Spell-b-ound: NRI kids grab top three positions in Scripps National Spelling Bee
Akash Vukoti is six and has been the youngest participant in this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee held in the United States. In a video, the little fellow narrates how he started. “I was very little… about one and a half. My uncle gave me a spoon. I spelled it s-p-o-o- n.” He then goes on to spell 'Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'.
In that same contest, Jairam Hathwar and Nihar Janga were declared co-champions. The third place went to 13-year-old Snehaa Kumar. That’s three Indian Americans taking the top three places. If you look around, you will find more such stories. Rishi Nair from Florida was declared the National Geographic Bee winner this May. NRI children for some reason seem to fare better in such contests than native kids. Researches show several reasons, including the legacy of British colonialism.
Twelve-year-old Rishi Nair believes it is because Indian Americans are a hardworking lot. “Seven out of 10 students in the Top 10 for the Geo Bee in 2015 and 2016 were Indian-Americans,” he says. His interest had begun when his first grade teacher Denise Williams gave a book about the Dominican Republic. He went to his elementary school library and read more books about countries like Kenya, Canada and Russia. “Once I was avidly reading country books, my mother put me in the Junior Geography Bee in North South Foundation (NSF) in the Tampa Regional Contests and I was placed third in Tampa.” That’s how it started and year after year the competitions continued. In 2015, he had a goal — to win the State Bee. “I strived for that goal by studying three hours a day on school days and nine hours a day on weekends.” That paid off and he became the 2015 Florida Geographic Bee Champion. In 2016, he worked harder — 4 to 5 hours on weekdays and 10 to 12 on weekends to win the national championship.
Ramesh Nair, based in Canada, had both his children Devika and Ganesh win the York regional spelling bee competition. “My daughter won the championship and my son became the runner-up (daughter was in third grade and son in seventh grade), my son also won the Canadian National Math competition when he was in ninth grade,” he says. He is a poet too so it’d seem the love for language runs in the family.
Shalini Shankar, socio-cultural and linguistic anthropologist, who is researching the growth and proliferation of spelling competitions, writes that the English-speaking abilities of most educated South Asian-Americans clearly give them an edge over immigrants from other countries. “My research indicates that fluency developed in English-medium schools — a legacy of British colonialism — makes them ideal spelling interlocutors for their children, despite their variety of British spelling. Another factor to note here is the parental ability to dedicate time to education and extracurricular activities,” she writes in The Conversation, an independent media outlet.
The parental attention is also what Suresh Kumar, director, MaRRS International Spelling Bee, mentions as one factor that comes in favour of the NRI kids. “That and the fact that Indian languages are syllabic while English is a phonetic language. Spelling will always be a challenge to a native kid.” Sivani S. From Thiruvananthapuram has won the MaRRS international spelling bee competition this year. “As a child I would participate in youth festivals for competitions in English, be it recitation or writing or elocution. It is in my fourth grade that MaRRS came to my school and I have been participating and winning some award nearly every year. The Indian system of education gives you maximum support and my parents were willing to take me anywhere.”
