Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.

Blogging in Russia

Who would have thunk?

I had no idea they even had such competitions. But, by golly, they do. And they have winners, too. And the winners are considered the smartest of the bunch.

Any takers on which country had the number one group? I would have gone with India. India is awesome when it comes to programming. Talk about stereotyping.

China is no slouch. Japan is good at making things better, so I didn’t consider them. Korea is sharp as is Singapore.

The winning team was from Russia’s Saratov State University. Russia! This explains in small part why they beat the US into space.

America’s top finisher managed only 12th, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Ahead of them were teams from Eastern Europe and Asia.

India and China have some 900,000 engineering grads each year – nearly 3 times that of US grads. Of course, India and China combined have more than 8 times the population of the US to draw from. And many of their (India and China) best come to the US to excel.

Still, we are getting smoked…and now by a country that has barely half the US population – Russia.

Computer jobs are expected to keep growing. America is NOT keeping up. Guess who’s going to get those jobs. And guess who is going to gripe because those jobs went overseas.

The logic is no one wants to work so hard if the job is going to end up overseas anyway….so, students have already conceded the jobs to India and China.

The answer – leadership is still needed – by people who know programming and how to manage. Is there anyone in America who can do that? Or are those jobs being given up as lost as well?

What do you think?

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.