Congrats, Anamika Veeramani!
The fourteen-year-old eighth grader from North Royalton, Ohio became the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion last night. Anamika won the trophy and $40,000 in cash and prizes after correctly spelling “stromuhr.” (If, like me, you weren’t familiar with that word, it’s “an instrument for measuring the velocity of the blood flow.”)
Anamika is the third consecutive Indian-American spelling bee champion (following Kavya Shivashankar last year and Sameer Mishra in 2008.) An astonishing 8 out of the last 12 spelling bee champions have been Indian-American. Slate’s Explainer column thinks the phenomenon can be attributed to the community’s “minor-league spelling bee circuit”:
The [North South Foundation] circuit consists of 75 chapters run by close to 1,000 volunteers. The competitions, which began in 1993, function as a nerd Olympiad for Indian-Americans–there are separate divisions for math, science, vocab, geography, essay writing, and even public speaking–and a way to raise money for college scholarships for underprivileged students in India. There is little financial reward for winners (just a few thousand dollars in college scholarships) compared with the $40,000 winning purse handed out each year by Scripps. Still, more than 3,000 kids participated in NSF’s spelling events this year due in part to what NSF founder Ratnam Chitturi calls a sort of Kavya Effect. “Most American kids look up to sports figures,” he says. “Indian kids are more interested in education, and they finally have a role model.”
For their part, Anamika’s family told the AP that they don’t know why Indian-Americans thrive at the bee:
[Anamika’s father Alagaiya Veeramani] guessed it has something to do with a hard-work ethic.
“This has been her dream for a very, very long time. It’s been a family dream, too,” said Veeramani, explaining that his daughter studied as many as 16 hours on some days. “I think it has to do with an emphasis on education.”
16 hours a day! Here’s hoping you have a relaxing summer, Anamika. You earned it.
you should post when a non-brown. otherwise, no news (and XX’s not doing too bad in this)….
Sixteen hours a day studying how to spell obscure words? As Indians, should we be proud? Or ashamed of our screwed up priorities? Or furious at the abuse these kids are being put through?
Ashish: Why do you assume she was being “abused”?
Not saying that parents don’t take it too far but painting a black and white picture of “abuse” because she was studying 16 hours day? There are plenty of people willing to study 16 hours a day if they can get into IIT in India. Not all of them are forced by their parents to do that.
Also, it’s not just about obscure words. Regardless of what she ends up doing, she’s demonstrated that she can work hard and has dedication. That is useful anywhere, whether it is spelling words or designing ad campaigns.
We’ve gotten so good at spelling bees, might as well tally the sub-cultural descent of each winner: 1st Gujurati-American to win! 1st Tamilian-American to win! And so on, and so on…
BTW – how much worse of a job can ABC do? 2 minutes of competition, followed by 3 minutes of commercials. Two schmucks talking over the kids while they are spelling. It was awful.
Congrats to Anamika ! I sometimes wince when I hear mention of work ethic as the implication is that others don’t have it. Other groups that are disproportionately well represented in academia and the professions tend to place greater value on other contests that test creativity and intelligence (e.g. Intel Talent Search, Math Olympiad, debate club) rather than memorization. The reason that we win disproportionately is that their non-desi high achieving peers (and their parents) have essentially forfeited. This is not to diminish the achievement of these winners, I know they are very smart and grow up to be successful in a wide array of careers.
I always wince when I hear such.
16 hrs a day preparing for the spelling bee!? Could have used that time to top the IITJEE!
I find it interesting and telling that the blogger chose not to post a picture of the new spelling champ.
i feel torn about the kind of mental prowess and “intelligence” being held up here. on the one hand i remember studying for the local bee and taking a lot of genuine pleasure in learning the meanings of words, visualizing them, populating my mind with new and awesome images. there was one category that was all geometry words relating to spatial orientation – can’t remember any now, but they were all long and delicious to learn. so there was definitely a Thrill of Learning. good for the kiddo. on the other hand, i wish i saw more desi kids being praised for something other than…doggedness? workaholism? pure brain CAPACITY? what about lateral thinking, critical thinking, rhetorical complexity, electric writing, accomplishments that require less Ironclad Certainty and more…personality, spunk, ability to rest in uncertainty? where my desi theater queens at? what about emotional education, learning to think beyond competition and domination? i just feel like i’ve known so many of our kids who put their minds on this one rigid track early on. i’m also meh on the whole culture of “study hard to give us the answer we want.”
i know, i know, i’m being a grouchy old shit and the little girl deserves her trophy. i just wish we could be viewed as more multifaceted than this.
