Teen Physics Whiz Makes U.S. Team

To those prosecutors and persecutors of public education--Los Angeles public education, to wit--Van Nuys High School physics teacher Art Altshiller presents defense Exhibit A: Scott Schneider.

He’s done it again.

Scott, some may recall, is the 17-year-old math-science-computers wunderkind who recently achieved a flawless 1,600 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test and starred on the triumphant Van Nuys team that swept the 1995 National Science Bowl.

Most recently, the slight teen who favors black jeans, high tops and T-shirts has just been named to the 1996 U.S. Physics Team. That makes him one of the nation’s 20 best physics students.

For the record, Altshiller notes, LAUSD hasn’t fielded a U.S. Physics Team member for eight years.

In May, Scott will compete for a spot on the national physics traveling team--the five brightest physics students in the country who will represent the U.S. this summer in the XXVII International Physics Olympiad in Oslo. Meanwhile, he has taken the grueling 4 1/2-hour test that may qualify him for the U.S. Chemistry Team, too.

Faced with the enviable choice of attending Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Caltech to study computer science, Scott also is visiting college campuses and weighing the benefits of generous financial-aid packages. That’s nothing to scoff at for a kid who wasn’t accepted to the prestigious Van Nuys math and science magnet program on his first try.

So how smart is he?

“Without hesitation, he’s the best physics student I’ve had in my 25 years of teaching,” Altshiller said.

His mother, Shelly Schneider, said she and her husband, David, once wished that Scott’s achievements would compare to their own--both parents studied computer science at MIT--but that now “he makes us look stupid.”

And Scott is also so likable, note his friends, family and teachers, that even his sister Sarah, 15, tolerates him. Most of the time.

Scott “doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body,” said Altshiller, also the Science Bowl team coach. “He’s just the kindest, most ethical kid you’d ever want to meet.”

But don’t be misled, Scott said last weekend at his parents’ Woodland Hills home. He isn’t normal.

“Normal people are boring,” Scott deadpanned. “What’s interesting about normal?”

Scott would much rather debate politics at a coffeehouse, listen to the punk band Bad Religion, watch silly cartoons on TV, rent a Monty Python movie or play Axis and Allies, a board game recreating World War II, than be normal.

But nonconformity wasn’t easy in his first few years of high school. “It is really hard to be a smart kid when you still think you have to be cool,” he said with a shrug. “But now, I’m just happy with the few good friends I still have here.”

Pal Dean Chen, 16, a teammate with Scott on two Science Bowl teams, said Scott’s strengths are “his open-mindedness and a really strange sense of humor.”

There’s more to Scott than computers and science, Dean said. Take, for example, his objectivist libertarian politics, styled after author Ayn Rand.

A vigorous defender of individual rights, Scott favors the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and believes the environment would be better served if air rights were part and parcel of property rights. He defends the right to bear arms with the same vigor that he defends free speech.

“Since I want freedom, I want to give others freedom,” Scott said, sitting in his father’s three-computer study, where the shelves are crammed with books on UNIX, chemistry and Windows 95. “I don’t want anyone to oppress me, so I don’t want to oppress anyone.”

Although Scott said he probably isn’t deserving of all the fuss, his parents disagree.

“Athletes get [attention], don’t they?” Shelly Schneider asked. “And in this country, everyone spouts pious words about math and science. . . . But who gets the top rewards in our society? Politicians and lawyers. It’s nice for students to get this kind of attention for math and science.”

David Schneider added: “It’s nice that any academics gets attention.”