While many 12-year-olds are navigating their sixth grade of school (or one or two grades ahead if they're really smart), others are already setting their sights on university. This is the case with child genius Viemens Bamfo, the 12-year-old boy who has gained admission into the University of Ghana. Of the 2900 freshmen who will be starting university, he is (unsurprisingly) the youngest of the cohort, according to Nigeria's Pulse.
Bamfo, along with his older brother who recently graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, was home-schooled by his father Robert Bamfo, due to financial constraints. The father says that he never anticipated that his efforts would yield such unprecedented results. Describing his teaching method, he said:
"We used the Cambridge syllabus and the WASSCE syllabus so I understood some basic things about [them]...What I teach first is dictionary skills so that the child is able to pronounce every word correctly. We do the phonetic skills and once that is done I teach Latin…for the sciences I do not give notes."
The father prepared Bamfo to take the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for private students—an exam his son passed effortlessly.
Bamfo will reportedly be studying Public Administration and hopes to become the president of Ghana when he's older. Asked why, the young boy says that, "I want to become the President of Ghana, I want to lift high the flag of Ghana and make Ghana a truly independent country like China, the US, Britain and other countries."
Here are a few varied reactions about the news of the child genius on social media:
