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Spelling Bee

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Clarissa

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I understand what he’s trying to say. However. My 9-year-old has the vocabulary of a very advanced college student and spelling skills to match. But the likelihood of her participating in a spelling bee is nil. Just like the likelihood of her participating in anything alongside kids who look like this. I don’t mean their race, God forbid. I mean their general appearance and demeanor of kids whose parents are driving over them like armored vehicles. They are clinically uncool.

I actually once suggested a spelling bee, and she said, “I don’t read to be competitive, Mommy. I read because I love books. My enjoyment of books doesn’t need an additional goal. It’s a purpose in itself.” In other words, she refuses to marketize her enjoyment, and I’m very glad of it.

12 responses to “Spelling Bee”

  1. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    Klara is a smart girl, as a kid I loved competing in these competitions because I knew I wasn’t pretty or cool and I got positive feedback from other kids for a while. Mom would actually be proud of me instead of complaining about how I read too much or dressed sloppy in jeans and rock band T-shirts, it was a real endorphin rush. Unfortunately I still seek outside validation and get a kick out of being seen as smart, being seen as smart gets her off my back for a while

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  2. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    I wonder if the parents of these children realize that this doesn’t even confer any external benefit to their children, such as helping with college admissions. What university gives a crap that someone won a spelling bee? Part of the reason you only see the children of immigrants devoting this much effort to spelling bees is that American families know better.

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      When I was a kid, there was a $10k scholarship involved.

      But yeah. I always won the classroom-level round. But you had to study word lists to win school level or higher, and I wasn’t about to waste time on that… plus, my parents were (thankfully) not into travel sports.

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      1. Demotrash Avatar
        Demotrash

        Oh, I forgot about the scholarship aspect, was only thinking of admissions. Still not the best bang for your buck even in that regard.

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    2. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      I wonder if the parents of these children realize that this doesn’t even confer any external benefit to their children, such as helping with college admissions. 

      This is incredibly naive. I’m sure the upper-middle class parents who are this driven are very aware of what does and does not help with college admissions. I would even say that college admissions is their only goal in life. Whether it’s a good thing or not is a separate discussion but they know 100x more than you on what works.

      Part of the reason you only see the children of immigrants devoting this much effort to spelling bees is that American families know better.

      Do you have any data on this? I know indian-origin kids excel at these competitions but that’s different from saying only indian-origin (or immigrant) kids participate in these competitions.

      Personally, I don’t care for spelling bees. The conventional narrative is not that knowing more words will magically make you smarter or whatever, but that the journey itself will yield dividends later in life. How to set goals, how to be disciplined, how to commit yourself to a process over a long term time horizon, etc. We can argue whether spelling bees help achieve those secondary outcomes, but let’s at least represent that narrative truthfully.

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I could see my youngest kid entering one of these, but only because he is intensely interested in reading, letters, and spelling. He’ll be three in August and already reads (self-taught), plays with letters literally all day (dozens of different letters all over the floor of my house at all times), and asks me to spell words with him throughout the day. I think the term is hyperlexic, although afaik it’s not a medical diagnosis. But for him, this is his what he enjoys. Just like Klara reads because it’s what she enjoys, my little guy spells because for some reason it’s what makes his brain tingle. Maybe he will find out all on his own about competitive spelling and want to try.

    My daughter and her friends recently decided to collaborate on a story for a city-wide writing contest. They and 9 other submissions were declared winners. 8 of those 9 other submissions were Indian-American. Some of those kids had won multiple years in a row. It’s just what the parents seek out, academic contests. My girl and her friends just wanted to write a story together and had a blast doing it. It wasn’t about the contest for them. And you know what, the story was very good. I’m biased, I know. But it was the best one there. The theme of the contest was “everyday heroes” and they wrote about an anthropomorphized traffic cone. I would have never been so creative!

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  4. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “the 10 finalists in this year’s national spelling bee”

    I can’t be the only one bothered by the fact that there are only 9 kids in the picture can I? CAN I?????? He just cheated us! This isn’t fair! THERE AREN’T TEN KIDS IN THE COCK – A – DOODIE PICTURE!

    It’s hard being me, sometimes….

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  5. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
    bluebird of bitterness

    I was a spelling bee champion as a child, routinely beating even the kids in the next grade up from me. Spelling was my favorite subject because it didn’t involve hard work (or, to be honest, any work at all). Whereas things like math and science required mental effort, spelling did not; I could look at a word once and that was all it took. In my case, being the kid who won the blue ribbon at every spelling bee I entered was not indicative of anything but laziness.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I’m not saying all people who participate in spelling bees have weirdo parents. I’m only talking about these specific kids. Their body language is uncomfortable, their clothes are devoid of personality, they look scared and miserable. They need to be urgently taken out of spelling bees and signed up for hip hop dancing.

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      1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
        bluebird of bitterness

        Well, I definitely had weirdo parents, but they’re not the reason I entered spelling bees. 🙂

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  6. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    My spelling bee trauma: I was usually pretty good at spelling and anticipated going fairly far (in the school I didn’t have much of any concept of anything beyond that), only to crash and burn in the very first round with ‘autumn’ (curses! silent n!) which was literally the only word that day that I made a mistake with.

    But it wasn’t that big a deal then.

    Overall, spelling bees are a great example of something…. Goodhart’s Law? (when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a meaningful measure? close… but… not quite….)

    When I was in school spelling bees were something we did in class sometimes (with a small prize like a candy bar or something) but I don’t remember any news coverage of the national finals or anything. We knew there was such a thing but it didn’t mean much.

    Being able to make it to the national finals seems like a misguided goal… memorizing hundreds or thousands of spellings of obscure words that none of the participants are ever likely to encounter in the wild seems like a big waste of time especially with the internet and quick access to finding the spelling when needed.

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  7. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    These sorts of academic competitions are definitely an immigrant parent, Tiger Mom thing, in a lot of schools where I’ve worked the Asian and Indian immigrant kids were always in these competitions. In fifth grade I made it to the county finals of our state spelling bee and I lost because I couldn’t spell Archaeopteryx, the dinosaur bird. I was the only Hispanic kid, all the other kids were Indian or Asian with no regular white kids or African American kids. Even I thought it was weird since there weren’t many Asian or Indian kids at my school, just Hispanic, African American and white Catholic ethnics with a handful of Jewish kids

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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