1977: the Tao family lives in an attractive brick house nestled in the low hills south of Adelaide, Australia, with Gulf St Vincent in the distance. William Tao is a pediatrician of Cantonese origin who emigrated from Hong Kong in 1972. He drew the plans for the house where he lives with his wife, a physics and mathematics graduate. After teaching mathematics in Hong Kong, she was able to continue her career at several secondary schools around Adelaide.
A gifted child -----------------
Terence Chi-Shen Tao, born on July 17, 1975, is the first child of this well-settled couple, who are well integrated into their community. At a family gathering, before he is even two, they are astonished to find him playing with another child, aged five, using blocks marked with letters and numbers, and explaining to his friend how to arrange the letters alphabetically and the numbers from smallest to largest. Soon afterward, he even begins doing simple addition and subtraction with the same blocks. How did he learn all this? By watching the educational television series "Sesame Street" (Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, 1969), he replies!
Soon after his second birthday, young "Terry" is caught by his parents using the typewriter in his father's study, typing out the text of a children's book he enjoys with one finger. Terence's parents are academics—William had even undertaken some research into the education of gifted children while living in Hong Kong—and decide that, although they will not push their child, neither can they hold him back. With this in mind, they expand their library, buying or borrowing numerous books that little Terry can read as he pleases and at his own pace.
By the age of three, Terry has the reading, writing and arithmetic skills of a six-year-old. He is enrolled in a private primary school, but does not adjust to being among five- and six-year-olds whose games and social development differ from his own and whom he is intellectually far ahead of. Moreover, his teacher has no idea what to teach such an unusual pupil. He is therefore withdrawn from the school after six weeks. Terry returns to his local nursery school, where he thrives among children his own age while continuing to read at home. South Australia, whose capital is Adelaide, has not yet developed special educational provision for children described as "gifted". In hindsight, this proves rather beneficial, since there is no guarantee that little Terry would have flourished fully in such a setting.