How come most of the terrorists in the USA are Desi muslims and most of the Spelling Bee winners Desi Hindus?
Great stuff – though the comments do allude that there is too much of an “exam culture” in South Asia.
I remember growing up the whole culture was “succeeding through education”.
Its only when I started working I realised that education, while useful, is not the end all and be all. Its simply a filter mechanism because many jobs actually can be done without being too educated. Its more about apprenticeship; learning on the job..
Did it bug anyone else that while Dr. Bailey (the announcer who was giving out the spelling words) said Anamika’s name properly…. The stupid ABC announcers continued to say it differently? I realize that many of us have the same names and pronounce our names slightly differently from one another. But Dr. Bailey is a classics professor at University of Vermont and is more likely to have invested the time to say her name properly. While the woman from ABC who was congratulating Anamika kept saying “anna… meeka” as opposed to “a-NAM-meeka.”
Thoughts anyone?
I found that annoying too. It didn’t seem like the other announcers even bothered to find out what the right pronunciation is. It certainly brought a smile to my face when I heard Dr. Bailly pronounce her name correctly.
Spelling/geography/math bees all require a great deal of discipline to succeed, and champs in these bees have gone on to make a great career, almost without exception. That is what counts first – without that all that snake oil about emotional intelligence and lateral thinking will not help (neither has any empirical validity – it’s just tosh). I have been a North-South Foundation volunteer for several years, and we spend a lot of time with the children prepping. We have produced spelling bee champs, and our first geography bee champ, last month, in Aditya Moorthy (Florida). We are working an approach for math bee and looking at greater participation in the ARML and other science talent competitions. Contrary to pious platititudes about building a “well rounded” resume, here in the US, high SAT/ACT scores means assured admission to the best colleges (barring, say, Harvard/Princeton/Yale – Caltech is a class by itself and admits almost only child prodigies) We are even trying to work with guidance departments to emphasise to children that all scores are not equal and they should encourage children to do extremely well, because if they don’t we find it hard to motivate the children. There is nothing unique about I-A kids, only the methods we use are sort of unique. And they are easily transferrable to any community. Although the North-South Foundation chapters meet at Mandirs, we count several non-Hindu families among our participants.
The winner of this years geography bee is also an Indian-American kid.
2 · Ashish on June 5, 2010 7:09 PM · Direct link Sixteen hours a day studying how to spell obscure words? As Indians, should we be proud? Or ashamed of our screwed up priorities? Or furious at the abuse these kids are being put through?
What is so screwed up on her priorities? I would rather have my son study 16 hours of geography rather than 16 hours of youtube videos.
15 · Vivek on June 6, 2010 11:46 AM · Direct link The winner of this years geography bee is also an Indian-American kid.
That’s correct!!! His name is Aadith Moorthy. At the end of the competition, he actually sang a Carnatic song in front of the whole audience under the invitation of Alex Trabek. Aadith is going to be a p*ssy magnet one day, I’m sure.
i think the labeling of any intellectual faculties that are not fact acquisition as “tosh” is the reason American desis are making glacial progress in literature, acting, or fields that cultivate an ambivalent, empathetic consciousness. one Aziz or V. V. isn’t going to be enough to convince or embolden humanities-oriented kids that’s there’s another road besides being a Champ. and yes, this is coming from an ARML/MathCounts/Ivy League/1600 washup who took ten years to admit that theater is where she belongs. obviously skipping or delaying college (and its social capital) is a very different decision for immigrants and PoC than it is for white kids, but my dropout autodidact friends, for whom the system didn’t work for whatever reason, are among my biggest inspirations as an artist and human. being a failure here doesn’t have to be as terrifying as it is in India. we haven’t figured out how to deal with kids who fail or fall outside educational norms. my mom had a reading disability and the Indian ed system, and family around her, crushed her confidence. How many other kids are getting stampeded on our way to creating Champs? i dunno, man.
