The Browns and The Bees

While scanning through Sitemeter, I noticed we were getting hits from a Trinidad & Tobago discussion forum, and that one of my posts was referenced on their website:

... Anyways relating to your last post, here's one by some blogger that might make you feel warm.
http://125columbia.blogspot.com/2005/08/spellbound.html

The blogger writes starts with the phenomenal success of Indian kids in spelling bees in the US, explaining what he thinks enables them to be so talented, then describes further Indian success in literature and politics, contrasting them with the East Asians relative paucity in those areas. Neil Bissoondath, a writer of Trinidadian background is mentioned here. Of course, keep in mind this blogger is Indian so his writing is obviously slanted.

OK, pretty accurate but for one thing – I am not Indian!

Anyhow, being still a teenager when writing that post a year ago, I was likely a bit immature and hasty in drawing inferences. Upon reflection (and with the erudition that comes with age) the paucity of notable East Asian writers is likely more a function of lessened English colonial influence than an innate lack of verbal ability as the guy who commented last to that post pointed out.

Funny that bees are mentioned, because the National Geographic Bee was held in Washington DC a few days ago, and the winner was a 12-year old kid by the name Bobby Jain, an Illinois boy of Indian origin. Remarkably, so were both runner-ups and 6 of the 10 finalists!

So what’s with the geeky brown kids and Bees anyhow? IMO to do well in these contests, all it takes is a lot of discipline, a keen memory, and autocratic parents. And I know (from experience) that brown parents like to show off their kids a lot; a Bee is an apt way to showcase their kid's superior mental prowess before a wide, captive audience, and I could see why these super-despotic parents pressure their kids into performing well at these Bees.

In my mind, the kids that win the Bees are nothing more than idiot savants - all you’re being asked to do is memorize and regurgitate; does this require any thinking? I would define intelligence as the ability to learn and assimilate new concepts quickly, and the ability to draw links and relationships between (seemingly independent) concepts. True, knowledge is a key component of smartness – one who is ignorant cannot profess to be smart, because one needs a vast repository of knowledge to draw upon when formulating an argument, advancing your view etc., and knowing things like history and geography can improve your understanding of why things are they way they are. But knowing how to spell super-obscure words and memorizing all the capitals, lakes, rivers, deserts, and mountains of the world isn’t very useful nor very applicable.

[OK, I may be bitter be because I took part in a spelling bee once, when I was 11. I didn't get very far though - I mispelled the word "skittish" - but it wasn't my fault! The proctor had pronounced it skiddish, which is the way I had erroneously and phonetically spelled it (thinking it was a derivative of the word skid) and I recall the Asian girl after me got it correct because he had altered the pronounciation to the correct one for her... son of a &#&$@! I don't think I'll ever get over that. My 9-year old bro got to 4th place though.]

Smiley and I were thinking of checking out Akeelah and the Bee (though we cracked that it should be called Sanjay and the Bee.) I've a feeling this movie will be a lot like the incredibly moving Searching for Bobby Fischer (I've a bias towards films about child prodigies). Also the Scripps National Spelling Bee is on ABC on Thursday at 8. Exciting stuff.