“54 students are in the National Geographic Bee finals. Just 4 are girls.” (NBC News) is interesting.
First, let’s consider the cisgender-normative prejudice. How can the journalist and editors say “4 are girls”. Unless we assume that people are imprisoned in their biological genders, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “4 currently identify as girls”? Or “4 identified as girls at the time we interviewed them”?
Leaving this hostility to transgender folk aside, the article is rich in detail regarding what Americans are willing to debate:
Fifty-four geography-loving fourth-to-eighth-graders have earned a spot in the televised, rapid-fire contest — winners of local competitions from each U.S. state and territory — but just four of them are girls. The gender gap has persisted since the competition started in 1989; of the 29 winners, only two have been girls.
The National Geographic Bee’s gender imbalance puzzles teachers, parents and students. Some say that the tournament is fair but that educators need to actively foster geographic curiosity in girls, while others think the National Geographic Society is in violation of Title IX and needs to overhaul the bee’s design to promote better results for girls.
To win this year’s New York and New Mexico State Bees, respectively, students had to know that Georgetown is the chief port city in Guyana, and that Europe’s longest ice bridge connects the island of Hiiumaa to the mainland of Estonia.
Estonia is interesting (see Estonia: Tough campaign stop for Bernie Sanders), but most Americans would visit in the summer and there be unable to use this ice road. Guyana? Google says the annual GDP is roughly $3.4 billion. That’s 1/100th the GDP of a mid-sized city in China (chart). It is supposedly a great country for bird-watching and rainforest-lovers, but Guyana last made the U.S. news in the Jim Jones era.
In the recent posting about whether open offices are bad for women, a Facebook friend commented
Journalism in 2018: Pick a situation or practice. Say that women (or minorities) are disproportionately affected. Collect thunderous applause.
This NBC article supports that with the twist that the skill described, geographic knowledge, is almost completely useless in the Internet age.
Readers: In the Google Maps and Wikipedia age, what is the value of obscure geographical knowledge?
In the Google Maps and Wikipedia age, what is the value of obscure geographical knowledge?
Males signaling intelligence to potential female partners. (Forgiving of course my heteronormative and cisnormative prejudices).
Knowing geography to the degree required to win a contest such as this is probably useless. This is true of most academic competitions (does anybody really need to know how to spell spelling bee finalist word Marocain?). Geography, though, helps us understand what’s going on in the world and whether it will effect us. Is invading Iran likely to be more difficult than invading Iraq, for example. What is the effect on the U.S. economy if Italy leaves the Eurozone? Hard to answer questions such as these without some knowledge of geography.
Indians have won the last 13 competitions; white-americans are more underrepresented than females.
Is this one of those bell curve things I’ve heard so much about?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes
Let’s address the question of geographic knowledge in general. Without it, a proper understanding of history, politics, and international affairs is impossible. Knowing that Iran is sandwiched between Afghanistan and Iraq is necessary to understand Middle Eastern affairs. How many people do not know this basic fact and still have opinions on the matter?
Relying on external memory aids, like Google, kills the internalization of such knowledge and renders profound thinking ineffective.
Little trivial facts (Georgetown is the capital of Guyana) and big important facts (Beijing is the capital of China) take up as many words to state, but are differentiated by how many other ideas they are connected to. It is a network effect. You pick up both types of facts, but you tend to retain the facts that are more connected. But you never know we what little fact is useful in a particular case to understand a particular problem.
The weakness of these bees, be they about spelling or geography, is that they present these facts as important without context. They render the information trivial.
Philg:There are 26-to-the-third-power (17,576) possible three-letter airport codes. How many of those are already taken and how many of those do you know? Is it useful for you to remember them, even the ones for little airports?
Mememe, well played.
What if Skynet shuts it all down?
Computers can now literally(how literally was used originally) approximate any persons voice and image on the planet with perfect accuracy over the phone, and make phone calls that fool your average person.
How can the journalist and editors say “4 are girls”. Unless we assume that people are imprisoned in their biological genders, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “4 currently identify as girls”?
Aren’t the two statements the same?
Let me put it this way…
If you have a COCK you are male. If you have a CUNT you are female. If you have a cock but thinks you are female, or vice versa, there is something wrong with your head. If something is so wrong with your head that you decide to cut off your cock and get breast implants, all you’ll ever be is an eunuch with fake tits. Liberal morons forcing girls into sharing their bathrooms or showers with you will never change that.
Oh, you are offended now? Well, too bad, because that is the plain and simple truth and your being offended doesn’t change jack shit.
“The weakness of these bees, be they about spelling or geography, is that they present these facts as important without context. They render the information trivial.”
This is it.
These things are useless and possibly dangerous, but the problem here is not the memorization of facts. Memorizing facts is sort of like pouring concrete into a foundation. You need to do that at some point to learn anything. The problem is that these things encourage memorizing facts without any context at all. Its sort of like pouring concrete on any surface available -an unpaved road, your garden, your living room. So I would like to get rid of spelling bees, but not because I think we should all outsource our spelling to Microsoft.
eD, what context is there to spelling? Are you suggesting you know the etymology of all the words you use, at all times? Also, how do know these kids just memorised information without context? maybe they could provide detailed intel about geopolitics if asked.
google “GPS fail” and you’ll know why.
“gender imbalance puzzles teachers, parents and students.”
Nobody would have thought the imbalance to be puzzling 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago. In most of the world today, no one would think it puzzling. How did our society create people who are puzzled by this sort of thing?
Yeah, 100 years ago, when women couldn’t vote. Those were the good old days.
100 years ago girls were taught geography in schools, just the same as boys.
Vince: I know that it is fashionable to imagine that we are vastly more enlightened than the benighted souls who dwelt upon this Earth 100 years ago, but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
shows quite a bit of female voting 100 years ago. It became universal/national in the U.S. in 1920 (98 years ago), but as in most other areas of human innovation, Americans were followers rather than leaders (and subsequently we imagine ourselves to have been leaders!). 100 years ago women were voting in Russia, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, et al.
I would argue that an American citizen identifying as “female” had vastly more political power in 1920 than her modern counterpart. The U.S. population was 106 million in 1920, less than one third the current size. So her vote was not drowned out as thoroughly as it would be today.
Also, keep in mind that presumably gender was also fluid back in, say, 1800. So there were American citizens whose birth certificates said “male” and who therefore voted, but they identified as women. So we did have women voting even in our very earliest elections. These were women who just happened to have been born with XY chromosomes.
I know that it is fashionable to imagine that we are vastly more enlightened than the benighted souls who dwelt upon this Earth 100 years ago…
I wasn’t making that point. I’m also aware that some states allowed women to vote 100 years ago. It doesn’t matter. If you go back 150 years, it was probably close to zero women who could vote. Nevertheless, the House and Senate, and a sufficient number of state legislatures, the members of which were 99% male, saw fit to amend the constitution. Those were people who were all born in the 19th century. Whether it represents a great increase in enlightenment is beside the point. It was a good idea, though some may disagree. It’s also important to note that the amendment was the fruit of a well organized popular movement, which is how much progress is achieved.