Indian Girl wins spelling bee…in other news the sun rose.
Jans,
You can always get into the creative professions, so it is the right thing to earn credentials and experience in hard areas and the professions. E.g., Naren Shankar – PhD ElecEngg. There are enough IA making it in the creative professions. As for the humanities, the my-heritage-sucks route is a well established path – no worries there. Jans I am happy your muse found you, and you can always go back to academics if the creative professions don’t work out. Would you rather be like a nephew of mine who has been tooling around for 15 years in the alternative music scene in Boston and is still a non-entity, or like his big sister who went to top-notch engg programs and is now close to tenure in a record four years? The pity, the guy was v.good at school. Train children to be disciplined, postpone the best for last, and they will become successful. That is the best tonic.
i guess i can’t compare the two lives, a person who chooses an indie music life obviously wants a very different pace and rhythm of life from someone seeking tenure in a competitive environment. is he really to be pitied? because no amount of time an artist spends on craft is wasted time. know i would flame out in an academic environment and my natural pacing lies elsewhere. anyway, i guess i’m just arguing that all spots are not interchangeable. the happiest man i know works a day job at the library, records music in his basement, and only distributes it to his friends over mp3. another happy person i know got her physics degree and M.D./Ph.D. and wound up choosing to teach piano. there are many ways to be a success 🙂
Eh, as long as Anamika is a normal, happy, well rounded human being with a normal life, it’s a fine accomplishment to be proud of. But there’s discipline, and then there’s dysfunction.
Jans and Jyotsana, as an IA, I feel like I know where both of you are coming from.
In the culture my parents grew up in, failure meant complete poverty and destitution. And the professions that offered the greatest likelihood of avoiding that fate were medicine and engineering (and maybe law). Nothing else made any sense unless the family owned some kind of successful business. One had to be completely and totally single minded in their life pursuits. One wrong step … poverty!! Wanting to be an artist, an entrepreneur of some kind, or any kind of non-traditional professional didn’t make a lot of sense in this environment. Fanatical devotion to academic pursuits was advantageous.
Fast forward to the United States and us 2nd generation kids. The economic landscape in the United States is radically different. We live an a broad and powerful economy where one can achieve success in a very broad set of fields. Not only that, the economic hierarchy is radically different. If economic security is really the priority, a professional business pursuit is a better bet than engineering in this country.
As an Indian American, I was forbidden from playing sports. I wasn’t allowed to have any hobbies. I was discouraged from having friends who weren’t Indian (the community I grew up in was 90% white so that basically meant I couldn’t have friends). I was forbidden from dating. All the while, I see the other kids playing baseball and stuff and living normal lives. I was left wondering why I wasn’t allowed social normalcy. It certainly didn’t make me more disciplined nor did it improve my academic performance. If anything, all it did was make me hate being Indian. And all of these things hindered my quality of life in the long run. And isn’t that what we are ultimately talking about here?
Studying 16 hours a day to win spelling bees makes me wince a little bit also. Is this a proper way for a child to spend their time?? But hey, maybe some kids like that sort of thing. If so, great! But to place some kind of value on it as if it were a necessity is horribly wrong. My nieces (excellent straight-A students) aren’t subjected to this kind of fanaticism, nor do they need to be in order to be successful.
Don’t get me wrong, the ethic of education in Indian culture overall is a good one. Jyotsana, I even agree with you when I see kids all bright eyed about how they are going to become actors, writers, musicians, comics, and whatnot. I lived in LA for some time and saw so much of that crap. I’d say ground yourself in something you can make money at and keep those ambitions in the side-view mirrors so to speak. Engineering ultimately wasn’t for me, but I’d have to admit it treated me reasonably well, and my academic background allowed me to move on to something else. But it doesn’t give back a normal childhood though …
nikhil, i’m really sorry that happened to you. i’m curious – when you say “other kids” were having fun was it other indian kids AS WELL as white kids, or were all the indian kids under house arrest? were your parents unusually strict? i was lucky to have really chill ones who let me be friends with whomever i wanted, but i definitely had friends who had to perfect their window-sneaking and barefaced lying to have any kind of social life. i sympathize with parents in a new country, but to expect kids not to want to participate in their surroundings is…jeez. if anything i hope it’s helped you to really value good adult relationships, but i’m sorry for what you can’t get back. 🙁
This discussion is really interesting. As a South Asian-American who is trying to make it as a musician (Hindustani classical), I feel that there is definitely prejudice among desis and pressure to go into traditional fields (engineering, IT, banking). I understand that when people are new immigrants to a country, they want their children to acquire skills that will lead to job security and a comfortable standard of living. But as Nikhil pointed out above, the same needs aren’t as applicable to the 2nd generation.
