It’s getting to be spelling and geography bee time. ESPN will be fired up in classrooms and homes across the country to watch how the home-schooled kids embarrass the students from public schools. And, not to be indelicate, but you have noticed that the winners of these things are the kids whose parents’ first language is something from Asia or India, right? The places where education reigns supreme? Where schools are for learning by kids and not set up as jobs programs for teacher’s union members?

Today we read of a bit of an anomaly. We’ve got a kid of Indian descent who

studied on her own time, natch, but, as we find out from the Zero, actually goes to a government school:

The easiest? “In what country are the languages Marathi, Gujarati and Tamil spoken?” After all, Pragyna (PRAG-nee-yah) was born in India, and her parents speak Marathi.

It also helped that the Franklin School student spent about two hours a day poring over maps during the months leading up to the bee — then six hours a day once her Spring Break began and she didn’t face any homework. She also practiced answering geography questions and kept up with current events, both necessary to do well in the bee, she said.

This year marked her third straight appearance at the Oregon Geographic Bee at Western University in Monmouth, including placing sixth in state as a fourth-grader. Students must win their school’s bee, then place in the top 100 school winners on a written test, to take part.

You go kid. Do Oregon proud. And, by the way, show the rest of your class where Oregon is on a map, OK?