America
'Perseverance behind Indian Americans' dominance of National Spelling Bee'
Washington, May 26
The impressive performance
of Indian Americans at the Scripps National Spelling Bee could be due to
their perseverance, hard work, well-educated parents and a milestone
documentary that made them realise "we could do this", according to a
media report.
"How hard a child works is a very individual
factor... But what might be happening (with Indian American contestants)
is that there might be perseverance for the National Spelling Bee goal
over a longer period of time," the Washington Post quoted Paige Kimble,
the Bee’s longtime director, as saying on Monday.
The contest,
which has been won by Indian Americans for seven years in a row and all
but four of the last 15 years, gets underway on Tuesday.
In fact,
Kimble's analysis could not be misplaced as of all the Indian American
champions in the last 15 years, only one, Pratyush Buddiga, won the
contest in his first attempt in 2002. The others, including last year’s
co-champ Sriram Hathwar, won after making several attempts.
But
Kimble is concerned about the racial aspect of the contest. Last year's
champions had to face a barrage of racist comments on social media
websites that "indicate that we have a long way to go as a country in
embracing all of our immigrant population", Kimble said.
Despite
experts not sure as to how they can explain the impressive performance
of Indian American youngsters in the national bee compared with other
groups, Shalini Shankar, an anthropology professor at Northwestern
University, said: "It's hard to say it's a coincidence."
"You
don’t see lots of spelling bee winners who are the children of assembly
line workers or cabdrivers, even if they're South Asian... You see
children of doctors, you see children of engineers,†the Post quoted her
as saying.
Another factor that contributed to the success of
Indian Americans in the contest was a 2002 documentary, "Spellbound",
which followed eight contestants to the 1999 national bee and shows
Nupur Lala's exultant victory.
"A lot of the spellers I
interviewed said that was the moment they realised, 'We could do this',â€
Shankar said. "So, if you count it down from when 'Spellbound' came
out, it's about a five- or six-year arc until they really started
dominating. The reach of that movie has been much farther than people
realised.â€
But it is also thousands of hours of hard work that Indian American contestants put in to become champions.
"When
the other kids are playing football or basketball, the Indians are
doing spelling. I don't think it has anything to do with Indians being
innately better at spelling. It's mostly just hard work," said Pratyush
Buddiga, who won the contest in 2002.