Not all desis are meant to be IT specialists or doctors and they shouldn’t be pushed into it blindly. Some of the most successful South Asians are artists: Ustad Rashid Khan, Medhi Hassan, Pandit Jasraj, Ajoy Chakravorthy. Are they any less as people because they chose to go into the arts?
I agree with jyotsana that one needs to acquire a solid education, but I think that one can do this in tandem with serious artistic study. For example, Pandit Ajoy Chakravorthy is a Ph.D in Economics and his daughter, who is a premier artist in her own right, has a masters in philosophy. So it’s not really an either/or distinction.
Jans,
Well gee, I don’t exactly cry myself to sleep every night over it. Although it sucked, I try to look at it in a humorous way. Quietly sneaking in and out of windows made me very agile, and the lying really developed my improvisation and story telling skills. 😀
By “other kids” I was talking about white kids; I hardly knew anybody of Indian descent growing up. But when I come across other IA’s, the lying and sneaking around just to do normal things seems to be a common theme.
I guess all I was trying to say is that education and discipline is great, but not to the degree where it leads to an unnecessarily fanatical, dysfunctional, and unhappy lifestyle. Ideally, it should be a path to a richer, better quality of life, not the opposite.
Oh yeah, and +1 for Kabrir. A strong traditional education does not need to exclude artistic, entrepreneurial, or otherwise non-traditional ambitions, whereas 1st gen Indian-Americans (Indian born and raised) often think it does. I guess that’s a point of contention.
If I were wired like your nephew, I would choose his path. (And I would lose all love and respect for an uncle who describes his life as “tooling around.” On second thoughts, I think I would lose the uncle.) If I were wired like your niece, I would choose her path.
Unfortunately for me, I am fundamentally like him but pretending to be her. And even though I enjoy what I do (and do it reasonably well but at my own pace), I still feel like I am missing out on larger life. I hope I live long enough to live two full lives.
Upon hearing that his patient is a writer, a doctor tells her that when he retires from practicing medicine he plans to become a writer. Without missing a beat, the writer replies that when she retires from her writing career, she plans to practice medicine.
I think too many of us see a few outstanding people make notable contributions in more than one area in life and forget that double or triple successes are the exceptions and not the norm. Whether we like it or not, most of us are in the middle of the pack. Yet we have this impossible standard to live up to and impractical ‘you can do it all’ attitude that we sincerely believe in. (And if we wish to have a family life, we had better make time for that too.)
I’m not Indian American, and neither am I a DBD, so here’s what I don’t understand. Why does one HAVE to go to Ivy League? Or Berkeley, or some such place? I’m very sure that there are plenty of very good universities in the USA without a big ‘name’, AND cheaper as well! All these ‘Ivy League this that’ is totally name-dropping and bragging. It is one of the reasons I can’t stand Jhumpa Lahiri, because all her characters have a PhD in Brown or something. It doesn’t make them relatable to me.
Also, what is wrong with ‘tooling around in the alternative music scene for 15 years’. Good to know older desis are as judgy as ever!
“Why does one HAVE to go to Ivy League? Or Berkeley, or some such place? I’m very sure that there are plenty of very good universities in the USA without a big ‘name’, AND cheaper as well! All these ‘Ivy League this that’ is totally name-dropping and bragging.”
I second it. what happened to the US with all these Ivy League creamy layer. there are good universities all over the world without a big name.one doesn’t have to go to Ivy League to become a successful humanbeing.
16 hours? Holy crap!
Thankfully, these extreme-nerds are a minority among Indian Americans.
