Many American Students Do Achieve at Extraordinary Levels

While it is fashionable today to dump on American education, two recent competitions highlight the fact that many youngsters in our country demonstrate extraordinary levels of knowledge.

Each year, two competitions, the National Geographic Bee and the Scripps Spelling Bee, feature some of the very best young minds. For those adults who think our future is suspect we challenge each of you to match the talents demonstrated by the students competing in each of these events.

National Geography Bee
The National Geographic Bee celebrated its 20th year this year. For the first time, a four-time state-level winner, Benjamin Geyer of Washington D.C., participated in the national finals. Geyer went on to become one of the competition’s eight finalists.

The 55 competitors, all in grades five to eight and ranging in age from 10 to 14, were competing for the top prize of a $25,000 college scholarship and a lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society.

A review of this year’s state and territory Bee winners demonstrates a group of youngsters of extraordinary talents, not just those that relate to geography. This year’s finalists have won numerous math, science and other academic contests. Most play a musical instrument and play a variety of sports. According to the National Geographic Press Release, one finalist has also penned a 57,000-page novel.

A year ago, Caitlin Snaring, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Redmond, Washington, made history be becoming just the second girl to ever win the national title. But this year, the winner was another male, Akshay Rajogopal of Nebraska. Barely eleven years old, the Lux Middle School student from Lincoln did not miss a single question in any of the preliminary rounds or the final and championship rounds.

Now to the aspects all readers can relate to, the questions. The winner was able to determine the urban area of Cochabamba, a region that had been in the news in recent years due to protests over the privatization of the municipal water supply and regional autonomy issues. The actual question: Cochabamba is the third largest conurbation in what country?

Moderated for the 20th year by “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, the Geography Bee also proposed such questions as to what constituted the westernmost Asian national capital (Ankara in Turkey), the country where Makossa is a popular type of music (Cameroon), and the location of Tillya Tepe (it’s in Afghanistan).

The national runner-up was 13-year-old Hunter Bledsoe, 13, a student at Hewitt Trussville Middle School, Trussville, Alabama. The eight other finalists were Nikhil Desai of California; Benjamin Geyer of Washington, D.C.; Erik Troske of Indiana; Isaac Pasley of Missouri; Joseph Perea of Montana; Milan Sandhu of New Hampshire; and Taylor Morris of North Carolina.

Scripps Spelling Bee
The newspaper articles that discussed the national spelling bee noted that Indiana teenager Sameer Mishra definitely earned his “guerdon.” The 13-year-old young man from West Lafayette, Ind. would survive a competition that featured 287 other competitors by correctly spelling guerdon, a word of German origin meaning ‘reward’.

A record-setting total of 288 spellers competed in this year’s Bee. Eight international spellers would make the semifinals, the best performer being twelve-year-old Sade Dunbar, of Kingston, Jamaica who tied for 13th.

Mishra won the title over Sidharth Chand, a 12-year-old from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Chand stumbled over “prosopopoeia” in the 15th round.

In winning the bee, Mishra receives $35,000 in cash plus more than $5,000 in other prizes.

Among the words that separated the finalists were “cryptococcosis” (a fungal infection), “phrenicectomy”(excision of a portion of the phrenic nerve), “cyathiform”(shaped like a cup), and “solidungulate,” (having single, undivided hoof on each foot).

Other top finishers included: Tia Thomas of California; Samia Nawaz of Arkansas; Scott Remer of Ohio; Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas; Rose Sloan of Illinois; Catherine “Cat” Cojocaru of North Dakota; Jahnavi Iyer of Pennsylvania; Kyle Mou of Illinois; Justin Song of California; and Austin Pineda of California.

Any readers wanting to get a sample of the spelling bee competition may simply head to Spelling Bee to give their skills a whirl.