Vijay.Sharma Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 These days there are spelling bee competitions in India as well. I guess it started off as we kept learning about Indian origin kids doing great in these contests held in the US. We take pride in the fact that our ethnicity seems to have a special talent for such a "nerd" topic which further re-emphasizes the stereotypical view (that of Indians being "smart" and intelligent fellows). It's a great thing to have such good knowledge of Etymology but what is its practical use? Who needs it really apart from Etymologists? Do the kids who take part in these competitions end up being etymologists or literati of sorts - like spellcheckers, editors of language related publications, teachers of language, etc? I mean do they want to have such careers...coz if they don't then they might as well spend their energies and use their intelligence on more meaningful things like pure sciences or mathematics or other such areas that require people to have the kind of analytic abilities which spell bee'rs quite obviously seem to possess. I used to be a decent quizzer at school but then that was of general knowledge and not any specific area so the knowledge I learned has never been wasted as such instead it has helped me in my profession and non-professional interests. I am sure you also have had such similar experiences. How do parents of young kids (quite a few of us here although I don't have a kid of my own) view such spell bee accomplishments? Have any of you had your kids participating in these spell bee competitions and has it helped your kids in objective ways? Basically, what is the practical use of these spell bee competitions in life? Math, Science, History, Geography, Civics, etc help us in day to day life in more ways than we think. But spellings :hmmmm:
EnterTheVoid Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 It teaches the value of competetion, hard work and ethics. That's what they take from this spelling bees.
punjabi_khota Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 ^True. There is enough time in life to learn math and science. I can guarantee that many of these kids go on to become successful in science and math based careers.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 10, 2011 Author Posted June 10, 2011 It teaches the value of competetion' date=' hard work and ethics. That's what they take from this spelling bees.[/quote']Yeah! that's cool I guess. I didn't look it from that way...my bad. But dunn the experience of competitiveness, ethics and stuff come thru the regular schooling system in the west? Edit - I mean my point is more from the perspective of 'why do we need to ape these kinda systems of the west'. I mean from the technical perspective of spellings what value does it have to children in India for their future...I know I am being purely 'functional' philosophically here but still...
vipervirus Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 Yeah! that's cool I guess. I didn't look it from that way...my bad. But dunn the experience of competitiveness, ethics and stuff come thru the regular schooling system in the west? Edit - I mean my point is more from the perspective of 'why do we need to ape these kinda systems of the west'. I mean from the technical perspective of spellings what value does it have to children in India for their future...I know I am being purely 'functional' philosophically here but still... I am not basing this on any statistic, but I am sure more of these geeks grow up to be nerdy scientists and doctors than their peers at that age who play Little league baseball or Pee Wee football who grow up to be professional sportsman.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 10, 2011 Author Posted June 10, 2011 I am not basing this on any statistic' date=' but I am sure more of these geeks grow up to be nerdy scientists and doctors than their peers at that age who play Little league baseball or Pee Wee football who grow up to be professional sportsman.[/quote']But that's just a correlation and not causation. I mean I am looking at it purely from an Indian society perspective...we can do away with such unnecessary competitions which don't add great value to a child's future. Our society, especially middle class, has been too much into competitive stuff of such stuff which haven't really developed the society in a holistic way. In any case we have enough focus on sciences and engineering competitiveness already...how does spelling competitiveness help? To make an outsourcing sector for scribes?
punjabi_khota Posted June 10, 2011 Posted June 10, 2011 The OP would rather have the children learn the mysteries of meta-"physics", psychic "sciences" and the ancient Indian Vedic nuclear technology for a more holistic learning Make up your damn mind man. 10-12 year olds don't know what they want to be (and hence do the bee only if they want to become writers :WTF:), and as Sree said, the main point of these bees is to build a culture of achievement based on hard work, nothing more.