Interesting how things change. I grew up in that kind of India, and made it to neither medicine nor engg, took a tough UG in sciences, and finding it v.tough went on to do a masters in business in India, worked many years there and then moved here as a skilled professional. Today I know if I had pushed myself a little harder at those many turning points in my life things would have been v. different. But I have not made my children go through a 16 hour daily grind, although I have made them for many years focus on getting somewhere, and not giving up a pursuit out of fear, but certain that they have no longer fear it, and are interested in other things. And yes I know if I had been a little more disciplined they would have done even better. I meant to say my nephew is fooling around, not tooling around. The creative professions are hard too.
Rais Khan: You are unstoppable. But I think such light-hearted banter has seen us through life. We have never got anything easily. We were made to practise till our fingers bled. We would walk, travel by bus, bullock cart and train for concerts that were often held in remote villages. Hariprasad: These have given us the strength and patience to sustain our passion for so many years. Ustad Rais Khan and Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia in conversation.
Do you think Zakir Hussain ever had a life? He was practising for 12 hours a day by the time he was six! Drummer Sivamani’s father was a sessions drummer in the Madras film music scene, and frustrated with the uncertainties of the profession – no assured schedules etc., he was determined that Sivamani never become a musician. The first time he caught Sivamani (when he was barely 8) playing with his dad’s drumsticks at the kit, the father scolded him. Next time he rapped his knuckles, but Sivamani would wait for his father to leave for work, play hookey at school and sneak back home to play on his father’s drumkit. When his father threw him out of home, Sivamani lived with a bunch of street drummers in North Chennai (who play for funeral processions at the nearby Krishnampet crematorium). Finally Dad gave up and the rest is history.
I have a pet theory on this.
I think this is so for the parents of the majority of 2nd gen Indian Americans who were born here pre-1990. Most people who immigrated here in the 70s and 80s came from lower and lower-middle class families, and thus an acandemic failure usually meant a future trenched in border-line poverty.
This kinda changed in the 90s and the 2000s because the majority of Indians who immigrate here are now from middle to upper-middle class families. Their kids will have a different pattern of upbringing. The academic pressure won’t be as high as it used to be.
The 2nd gen Indian Americans born post-2000 will not be the spelling bee winning future-doctor nerds that most people think of when they see an Indian American kid.
(btw when I use terms like lower, middle, upper class, I am talking from the financial/social angle and not from a religious/caste/sub-caste point of view)
Maybe some of the words used in the spelling bee should be names of the past winners!!
Well the scene in US of A mayb encouraging for drop out …but back in Desh things are slow .a drop out from top notch engg college Blore. Recent experience : 1.We know you are perfectly suited for Social Media Marketing however we hire minimum grads. Well you have great percentage in 10th and 12th.We are sorry.GoodLuck 2.Well we understand you know Bayesian Probability , Times Series Analysis , ARIMA ,CHAID ,Cluster Analysis but our company policies compels us to hire minimum graduates .
In bustling Kanpur, the crumbling industrial hub of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, a shoemaker’s son made history last month. Abhishek Kumar Bhartiya, 17, was selected for admission to one of India’s — and indeed one of the world’s — most prestigious engineering schools — IIT-Kanpur. The Kanpur boy scored an amazing 154th rank among 13,104 successful candidates in the intensely competitive all-India IIT entrance examination [JEE]…
If Abhishek moves to the US for a PhD in four years’ time and settles down here to raise a family, how do you think he will raise his children? What about the person who did not make it thru JEE this year but still manages to make it here? Cases like Abhishek’s reinforce our decision to emphasise academics over everything else.
Why do we learn to think like that? Why don’t we think like this: Each and every one of us peak and realize our full potential at different ages; we mature at different points in time; we accomplish at our own pace, in our own ways, when we feel inspired. Maybe our lives aren’t supposed to be any different than the ones that have brought us up to this point. Maybe humanity collectively benefits from all kinds of people. Why doesn’t the idea of fate bail us here?
Bleeding fingers may have helped Rais Khan tap into his full potential (additionally, perhaps it was a right combination of need, ambition, determination, personal interest matching up with corresponding opportunity) but how many millions of fingers (in society) were made to bleed before one Rais Khan was produced? Or was it thousands of fingers? Hundreds of fingers? Tens of fingers? What happened to the other nameless kids with such rigorous expectations and schedules? We don’t collect statistics or conduct studies to answer such questions. The outcomes we define and study are also usually narrow. So we see what we want to see. Some people call it observer bias; others may call it selection bias.
