Posted on 05/30/2016 3:54:06 AM PDT by Cronos
..About 70 of the 285 final round competitors in this year's bee had South Asian names.
Apart from winning the last nine spelling bees in the US, Indian-American children have also won the last five National Geographic Bees ,which tests the geographic knowledge of millions of American children. From 2005, the winning rate of Indian-origin children in these two competitions has been well over 80%.
But what explains this extraordinary success by a group that makes up less than one percent of America's school-age population?
...In academic competitions, especially those focused on math or science, Indian-American youngsters do very well - nowhere near as spectacularly as in the spelling and geography bees, but at five to 20 times the rate of their population size.
These competitions include the Siemens Science Competition, Intel Science Talent Search, Mathcounts, and US Presidential, Rhodes, Truman, Churchill, and Marshall Scholarships.
But in other fields like music and athletics, Indian-Americans either barely hold their own or are non-existent at the top level.
..For example, in the 2013 All-National Honor Ensemble, 45% of the musicians in orchestra and 13% in the band were Asian-Americans, but just 2 and 1%, respectively, were Indian-American.
In athletics and team sports, Indian-Americans actively participate in high school but are virtually absent at college level and in professional sports.
No one of Indian origin (with a very minor Indo-Canadian exception) has ever played in any professional sports league: American football, baseball, basketball, or ice hockey.
There is also no one in the lists of emerging talent, for example, the top 100 high school prospects in baseball.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
To the headline:
Because they’re serious about academics.
Vijay Singh in golf.
I have to say these spelling bees are questionable. The most arcane and useless of words are what it takes to win. But that is what is used to weed out the less-proficient spellers. Maybe these bees should be discontinued because of the nature of the words used.
We would know a lot more about human potential if we could do actual testing for intelligence and other human qualities, without worrying that scientific proof might be found that some demographic groups are inferior in some areas (academics and self-control) while perhaps being superior in other areas (jumping and running).
The fear of knowing holds us back.
Bump
Hard work.
What's wrong with these people? Why are they wasting their time developing academic skills which will lead them to a lifetime prosperity in a myriad of professional fields when they could be playing football or basketball?
Practicalities. How many high school/college sports players go on to make it in the pros?
How likely am I to get a good job if I’m a whiz at math/science/medicine/engineering?
Legal immigrants come to make their family a better life. The way to do it is through education.
My son worked at a construction site in Kuwait with Indian carpenters. The Indian carpenters loved math. Studying math was a family hobby.
That is the answer; in addition, many of the Indians that get here are the cream of the crop, and they know that back home they are just cogs on a wheel with over a BILLION other cogs. They are competitive at a young age because India has so many interchangeable cogs, and if you don’t stand out you are nothing. That also drives much of the cheating in academics there as well.
Consider the names.
Say, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.
You’d get good at spelling too.
The smaller one’s vocabulary the better ... ugh, grunt ...
If they stuck with words like cat. dog, house and car, they would eliminate nobody and all would get a participation trophy. Let’s not make things too challenging so as not to offend the less talented or hardworking.
Vijay Singh is from Fiji.
I suspect the results would be unspectacular, if not disappointing.
My guess too...
I get your point but what would one do with that knowledge? Just because a given ethnicity is generally more intelligent than another, doesn’t mean that individual members of that group aren’t also very intelligent. Get rid of quotas and extra efforts to recruit people into areas that they aren’t necessarily interested or talented in, and individuals will go as far as their own skills take them. But you don’t need to know general traits of a given group to make those changes. Not saying we shouldn’t test for those things, but the information shouldn’t change how we treat individuals.
Even a peasant can become a king.
Indians figured out going ghetto and trying to be like Blacks, lots of athletes minimal academics, is a road to failure. They went as with other Asian groups went the Jewish route and succeed. Too bad Hispanics are going the ghetto grievance route.
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