Spelling counts at the Spelling Bee,

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the
Web of Language:

it's the sequel to the Spelling Bee protesters post last night:

Spelling counts at the Spelling Bee, but in the age of the Internet  
it doesn’t count for much

Take a chess tournament, with its clash of intellect.  Add to it a  
dash of Little League, pitting America’s youth against screaming  
parents and scowling coaches.  Mix in the luck of the lottery.  Top  
it all off with the commercial hype of Bowling for Dollars, and what  
you have is the grueling American contest called the Spelling Bee.

For the past two days, 286 finalists from grades five through eight,  
all winners of local and regional competitions involving millions of  
American school children, have been vying for the title of America’s  
best speller.  After years of drill and memorizing, testing and  
tension, coaching and cajoling, they’ve made it to the 80th annual  
Scripps Spelling Bee inWashington, D. C., while outside the hall  
protesters picketed against English’s irrational spelling.

The Spelling Bee is one of the oldest and least rational of our tests  
of knowledge, which include everything from the SAT to “Who wants to  
be a millionaire?”  The bee pits youngsters who should be outside  
playing against one another in a test of trivia where losers often  
suffer great emotional trauma, and winners get to take home a  
dictionary and the certain knowledge that they’re about to forget  
most of the rare and obscure words they’ve spent years learning to  
spell.....

to read the rest, go to

the Web of Language

http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage



DB


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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