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 ...
I agree. However, it would be interesting, just for its own sake, to know whether achievement in spelling bees reflects an aptitude for, say, visual recognition, or whether it's strictly effort, driven by family pressure to achieve in this particular way.
When I was a spelling bee competitor (early 1980s) the winners tended to be Korean, which leads me to believe that effort is it, rather than genetics at the ethnic-group level. Individuals, on the other hand ... comparing Indian spelling-bee winners with Indian robotics-competition winners could be interesting.
I’ve been told that if you go to any college library on a Friday or Saturday night, most of the faces you see will be from India and Southeast Asia.
Smart people tend to respect disciplines that involve intelligence—and to believe in their ability to do well in them.
bump
Oh, and rote learning, discipline, and competition have traditionally been critical to academic and professional success in their home lands as well.
The two Pittsburgh Pirates guys. The million-dollar arms.
Academic discipline in the HOME.
Ha ha.
Do you think it is just coincidence that those groups have gone in those directions?
I sense a case of disparate impact here. Somebody call the DOJ.
Intelligence and memory tend to be very closely related:
http://trendingsideways.com/index.php/what-does-memory-have-to-do-with-intelligence/
I think Indian families focus on the importance of academics, and that’s a good thing.
As for spelling bees, the truth is that they require no intelligence, creativity, or original thinking. They’re primarily contests of memorization, discipline, and endurance. All three can be trained with minimal investment. Spelling contests are comparatively easy, provided the person has the basic tools and develops then.
That was my first thought just from reading the headline.
Must be the Indian equivalent of the Chinese Tiger Mom.
Disciplining ones children is considered child abuse in America.
Or Samir Nagheenanajar.
Call Biden too. Somewhere in Delaware a Dunkin Donuts is missing its proprietor.
And then there are groups where you had to be physically strong and athletic to succeed:
Even if you narrow this to just European-origin peoples you would find that Germanics and Nordics are stronger than Italians or GReeks
Then why don't Greeks win more spelling bees?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2016/05/25/geo-bee/01-national-geographic-bee-winner.ngsversion.1464199898023.jpg
Here's one:
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