If either Abhishek or his unsuccessful competitor move to the US (or stay in India, for that matter), it would behoove them to remember their kids aren’t their clones. And even clones don’t exhibit the same behavior. Context and environment play a role in determining what we choose to go after.
India was ruled by powerful fascists up until the 90s. This made it so that economic opportunity was near completely determined upon the whim of some person in Delhi. Academic success, then, was the ticket out of the country, so you can figure out the rest.
Sure, the fascists lost power in India, so people aren’t as driven to find a way out. In any case that should not matter for the 2nd generation, because the USA has not been under authoritarian rule even in the 1st generation’s lifetime. What matters though, is that the USA is a more regulated country than India, so getting credentials becomes very important. People with informal training have limited avenues to succeed in the professions here, compared to what is possible in India.
At the end of the rat race you are still a rat. This contest is about rote memorization not critical thinking skills, which is something that should be fostered very early in a child. I can’t imagine this girl actually wanted to spend 16 (!!) hours a day studying spellings of obscure words. Is there really a need also to study for so long?? While I have many criticisms of the culture here and in W-E. in general I’m grateful of the childhood memories such as catching fish in the lake, playing hopscotch etc instead of locked in a dark room studying.
While I agree that it’s important for the children not to be pushed or harassed into any activity, whether it be spelling bees, sports or art contests, I think it’s important not to assume that the winners are one dimensional beings who have no other life (although I’m sure a few do have limited lives and pushy parents). In her description of herself, Anamika said she liked to play golf and that her favourite athlete was Vijay Singh. Many of the other children had other non-spelling interests. As for this being all about rote memorization and nothing else, that’s not true. When they didn’t now a word, the children asked questions such as language of origin, usage in a sentence etc., and used these clues to try and figure out the correct spelling. That is a creative process in its own right and involves critical thinking. One doesn’t have to memorize a word if one knows the rules of etymology. And memorization is a foundation for much of learning, whether it be maths, language, science, music, even sports and art. Federer and Nadal or Tendulkar are sports geniuses because they spent hours every day practicing or memorizing the same basic shots, techniques and strategies. The ones who can, of their own accord, dedicate hours to becoming excellent in whatever their passion is and still have a reasonably balanced life are the successful ones. The best artistic, creative activities/products are underpinned by order and rules. One can break the rules creatively/in the manner of a genius/properly only after one has mastered them, in general.
I agree with delurker and Anamika is adorable…hope I’m not being patronizing to the teens who read this; i’m just in my 30s so someone Anamika’s age is very young to me.
Here she is in an interview – she has many interests and spelling bees aren’t just about memorizing; it’s a lot of understanding in language history, which is history and critically thinking components of history to put together today’s spelling of the word. It’s no accident that many of the kids who participate and/or win these bees are highly motivated and succeed in very competitive fields.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO3WNtARvkI http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/spell-success-10834193
I think it all depends on the parents and how they present such endeavors. The little spelling beauty has a lot of poise for such a young child. Congrats!
said Veeramani, explaining that his daughter studied as many as 16 hours on some days.
The dad said she put in SOME 16 hr days so lay off the abuse talk. Having a healthy childhood involves spending SOME 16hr days doing one thing be it tennis, tabla or tamasha.
Thanks to this thread I learned that working hard and enjoying life are mutually exclusive.
It could not possibly be that some kids are naturally bookish and have a genuine interest in whatever random thing they spend a lot of time studying. No. Not that. Never that.
I suppose it would be better that they spend their time with the other kids memorizing what Pikachu evolves into rather than learning linguistics.
LOL @ a spelling contest being ‘linguistics’
Kids already work hard at school. It would be better to encourage in them a love of literature, for instance, rather than just memorizing words. It will encourage a knowledge of the world that cannot be learned from mere textbooks.
