The national spelling bee now has a vocabulary component.
True, it doesn’t really seem like a particularly good use of time, although I’m sure that in the process of studying for spelling bees these kids are learning a lot of related information which actually will be useful later (like Latin roots, and foreign languages). In any case, it’s no worse than a kid spending nearly every waking hour practising a sport which they most likely won’t ever even reach the college level in, never mind making a career out of it.
Lord, no. Spell check has been a disaster, not only because it doesn't recognize "sound alike" mistakes, but also because online editors now don't bother to sight read, missing not only homophonic errors but also auto-fill errors. You see egregious errors in all print communications now that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, which further lowers literacy in the reading public.
Failing to study the reasons behind spellings and the origins of contemporary words cheats students out of a deep understanding of language, and how the roots of one language continue to influence many others. I have learned several languages. After you truly study one, learning the next one becomes easier, and the one after that even easier, etc. It makes reading comprehension so much deeper, cross cultural understanding easier, and a host of other benefits.
Granted, language study is not for everyone. But if you can read well, you can learn so many other things so much more easily.
“I’d rather see a kid put his/her efforts into mastering vocabulary,math or science.”
I attended a music recital recently that one of this years winners played not only the piano but had recently started studying the guitar. I would suspect that this young man was also well acquainted with math, vocabulary, and science. Keep an eye out for future spelling bee participants because he has a younger sister .