National Geographic has declared an end to its geography bee, GeoBee. Reportedly the cancellation is because it was attracting a non-diverse set of contestants. I don't know if I agree, but it's what it says at the link.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/national- ... -of-equity
National Geographic GeoBee is finished
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floridagator
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National Geographic GeoBee is finished
I'd rather cuddle then have sex. If you're into grammar, you'll understand.
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LucarioSnooperVixey
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countyguy
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
I remember reading in summer 2021 that they were planning to discontinue the Bee because participation plummeted after the pandemic to the point that it didn’t look like it would recover. I think that’s the real reason.
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trainman
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
Or you could read the statement directly from National Geographic's website rather than another source's attempt to interpret what they meant.
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alietr
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
The Blaze is far from being a reliable and unbiased source.
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Ironhorse
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
The official statement doesn't really say anything at all about why the actual cancellation was done. For as long as the statement is there's not really any substance.
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Jurimetrician
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
I was a two-time State Geography Bee (pre-GeoBee branding) participant, once making the Top 10 at State.
As an outreach tool, bluntly, the GeoBee was terrible (and I say that as someone who benefited from the program). At the school level, it was a one-time event per year, with most students barely engaging and even a wide band of each school's brightest getting rejected early. (Two smart geography kids in one classroom? Sucks to be one of you.) Question difficulties could be wildly uneven between rounds, and when one miss could be the end of you based on the structure, that's not good enough.
The program was designed for the elite of the elite, not in a way that reliably produced the best geographers as champions, and it never developed the cachet of the National Spelling Bee. Replacing the GeoBee with programs that encourage geographic knowledge across a wider range of students is far more likely to pay dividends, especially when the first-place scholarship prize at the GeoBee won't cover half a year's tuition at Pomona. Even a simple geography-themed contest with a $25,000 scholarship top prize is likely to get far more buy-in from far more students in far more classrooms.
As for diversity, the last edition in 2019 had precisely one girl to 53 boys competing at Nationals. That's just shocking, especially compared to the National Spelling Bee next door.
Bottom line, the GeoBee wasn't meeting its goals and wasn't worth the money. That's why it ended.
As an outreach tool, bluntly, the GeoBee was terrible (and I say that as someone who benefited from the program). At the school level, it was a one-time event per year, with most students barely engaging and even a wide band of each school's brightest getting rejected early. (Two smart geography kids in one classroom? Sucks to be one of you.) Question difficulties could be wildly uneven between rounds, and when one miss could be the end of you based on the structure, that's not good enough.
The program was designed for the elite of the elite, not in a way that reliably produced the best geographers as champions, and it never developed the cachet of the National Spelling Bee. Replacing the GeoBee with programs that encourage geographic knowledge across a wider range of students is far more likely to pay dividends, especially when the first-place scholarship prize at the GeoBee won't cover half a year's tuition at Pomona. Even a simple geography-themed contest with a $25,000 scholarship top prize is likely to get far more buy-in from far more students in far more classrooms.
As for diversity, the last edition in 2019 had precisely one girl to 53 boys competing at Nationals. That's just shocking, especially compared to the National Spelling Bee next door.
Bottom line, the GeoBee wasn't meeting its goals and wasn't worth the money. That's why it ended.
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Vintsanity
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Re: National Geographic GeoBee is finished
I made the top 10 at my state's Bee from 2003-2006. Best I ever did was runner up, but my brother won state the year I aged out. I was in the audience to see Caitlin Snaring become the second, and now definitively last, girl to win the competition.
I second almost everything in Jurimetric’s post above. I haven’t paid attention to the Bee since 2007, but looking into it, I see a lot of parallels to youth sports, something else I was participating in at the time. The noble idea is to use competition to encourage broad engagement in positive things, geographic literacy and physical activity, respectively. Unfortunately the logical conclusion is domination by a hyper-focused elite that spend tons of time and/or money training. Everyone else is eventually turned off by the extreme level of commitment required to have any level of success at all, and the end result is less broad engagement than without the competition in the first place.
This was starting to happen when I was competing, but it seems it has gotten much, much worse in the intervening two decades. I never did any rigorous studying for the Bee, I just liked reading almanacs and looking at maps. That was enough to get most of the questions, and most of the ones I didn’t know, even at the national level, were things I was at least familiar with. Looking at some of national finals questions from the past few years I see a lot of answers I’ve never even heard of. But that is what the question writers have to do when the top contestants are systematically studying for multiple hours every day. Probably for the best that the competition has been retired.
I second almost everything in Jurimetric’s post above. I haven’t paid attention to the Bee since 2007, but looking into it, I see a lot of parallels to youth sports, something else I was participating in at the time. The noble idea is to use competition to encourage broad engagement in positive things, geographic literacy and physical activity, respectively. Unfortunately the logical conclusion is domination by a hyper-focused elite that spend tons of time and/or money training. Everyone else is eventually turned off by the extreme level of commitment required to have any level of success at all, and the end result is less broad engagement than without the competition in the first place.
This was starting to happen when I was competing, but it seems it has gotten much, much worse in the intervening two decades. I never did any rigorous studying for the Bee, I just liked reading almanacs and looking at maps. That was enough to get most of the questions, and most of the ones I didn’t know, even at the national level, were things I was at least familiar with. Looking at some of national finals questions from the past few years I see a lot of answers I’ve never even heard of. But that is what the question writers have to do when the top contestants are systematically studying for multiple hours every day. Probably for the best that the competition has been retired.