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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| India's child 'geniuses' never lost for an answer |
| 2004-11-18 |
| If you've ever wondered why India is taking so many jobs away from Britain because of outsourcing, you need look no further than the Subcontinent's most popular TV gameshow - India's Child Genius. In the programme, which has just finished its 27-week run with an avidly watched grand final, Indian children as young as 10 confidently answer questions that are often harder than those on University Challenge. Some examples: What inherited form of anaemia is characterised by a deficiency of haemoglobin? What does the term thrombosis literally mean in Greek? The contestants were asked to identify the missing symbols in molecular models. They were shown diagrams of curved mirrors and asked to identify the numerical value of the difference in size between an object and its reflection. All this was conducted in English, which for many contestants would not have been their first language - although many Indian middle-class parents speak English with their children at home to improve their command of the language. In some rounds, children were offered the option of seeing multiple choice answers, in the style of Who Wants to be a Millionaire - but the majority chose instead to answer the questions without seeing the choices, for extra points. Winner of the £12,000 prize was Shubham Prakhar, 12, from Bihar. "I've never stood second in life and that's how I want to be," he said. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #6 Yeah, you really need to be a genius to work in a call centre. |
| Posted by: Onionman 2004-11-18 10:22:34 PM |
| #5 Who does this kid think he is, Ken Jennings |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2004-11-18 6:05:46 PM |
| #4 See what kids can do when they pick up a science textbook on occasion instead of some call to jihad? Yeah, I know....not that the Islamonutz were watching that show...... |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2004-11-18 2:08:44 PM |
| #3 Note the high correlation between educational spending and educational attainment. What does India spend per middle-class pupil? Maybe $100/yr? Even adjusting for PPP, the joke is obvious: the best math and science students around the world come from miserably piss-poor countries (Russia, India, Hungary, etc) in which school budgets are a tiny fraction of what they are in the worst US slum. Tell me again why we need to increase annual primary/secondary school spending beyond the current average of $8,000 per pupil? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-11-18 12:48:51 PM |
| #2 The downside is that they will grow up to be the arrogant know-it-alls that my customers hire as the lowest cost IT solution, who won't follow my advice or RTFM when they run into problems running our product, consequently wasting my time, hurting my company's reputation, and driving me to drink, but I'm not bitter. |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2004-11-18 12:32:44 PM |
| #1 Think about that when your child tells you he wants to major in modern dance or womyn's studies... |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-11-18 9:21:55 AM |