Success of Indian (dot) kids at U.S spelling bee competitions .

In My Humble Opinion
41

Of course I’m over-generalizing! I did use the weasel word “tendency” as in “have a tendency to” :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways, have you actually seen any of the discussion boards of the eastern culture demographic and how they talk about themselves? There’s some angst among those rebellious kids. For example, Americans might try to balance 75% academic 25% sports or 60% 40% activities. In contrast, a lot of Asian parents go for 100% academic and 0% anything else. Or maybe they’ll have the rare parents that are cutting edge liberal and downplay the education a bit to 99% education and set aside 1% for non-education – that 1% is set aside for learning the piano or violin. :slight_smile:

Where do you think all the self-deprecating jokes about parents’ over-emphasis on education come from? Their imaginations?

Manda Jo’s observations on how the different cultures perceive the education system are right on the mark.

42

I can confirm this. Also, an “Indian” restuarant here isn’t necessarily going to serve korma and lassi. There are especially a lot of “Indian Fry-bread” places around.

Re: “red dot or feather?” come on, there are a lot worse injustices in the world to worry about. I wouldn’t say it in any kind of formal setting but it is possible to make light of something without insulting it. It’s essentially just a play/observation on there being 2 different kinds of Indians. Big whoop.

43

You are exaggerating. I know many Asian kids, and they are quite diverse in their interests. I know a few that run marathon, strive to do well in American Idol, and want to run for office.
If I were you, I would get to know a few of them from your neighborhood.
While Manda JO’s assessment was well thought, it lacks any connection with reality.

44

Lacks any connection with reality?! Now you are the on exaggerating!

To clarify, I’m more aware of 1st generation immigrant parents which aligns with Manda Jo’s assessment. The 2nd generation would be more liberal, and the 3rd generation even more so.

Are the 3rd generation parents now on even par with American counterparts in academic-vs-social balance? I don’t know the answer to that. Which generation are today’s Indian parents with kids winning spelling bees?

45

I think the problem is extrapolating from the choices of a subset of immigrants to some vague notion of “eastern culture” and furthermore the idea that those immigrants are only “obedient white-collar worker bees” as opposed to the red-blooded entrepreneurs who really matter. Last I checked doctors, software engineers and professors are pretty important to the US economy. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Asian-Americans are a higher proportion of entrepreneurs than their share of the US population particularly given their strong presence in the technology sector. And as I mentioned earlier there are innumerable entrepreneurs in Asia itself. Anyone who believes Asian culture is anti-entrepreneurial needs to visit Hong Kong.

46

Actually, it’s kind of like the Black/African-American debate: some people prefer one, some people prefer another. The feather-not-dot Indians I’ve known have all chosen American Indian over Native American. (Well, what they **really **prefer is the name of their nation, but almost no one is gonna be able to pick that out of a hat.)

47

Definitely cultural. I attend a top-10 public engineering university in the US with a very large Asian population (Indian and East Asian). There is a markedly huge difference in who you will see at the library at 3AM… or studying extremely hard for tests the local (using that term extremely loosely, as I include some Indians/Asians raised in the US) students don’t care about. It seems like to the US students, the goal is to enjoy themselves and make it through college, whereas the Asian’s recognize that they’ve been given this opportunity to be here and learn and then spend all/most of their time doing just that. Their work ethic is extraordinarily different than Americans, and they just seem to be constantly working or in their dorms. This doesn’t apply to all of them (obviously), but the vast majority.

All the while, while they study their asses off, it still seems to me that Americans actually understand the material better, rather than just being able to memorize, name and plug stuff into formulas, though that could just be a product of the language barrier and memorization being a preferred method to bypass that.

Manda Jo’s assessment seems very accurate, at least based off of my observations.

48

Probably I shouldn’t have said “lack any connection”. But, you have to admit that she’s not highly knowledgeable on this matter.

I teach myself, and have met many Asian students. At the first look some of them may look like nerds. (They are good at school.) However, 90% of them have diverse interests. I knew a pre-med who’s into environmental activism and another one into crabbing. (And I’m talking about kids of immigrant parents.)

If you look at the lists of notable Chinese Americans and Indian Americans in wikipedia, you will find many in Business, Politics, Media and Entertainment (besides scientists and physicians). Starting from Elaine Chao to Jindal (I am no fan of him) to Norah Jones.

49

Good for her! Her mother and I worked together a couple years ago and she was a finalist then and I know she loved doing it. I’ll have to send Sandy a note. That’s pretty cool.

In this particular case I know the family does value academic excellence, but if I remember correctly it was Kavya who wanted to do it, and her father, a spelling coach, just helped her get to a higher level.

Enjoy,
Steven

50

By the way, did anyone see the national geography bee finals the other day? Out of maybe ~15 or 20 kids it was 1 anglo kid, 1 ginger, 1 east Asian, and the rest Indian.

