Wired Magazine:12-Year-Old Mexican Girl is the the Next Steve Jobs Wired Magazine

Wired magazine believes they have found the world’s next tech genius in a Mexican border town. Paloma Noyola Bueno, 12, lives in Matamoros, attends a school that sits next to a municipal waste dump and is supported by her mother and other family members who get by selling scrap metal and food in the streets not your typical technological genius story.

Despite adversity, the youngest of eight scored a maximum score of 921 in Mexico’s version of the SATs meaning she had the highest score in the nation.

Wired’s article focuses on the teaching methods of her educator to produce such astonishing scores. Her maestro, Sergio Juárez Correa, 32, employs a “minimally invasive education” concept pioneered by Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Britain’s Newcastle University. The technique encourages students like Paloma to tap into their own curiosity and self-learning to solve problems.

Juárez Correa saw his students’ scores in Spanish and math exceeds standards with the implementation of this new way of teaching. A total of nine other students scored over 900 in the math section of the standardized test as well.

The school that Paloma and these nine other students attend, lack basic facilities like running water, drainage or a telephone lines leaving students in less than teachable conditions. Such occurrences as two of her classmates disappearing halfway through the school year without anybody knowing why also bring worry to educators.

“If Paloma had the same opportunities or open doors as Steve Jobs, she probably would be a genius in this subject,” Juárez Correa said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Not fazed by all the media attention, she seems happy to just be learning.

“I’m very happy,” she said. “If you want it, you can do it.”