EnterTheVoid Posted June 11, 2011 Posted June 11, 2011 ^True. There is enough time in life to learn math and science. I can guarantee that many of these kids go on to become successful in science and math based careers. Plus it look good on your resume if you were involved in extra curricular activities/competitions from a young age.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 11, 2011 Author Posted June 11, 2011 Plus it look good on your resume if you were involved in extra curricular activities/competitions from a young age.Are you sure it does? For example, if you have had any such achievements do you mention it in your resume...I mean I was a, without being modest, a 'champion' quizzer in Bangalore (have some recognition certificates), I played for the state U-16 teams, I played in a rock band....these are all extra-curricular activities. Sport and Music are also 'extra'-curricular. My point is, why is our society bent upon viewing them as extra curricular....why not make it curricular? Why not make art forms curricular. For ex - music: could be classical (western, Hindustani, any other Gharana, Chinese. etc), sport, other art forms like say creative writing, painting, calligraphy, etc. When we have our kids achieving new heights in these legitimate areas of human endeavors then our society automatically has greater opportunities for the next generation and our society's "life-experience value index" (just made it up) would grow up. The fact is that we will always be good at "intelligent" stuff - it is like an imprint in our DNA. Indians will never cease to be the toppers in sciences, mathematics, and applied sciences, applied math, medicine, etc. But it is high time we started recognizing some other human capabilities differently. Just think about it...the mother of all martial arts (as per the current "european/western Historians" belief) is kallari payathu. It is a gift of the Mallus to Humanity. But it has stagnated. The Chinese who came and learned KP during the visits of Fa Hien and Huen Tsang in ancient times ended up taking it to a totally different orbit, that of kung fu. These days if you see KP in comparison to other martial arts like KF, Karate, Taekwando, etc you'll feel KP is a bloody joke to be called a martial art. After beating manu bushes, coming back to the main point, how the hell does spellings help children of India? Competitive spirit - we are born with it. Go to Maharashtra and in the XII ppl will talk about their scores in PCB or PCM with a 100 folks having scored 290+ (out of max 300). Same case in the south and north. There is no lack of competition here. Every year about 10,00,000 students (numbers out of the hat but am sure it will be pretty much close to it) try to get admission in about 10,000 Engg/Medical institutes. And probably a 1000 IIT/IIMs. How much mroe competitive can it get? ps: thanks for responding to PK, I see he hasn't put me down in his response which is a positive thing for me. Than You, PK!
Sidhoni Posted June 11, 2011 Posted June 11, 2011 Plus it look good on your resume if you were involved in extra curricular activities/competitions from a young age. :agree:
EnterTheVoid Posted June 11, 2011 Posted June 11, 2011 What are you talking about Mr Sharma? Of course it looks good on your resume, it shows drive and an initiate to succeed. Only an absolute goose of an employer would overlook such feats, in which case his **** will be fired before you get hired.
EnterTheVoid Posted June 11, 2011 Posted June 11, 2011 The fact is that we will always be good at "intelligent" stuff - it is like an imprint in our DNA. Indians will never cease to be the toppers in sciences, mathematics, and applied sciences, applied math, medicine, etc. But it is high time we started recognizing some other human capabilities differently. Just think about it...the mother of all martial arts (as per the current "european/western Historians" belief) is kallari payathu. It is a gift of the Mallus to Humanity. But it has stagnated. The Chinese who came and learned KP during the visits of Fa Hien and Huen Tsang in ancient times ended up taking it to a totally different orbit, that of kung fu. These days if you see KP in comparison to other martial arts like KF, Karate, Taekwando, etc you'll feel KP is a bloody joke to be called a martial art. After beating manu bushes, coming back to the main point, how the hell does spellings help children of India? Competitive spirit - we are born with it. Go to Maharashtra and in the XII ppl will talk about their scores in PCB or PCM with a 100 folks having scored 290+ (out of max 300). Same case in the south and north. There is no lack of competition here. Every year about 10,00,000 students (numbers out of the hat but am sure it will be pretty much close to it) try to get admission in about 10,000 Engg/Medical institutes. And probably a 1000 IIT/IIMs. How much mroe competitive can it get? ps: thanks for responding to PK, I see he hasn't put me down in his response which is a positive thing for me. Than You, PK! :WTF: The spelling bee is just a competition and like any competition, it shows the value of hard work if you want to achieve anything meaningful in your life.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 12, 2011 Author Posted June 12, 2011 What are you talking about Mr Sharma? Of course it looks good on your resume, it shows drive and an initiate to succeed. Only an absolute goose of an employer would overlook such feats, in which case his **** will be fired before you get hired.Well, Sree I don't mention on my resume that I was a "Champion" quizzer in Bangalore during 1990-1991 academic year. Neither do I mention that I was an U-16 state level cricketer, or that I played for a band. When I was a "fresher" I'd mention my Interests/Hobbies but not such details. Besides, I myself do not give any great importance to such things when I am interviewing someone. Whether someone has mentioned it or not does not make a difference. What matters to me is his professional expertise and relevant areas of work. Of course when I played for Telco in the Pimpri-Chinchwad leagues, my resume had everything about my cricket achievements and a mention that I was doing my graduation. Do you mention these things in your resume? Hey, please don't interpret this as me finding it 'silly' or anything like that. My view is strictly functional in this context and as is the case always, its 'goodness/badness' depends on t,s,p,c.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 12, 2011 Author Posted June 12, 2011 :WTF: The spelling bee is just a competition and like any competition, it shows the value of hard work if you want to achieve anything meaningful in your life.No disagreement as far as it's competitive value is concerned. But please try to understand my point in the context that I have specified....that of Indian schools. You think the spelling bee will add even 0.0000001% to the competitiveness of the kids here? India is filled with such competitions...."intellectual and nerd" kinda competitions. My main point, again, is, what is the need to ape the west with such "spelling bee" competitions. Being a spelling bee'er - how does it help an Indian kid studying in India other than for helping him pursue a career in Etymology.
