Bill Bryson in his book "Notes from a small island" makes a comparison on the education system in UK with that in the US. Since, he uses quizzers as an example to make his point, I particularly remember this anecdote.
Anyways, the example he quotes is this- when the University challenge winners of UK and USA faced off each other in a "University challenge grand final", the UK team beat the USA team by some 17,000 to 3 margin. He adds that if you look at where the USA winners are now, some 10 years on, he claims they'd probably be the highest paid bankers on Wall Street, but the UK winners on the other hand, are more likely to be doing a Phd on "the evolution of cello music in Southern Silesia in the late 18th century" sharing an apartment with 17 others, or some such thing. (Bill Bryson and I both exaggerate like hell, but you get the general idea).
The point he was making, of course, was that while the UK education system was arguably making its students more erudite, the US education system was more practical.
I couldn't help thinking about where we (Indian quizzers) lie on the same scale. Our education system is definitely closer to the UK system than to the US system (after we did borrow heavily from the UK education system when we started off English medium education in India).
But as such, are we (Indian quizzers) closer to the southern Silesia Phd types, or the Wall street i-banker types. Scary thought. Actually looking back on the quizzers I've known over the years, I think more quizzers I know fit into the latter category than the former. Or am I just arrogantly assuming ?
Comments, (especially from quizzers) are highly welcome.
5 comments:
OK I just went to a quiz at a pub here yesterday. The first round was sports and all but all questions were about US sports. Questions like who was the 2008 WNBA draft number one pick and what is the Arena Football League Salt Lake City Utah expansion team name. Now nobody in the UK or India can answer those, but then nobody in the US can answer what IPL club MS Dhoni got picked for either. (Credit are there because EPL/Serie A/La Liga soccer are unexpectedly popular here, but that's the extent of their knowledge of world sport.)
So your problem in analysis is not so much that the UK education system is different from the US system, but that the 17,000 to 3 score probably happened because of a home team advantage in the quizzes.
i wonder how quizzing is in the UK - whether it is calcutta style or bangalore-madras style.
that said, I think whether you are a quizzer and what job you do are independent variables. though, of course, quizzing in the south indian style indicates a certain degree of general smartness
@ skimpy: Well, when I said Indian quizzers, I did kinda mean "Bangalore madras south Indian style" so my comments are loaded.
@ manu: Bryson's analysis actually. I'm assuming that Bryson being American, and settled in UK, would have taken that "home advantage" into account before making such a comment, but anyways...
On behalf of the southern Silesia Phd types, I strongly disagree with your thesis.
K
(For more on what exactly K means, refer madman's blog)
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