51

FYI, here is the list of finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. Now, this isn’t necessarily going to be accurate (and might be slightly racist?), but I counted eight Indian/South Asian names, about ten names that appear to be Chinese or other East Asian and a few that sound Russian or Eastern European, out of the forty finalists.

But in reading the bios of the students, you can see that none are pure nerds. They participate in sports, play an instrument, participate in student government, etc. (Actually, that’s a necessary thing today, just to get into a top school. Top grades alone won’t guarantee admission anywhere, as there are so many high achievers out there.)

52

You won’t find a statistically significant number of third-generation Indian-Americans for a while; Indian migration to the US didn’t take off until about 1970.

For what it’s worth, though, in the UK, where there are lots of third- (and higher-) generation Indian kids, their academic achievement isn’t quite as drastically superior to the “locals”. Part of that is down to the fact that the average level of education among Indian migrants to Britain is lower than among Indian migrants to the US.

53

Actually, I think the big wave of immigration from India started in 1965, after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That first generation of Indians was almost entirely doctors, professors and engineers. Some of the more recent migrants are not as well educated.

54

To clarify a couple points:

I never said anything about Asians. I said “recent immigrants”. I teach in a very diverse school, and I’ve seen this exact sort of behavior in Hispanic immigrants, African immigrants, and Eastern European immigrants. The behavior I am speaking of is NOT restricted to winning spelling bees–it’s about setting out to be extraordinary in one thing with clearly defined creditials–top speller, or Academic Decathlete, or Validictorian, or graduate early (for some reason, African immigrants seem to often be focused on this).

It’s a high-risk low yield strategy because 1) there is a limited number of “best” slots and 2) the “scholarships” programs like this flash around are often chicken-feed in the big scheme of things–20K over four years is usually the absolute best they offer.

If your goal is to get college paid for (assuming you do not have the funds to pay for it yourself) your best bet is to get accepted into a top tier private university–anyone with a household income under 75K goes for free to these schools (including room and board, and you don’t have to borrow anything) and that’s easily 100K worth of services. People that make up to twice that still get generous aide packages.

If your goal is to get a high paying job after college, again, getting into a top-tier university is probably your best bet: no one cares if you were the spelling be champ at 14 when you are 22.

So for either goal, you want to get into a top school. National Spelling Bee Champ would help a lot with that, but if you fail, you may not have much to fall back on. Spelling Bee DISTRICT champ, plus 4 years on the newspaper staff (2 as editor) + 4 years track and field + 2200 on the SAT + an interesting summer internship is how you get into a top school. If you flub one of those things, it’s ok because it wasn’t just that one thing that made you special. That’s the system and recent immigrants often don’t know how to play it.

Now then, I already said in like post #5 that not all super-focused kids are under pressure from their parents–I’d never make that assumption. All I am saying is that people that don’t know the system sometimes think being “the best” counts for a whole lot, and it really doesn’t --variety counts for more with things like college admissions.

I am not even commenting on what is better for the kid’s personal growth. That totally depends on the kid.

55

Manda,

From your comment, it did seem like you are criticizing the idea of getting to the final stages of any competition.

Are you saying that there is no scholarship advantage beyond a district champ (unless you are the nationwide champ)? If that is the case then I probably agree with you. If, however, you get some advantage for performing well in county or state level (in any competition), then it makes sense to focus on it, as your reward will be proportional to your commitment.

Also, keep in mind that many of these kids do this simply because they feel like doing it, and not just to keep their parents happy.

56

Do spell bee champions get any kind of financial assistance ( freee scholarships) for higher studies in any particular field ??

57

My point is that it is NOT proportional to your commitment, if by reward you mean “sum total of scholarships”. It’s all about opportunity cost and diminishing returns. To be district champ, say, you have to spend X hours working on that and not something else. Well, to be region or state or national champ is going to be many, many times X, and so you will have to give up a lot more of other things in order to have time. If you enjoy that for its own sake, then fine. But it’s not the best way to maximize your chances of getting into a great school or getting scholarships. And numbers like “$20,000 for school!” are misleading–it isn’t nearly as much money as it sounds like.

I have no problem with kids having a passionate focus on one activity–I coach Academic Decathlon, for god’s sake, which is also heavily tilted toward insane rote memorization. But it needs to be it’s own reward, because if you think it’s going to pay off in scholarships, you’d probably be better off, hour per hour, with a job.

ETA: To clarify, I am criticizing the idea of dropping many other things in order to get to the final stages of any competition *because you think it will help you in the future. Because that simply isn’t true: being pretty good in a wide variety of things instead will help you more.

58

What the hell’s a “ginger”?

59
60

Manda JO,
The basic problem with your argument is that the kids of Asian immigrants are in fact highly successful in getting into elite colleges where their representation is several times their share of their population. This suggests that Asian parents are pretty savvy about the system contrary to what you claim. This also suggests that Asian kids are probably more well-rounded than you think because it’s not possible to get into the top colleges on academics alone. Dewey Finn provides some anecdotal evidence above. So whatever your experience with immigrant kids is, it’s probably not very representative.