ganeshran Posted June 12, 2011 Posted June 12, 2011 Many competitions dont have direct correlation with any positive effect that you are trying to find. As Sree said, they build up general culture of competition - the need to play hard and play fair. If such competitions can inspire children to work harder in future for bigger things, they have served the purpose.
Brainfade Posted June 12, 2011 Posted June 12, 2011 In some fields of work (like mine - Biochemistry), the ability to spell, to parse complex terms and to pronounce them confidently is imperative. It is disastrous to misspell the terms of complex chemicals incorrectly or misinterpreted the meaning of terms. Not to mention the lack of credibility when you mispronounce scientific terms at a meeting or a thesis defense. And when you write a paper, there is no spell-check for those. It may not be the case for mathematicians and computer programmers who use abstractions.
EnterTheVoid Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 Well, Sree I don't mention on my resume that I was a "Champion" quizzer in Bangalore during 1990-1991 academic year. Neither do I mention that I was an U-16 state level cricketer, or that I played for a band. When I was a "fresher" I'd mention my Interests/Hobbies but not such details. Besides, I myself do not give any great importance to such things when I am interviewing someone. Whether someone has mentioned it or not does not make a difference. What matters to me is his professional expertise and relevant areas of work. Of course when I played for Telco in the Pimpri-Chinchwad leagues, my resume had everything about my cricket achievements and a mention that I was doing my graduation. Do you mention these things in your resume? Hey, please don't interpret this as me finding it 'silly' or anything like that. My view is strictly functional in this context and as is the case always, its 'goodness/badness' depends on t,s,p,c. You're missing the point. If you're some IT pro, you don't need to include that you won a spelling bee in the 3rd grade. Its the culture of hard work that you learn at a young age and carry with you throughout adulthood that's worth its weight in gold.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 13, 2011 Author Posted June 13, 2011 In some fields of work (like mine - Biochemistry), the ability to spell, to parse complex terms and to pronounce them confidently is imperative. It is disastrous to misspell the terms of complex chemicals incorrectly or misinterpreted the meaning of terms. Not to mention the lack of credibility when you mispronounce scientific terms at a meeting or a thesis defense. And when you write a paper, there is no spell-check for those. It may not be the case for mathematicians and computer programmers who use abstractions.Cool! So this is one area of practical application. One of my friends used to do Medical Transcription for a few years and now I recollect some of the things he would say about getting the terminology and spellings correct while transcribing the data regarding patients. More than the English language they were more interested in candidates who understood the medical terminologies and an awareness of the difference in Brit and American spellings.
Vijay.Sharma Posted June 13, 2011 Author Posted June 13, 2011 You're missing the point. If you're some IT pro, you don't need to include that you won a spelling bee in the 3rd grade. Its the culture of hard work that you learn at a young age and carry with you throughout adulthood that's worth its weight in gold.I understood your context and perspective in your first post itself. However, it looks like I wasn't able to communicate the specific context and perspective I had intended the topic to have....my bad. Like you said, any form of competition during a child's school years helps her later on in life.
f.b.m Posted June 13, 2011 Posted June 13, 2011 I see the fact that it can help instill a sense of determination into kids but so can running up and down stairs for 5 hours. I'm with Sri Sri Nirvanam on this :fear: : Any particular reason that it has to be a spelling contest?
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