I have a nephew who is just as these children, slightly older. He is also USian. He will memorise lots of facts and reel them off to us. The boy however does not have critical thinking skills and he is very much naive to the ways of the world. I have noticed that many desi children harbour a similar naiveté. I was a lot more mature at their age, though that might have been a function of the country I grew up in. One should encourage one’s children to go outside, learn a bit about the world and it’s people, IMO. Although that might be an unpopular method of parenting nowadays.
It’s great though that she won so many prizes, especially a big money prize. Good for the university fund, since higher education is so expensive for you people.
metal mickey, the spelling bee involves etymology, which linguists would say is important to their studies. Also, you are making assumptions that children who do well at spelling bees don’t have a love of literature or aren’t encouraged by their parents to do so, don’t go outside to play ( I believe golf generally takes place outdoors), and don’t have critical thinking skills and don’t know about the outside world. What exactly is your definition of critical thinking skills? Do etymologists or good spellers automatically lack critical thinking skills? When you don’t know a word but can figure it out from clues, what is that? While I agree that there are children like your nephew, why assume that all spelling “geeks” or trivia “geeks” are like that? Not every kid should enter a spelling bee nor should success at that be the definition of smart, but boxing those who do into some sort of one-size-fits-all stereotype isn’t fair either.
Delurker, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not talking about literally playing outside, I’m talking about meeting other kids, hanging out. But all this is also from my impression of desi American parenting, which appears to be quite strict. When I was Anamika’s age and much younger even I’d roam around with my friends, not coming back until dinnertime. People didn’t own cellphones yet in those days. Our parents would’ve been horrified to know what we’d been discussing. I think that it would be a bit unfair to characterise those of us who look at such contests with a skeptical eye as people who don’t know work ethic, or who are not clever. I was learning 4 foreign languages at her age, I could;ve done it if I wanted to.
BTW what 14-year-old plays golf? Her parents must be f’ing loaded.
Why do you think they so frequently ask for roots? You don’t rote memorize how to spell random words. You learn the rules about why words are spelled the way they are and learn when to apply them.
Ha! Have you seen the American public school system? I can count on two hands the total number of hours I had to spend studying through all 4 years of high school (not including reading, but I only actually read the books in which I was interested and skipped the ones I didn’t care for so I don’t even count that as “studying.”) You don’t need to be especially brilliant. If you’re even of above average intelligence you don’t have to work hard to excel in school. I barely had to work at all.
Is it so inconceivable that a child might be able to do both I suppose. Let me explain how people get into spelling bees. A classroom will do a class-wide spelling bee for which a student will spend maybe an evening preparing tops. Since American public schools are about 70% comprised of marginally interested dullards raised on a steady diet of anti-intellectualism and disdain for “book-smarts.” These other kids will go on to listen to Insane Clown Posse and find resonance in lines like “Fucking magnets: How do they work? I don’t need to talk to no scientist. Motherfuckers be lyin’ and gettin’ me pissed.” Now since the student is bright and the first stage competition is anything but they handily win. At this point you’re looking at a 70%-80% Desi/East Asian pool. Having separated the wheat from the chaff, they go through another school-wide level of competition where it’s actually a competition. Either at this level or the next parents realize that their kid actually has a shot at winning something and consequentially buy them some prep. materials and encourage them to study. Kids realize they’re good at something that might go on to get them scholarship money, an easy ticket to a top university, and 15 minutes of fame and they go for it.
(I realize my stereotype of American public schools does not hold in affluent suburbs. You kids were lucky to have funding and teachers with qualifications and shit. Not so for those of us who grew up in the boonies.)
Everyone assumes their childhood was awesome and that they were so much more mature or rebellious or “with it” at “that age.” These statements don’t seem qualitatively different from people claiming they walked 15 miles in the snow, with no shoes, uphill both ways to get to school. Some kids are naturally bookish. They have bookish interests. Why get on their case about it?
Everyone who typically reads my posts knows my penchant for raining on people’s parades, but even my stone-heart can’t bring itself to diminish the triumphs of 13 year old kids.
Besides, if children go outside they might tan. Lord knows we can’t have that!
I bought a full set of used golf clubs for $75 when I was 14. Greens fees outside of dense urban areas are cheap enough to be almost negligible. You need some money to play but you don’t exactly have to be P Diddy. As far as hobbies go golf is probably only a tad more expensive than more “common” ones like paintballing or hunting.