on Child Genius. Seeing him up on stage, competing with kids much older than him, gave her a new appreciation for his ability. “To have the gift that he’s got…is really quite amazing,” she says. “It’s not often that your kids amaze you like that.”
A new six-part SBS series hosted by Dr Susan Carland, Child Genius follows the lives of Australia's brightest children and their families and sees them testing their abilities in maths, general knowledge, memory and language.
The quiz show is being broadcast over two weeks from November 12, with episodes airing Monday to Wednesday at 7.30pm on SBS.
