The View from the Bottom
By Dr Ghulam M. Haniff
St Cloud, Minnesota
Not surprisingly the winners who received prizes, at the recently held National Geographic Bee, were all children of the Indian immigrants. They received cash prizes ranging in the amounts of $1,000 to $25,000. The person who came in first, Rahul Nagvekar, in addition won a trip to Galapagos Island.
In the final cutout of ten contestants fully seven were Indians. Several of these were eliminated before the final four were narrowed down. The Indian parents seated in the crowd were visibly very proud.
The contestants ranged in age from 8 to 14, roughly the middle school cohort. In fact, the contest was open to all those who chose to participate. It started out with four million participants and was gradually narrowed down to the four at the top who survived.
Two weeks later I came across the National Spelling Bee contest. Once again the Indians prevailed at the top. The winners perched there were Arvind Mahankali who dominated the contest and another person, Snigdha Nandipati, in the second place.
A few days later I came across another competition, the National History Bee, and this too had Indian participants. The young Indians are proving to be very intelligent and serious students. They also are quite knowledgeable about a lot of subjects.
The end of the school year, roughly corresponding to the months of May and June, is when these contests are held and the winner determined. However, in some cases they have been in the process for much of the latter half of the academic year.
Watching these contests I did not see or hear a single Muslim name, or any name representing the world of Islam. It is quite unfortunate that young Muslim people lack the ambition or the vision to become participants in these events. It is very unusual to see a Muslim who has participated in one of these events.
Some days later when I raised the issue of these contests with my Muslim and Pakistani friends they expressed surprise at never having heard of the events. As usual they pooh-poohed the entire contest even though it carries a lot of prestige. They also ridiculed aspects of Indian education and came to the conclusion that India does not have t much to offer of anything in the way of learning. A good portion of the Muslim colleagues did not seem to be interested in the competition or anything of that nature. Only a selected few showed some interest.
Many of the parents I know are professional individuals with occupations in engineering, accounting, medicine, architecture and various fields in business administration. They are barely out of villages with the behavior to demonstrate that characteristic. Of course, their education stopped on the day they received their diploma.
Compared to schooling in India the educational system in most of the Muslim world leaves much to be desired. In comparison with India the literacy rate in Pakistan, for example, is shockingly low. In most statistical measures Pakistan stands several notches below India in just about every measure of achievement.
In 1947 when the partition took place both the countries, India and Pakistan, had a literacy rate of 12 percent each but since that time India has zoomed ahead above the 75 percentage mark while Pakistan has only achieved a rating of slightly above the fifty-five percent.
At such a low rate Pakistan has not been able to show excellence in any field. Each year India graduates more than 200,000 engineers but Pakistan remains below 20,000. In population India is only six times larger than Pakistan but it produces ten times as many engineers as Pakistan does.
Most of us know that India is second only to the United States in the field of information technology. The Indian IT specialists are very much in demand the world over. They constitute a good proportion of the IT workforce in the United States as well as in Britain, Germany and Finland.
Our Arab friends listening to this conversation were dazzled and could not believe that India would be so far ahead. All they had to do was to look at their neighbor next door, Israel, to get the message.
Alas! But who is looking.
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