THE MISTERY OF THE NASHUNAL SPELING BE

This year’s Scripts National Spelling Bee winner is 12-year-old Bruhat Somer. Runner up was 13-year- old Faizan Zaki.  In the final lightning round, each contestant had words fired at them.  Bruhat nailed 29 words, Faisan spelled 21 correctly.  Poor Faisan was in tears as other spellers gave him hugs, including his friend Shrey Parikh, who had been eliminated earlier. Among the words they spelled correctly were molysite, peccant and febrifuge. The fifth-place winner was Colorado’s own, 13-year-old Aditi Muthukumar.  Almost all of them are of Indian descent.  It’s been this way for a long time.  With a couple of exceptions, the winners since 2010 have been Indian. Their dominance is extraordinary, and begs for an explanation.

2010 – Anamika Veeramani,  2011 – Sukanva Roy  2012 - Kavya Shivashankar and Snigdha Nandipati Snigdha,  2013 - Arvind Mahankali,  2014 – Sriram J. Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe  2015 - Vanya Shivashankar†  2016 - Jairam Hathwar† and Nihar Saireddy Jangat,  2017 - Gokul Venkatachalam†  2017 - Ananya Vina, 2018 - Karthik Nemmani, 2019 - Rishik Gandhasri, Saketh Sundar, Shruthika Padhy, Sohum Sukhatanka, Erin Howardt, Abhijay Kodali, Christopher Serrao and Rohan Raja 2020 – none,  2021 – Zaila Avant-garde, 2022 – Harini Logan, 2023 – Dev Shah, 2024  Bruhat Soma.

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The names of these children are harder to spell than the words themselves. There’s not a John Smith or a Tammy Sue Jones in the bunch.  Why?  I don’t really know, but I have some possibilities.

Population – India has a population of 1,441,719,852, (about 1.5 billion) over four times the population of the United States.  Putting it in perspective, if 330 million Americans were killed and an equal number in India, the United States would have a population of zero, while India would still be left with well over one billion people. (1,111,719,852.)  Thus, the chances of India having an abundance of very smart people is proportionately higher. Many of these high achievers emigrate to the US.

Education and Affluence - Immigrants in the past were generally poor, often desperate.  Indentured servants, mostly from Great Britain, worked for seven years in return for passage to the colonies. Between 1880 and 1920,  a surge of twenty - three million people emigrated to America. Most were looking for opportunity and freedom.  But Indian immigrants today are different; they are educated, highly skilled and have the resources to get here.  Their version of the American dream is to attend medical school or to earn an engineering degree.  Indians are the highest earning ethnic group in the US, earning an average of $123,700 annually.  According to U.S. Census data, Indian Americans have around double the median income of American households.  Indian Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree are twice the national average.  

          No indentured servants, here.

India’s caste system is over 3000 years old, and not easily dislodged.

               "Give me your tired, your poor,

         Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

      The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Today, the huddled masses of India rarely leave those teeming shores; only the higher castes have the wherewithal – money, education, determination - to move to the other side of the world.  According to the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2003, only 1.5 percent of Indian immigrants in the United States were Untouchables (or as they are called today, Dalits).  More than ninety percent were from the higher castes.  

India seems to have turned the immigration paradigm on its head:  the wealthy and educated emigrate to America; the wretched refuse stay behind. 

The Work Ethic - Success requires industriousness, discipline, grit, tenacity, and talent.   In order to compete in - much less win - the Spelling Bee, these 12 and 13-year-olds, must not only be very bright, but must spend a good part of their childhoods studying.  This year’s winner, Bruhat Somer, said, “First, make a goal. Then realize how hard you have to work. Then work for it, and you’ve got it.”  Bruhat practiced 10 hours daily on weekends and six hours on weekdays.

Engaged Parents - It also requires parents who are dedicated and supportive. Asian parents seem to have greater discipline for their children than Americans.  Shalini Shankar, author of Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z's New Path to Success, found that South Asian parents perceive childhood as not only a time for play but also to build a foundation for education and skills to prepare them for the adult world.  She discusses the parenting styles of Asian parents, like the “Tiger Mothers” that have very high expectations, including demands for perfection, to be achieved through strict discipline.  Shanker pointed out that the laid-back approach of white middle-class American families cannot compete with tiger mothers.

Culture – An article by CNN pointed out, “they’re (Indian children) not born great — they’re made great through a culture that instills a drive for achievement and mastery of the English language. “This suggests a shift may be underway — away from a play-based childhood to one marked by competition and recognition.”

Heredity and Environment – In 1985, Balu Natarajan, the first Indian American champion, lived in a home where his parents spoke their native language.  Now a physician, he explained why South Asian kids are so good at this competition.

“In any field, in order to do well, you have to have opportunity, skills and you have to have a good strategy. You have to have the talent and you have to execute.   But before that, you have to have interest.”   

Skills, talent and interest are generally genetic.  Living in a democracy, supported by the culture, possessing affluence to pursue interests, recognizing the value of competition, are environmental factors making it possible.

(I suspect that most parents reading this are thinking to themselves, I’d never put my kids through that kind of intense pressure. Neither would I.  But what would I do if my daughter came to me and said, “I want to put in ten-hour days studying for the spelling bee?”  I’d probably discourage it.  But if she wanted to put in ten-hour days playing the piano, I’d probably agree.  How about golf, or playing chess, or gymnastics, or the violin?  I’d go along with it if she had the talent, tenacity and interest, put wouldn’t push it.)

         Why is all of this relevant? I’ll answer the question with questions.

1.     Has the American work ethic deteriorated?

2.     Do we want highly educated immigrants or day laborers?

3.     Have American schools and parents lost the ability to raise disciplined children?

4.     Has the deterioration of marriage and family in the United States contributed to mediocre education?

5.     If America is systemically racist, then why do brown-skinned Indian immigrants do so well here?

6.     Soma plans to be a doctor when he grows up and he understands there are no shortcuts to success, whether it’s a spelling bee or anything else.  In other words, hard work yields results.  Indian kids understand that.  Has America education, with its insistence on equality of outcomes, lowered expectations in order to level the playing field?   

7.     If children grow-up in a culture – a society -  that recognizes, respects, admires, encourages and rewards academics and learning, children will strive to be part of that culture.  Does this describe American culture?