Yusof Family’s Official Blog

So Farooq didn’t actually do much teaching at all?

Of course he didn’t. It’s a little difficult to teach when you’re not actually present, and Farooq wasn’t with the family for over six years. During this time, Halimahton was practically a single parent.

But I read something different in the papers! I heard about these “accelerated learning methods”…

That’s because Farooq enjoyed talking to the press. Nobody in the family bothered correcting him before because they didn’t think it was that important.

In fact, Halimahton dislikes the term “accelerated learning” because she prefers to just teach at whatever rate the children like to learn, so it basically depends on their own personal preferences. And some of the children aren’t fast learners; for example, Iskander’s personality was such that he liked to take his time to thoroughly understand a subject instead of trying to rush through it, so Halimahton simply adjusted her teaching to take this into account.

So how did the Yusof children become prodigies?

It wasn’t something planned. Halimahton just wanted to raise her children as well as possible, and education was merely one aspect of that. The Yusof children didn’t spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and studying, though, because Halimahton realised that when it comes to kids, a huge amount of learning takes place when they are just doing everyday things. A lot of “teaching” occurred when she encouraged the kids to participate in ordinary activities like cooking karipaps or scheduling trips across the country.

Slowly, by doing these things and others, it became clear to Halimahton that her particular teaching philosophy was helping her kids develop more rapidly than “normal”, except that within the family there was nothing strange or unusual about it! This was because Halimahton’s style of teaching tended to make things very easy for both her and the children.

So were there any “teaching methods”?

In retrospect, yes, but Halimahton didn’t make a point of sticking rigorously to any single technique; there were numerous guidelines, but few hard-and-fast rules. For instance, Halimahton always maintained a good rapport with the children so that they got along and understood each other very well. After that, she tried to make learning fun for the kids so that they’d be enthusiastic about learning with her and on their own, figured out a bunch of techniques to make it easy for them to learn, and so on. The most important thing was to keep the whole process fun and rewarding — not just for the kids, but for Halimahton herself!

How much is nature and how much is nurture?

We think it’s mostly nurture, to be honest. The children’s personality traits and interests seemed to be innate, though, and Halimahton structured her teaching around their preferences. Many people make the mistake of trying to use one method to teach every child, but every child is different and they respond best to different things.

Halimahton’s perspective is that if a child is struggling to learn something, the problem is usually with the way he/she is being taught as opposed to the child being incapable in any way. So whenever Halimahton encountered this kind of situation, she would keep modifying her approach until the child understood; and if nothing worked, she’d just leave it until later.

Were the kids forced to work really hard?

No — when they were little (i.e. less than eight years old) they usually spent one or two hours in formal study, and after that they largely worked independently and figured out their own schedules. Young children can rarely maintain a good level of concentration for more than two hours a day, which is why anything else would have been rather counterproductive.

But I read something different in the papers!

Well, they kind of made that one up.

Why were the children homeschooled?

Because they were already far ahead of their peers by the time they were of school age. They did go to their local school for a while, but unfortunately it could not cater for students who were at such a high level and they ended up being left on their own even while at school. After a while, the kids said they wanted to learn from Halimahton again; though she was initially hesitant due to her limited finances, Halimahton did greatly enjoy spending time with her children and so she eventually agreed.

These days, many schools are better at providing for highly able children and Halimahton would certainly have considered them if they had been around in 1989.

Why did Sufiah run away from Oxford?

Because of Farooq’s behaviour, according to what she said when we asked her. After she had some problems in her first year, he would obsess over everything she did a little too much.

How come Sufiah is now working as an escort?

Presumably because she wants to or she thinks it’s the quickest and easiest way for her to make money. We certainly don’t condone it and hope she will figure out a better path in time, but it’s something she has to decide for herself.

What’s with Farooq?

As with most people, his life isn’t totally black and white. He has his good points, but unfortunately there were some things in his past and his childhood (we won’t go into them here out of respect for his family) that caused him to exhibit very strange and irrational behaviour on occasion. Most of the time, Farooq would behave in a thoughtful and considerate manner, but every now and then he would lose control of his emotions and this aspect of his personality was what caused almost all the problems, including his violent outbursts. The family believes that he needs to be on his own and should seek psychiatric help for his mental issues.

Why didn’t Halimahton divorce him before?

She did consider it a number of times, but because of her precarious financial situation and the fact that Zuleikha had just been born, she decided to try reasoning with him instead to persuade him that his behaviour was wrong. In retrospect, this was clearly a bad decision but at the time it seemed like divorce would only have led to extreme hardship and an uncertain future. In any case, Halimahton finally initiated divorce proceedings a short time ago.

Is it right to go to university early?

It depends, but going to university at 12 or 13 is probably only a good idea for a very small percentage of prodigies — namely those who are super-focused on their work, highly mature, and seemingly unlikely to change their interests much in the future. If not, they should probably broaden their horizons, explore other subjects, and just generally grow up a little before applying to university. This would give them an outstanding background and add a lot of breadth to their life even before they enter university.

For example, Zuleikha is 14 and has had the qualifications to enter a top UK university for quite a while, but she has numerous other interests that she’d like to explore before she applies to university around two years from now; it’s certainly a luxury to be able to work on whatever you like without any commitments or exams! In our opinion, a mature 16-year-old is unlikely to have much difficulty at university.

Funnily enough, all the children wanted to go to university as soon as they had the qualifications, but in hindsight all of us should have thought about it much more carefully. Unfortunately, even if we had, it would still not have been easy in those days to find a suitable alternative to university; the Internet had not really taken off (and our PC was ancient!), we didn’t have the money to afford things like Open University courses or even good books, and there weren’t any appropriate Gifted Children programmes in the country. In a perfect world, though, they probably would have gone to university a little later.

Does being a prodigy mean your future success is guaranteed?

No, though it definitely helps a lot in our opinion. What many people don’t seem to realise is that the skills needed for early achievement are only a subset of those needed for future success; those “other skills” such as self-motivation and drive, learning to socialise with people, etc need to be developed separately.

However, we believe that early achievement can and certainly should be a big advantage — it’s just that most people don’t exactly know what to do when it comes to prodigies, and thus their abilities are often wasted to a large extent. Fortunately, we have much experience with prodigies and we now feel we have a pretty good idea as to how they can make the most of their talents, though as always it depends a lot on their specific situation.