Posted on 05/31/2007 7:46:53 PM PDT by gobucks
Evan O'Dorney always eats fish before his spelling bees. The brain food apparently has served him well: He's the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
The 13-year-old from Danville, Calif., aced "serrefine" Thursday night to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee. He won a tense duel with Nate Gartke of Spruce Grove, Alberta, who was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee.
Evan won a trophy and a $35,000 prize, plus a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond and a set of reference works. He said he knew how to spell the winning word - a noun describing small forceps - as soon as the pronouncer said it.
Evan said he wasn't surprised to win, but he confessed that spelling isn't his top interest.
"My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together," he said. "And with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes - and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization."
Sorry Charlie, Nope.
back then, it was fresh caught panfish and crappies, filet ‘em and then bread crumbs, batter and butter in a hot pan.. crispy and moist, melt in the mouth kind of stuff.
Canada, the 52nd state.
That might have been true in the 17th century, but today most human knowledge is on computers. A simple computer program could convert words from irrational English to rational English. Since the grammar isn't being changed, nor are the sounds or syllabification, no meaning will be lost even in music and poetry. Students today can understand Shakespeare even though the words are spelled in very different ways than they are today. They would have even less difficulty understanding words that are spelled exactly like they sound.
This is a statistics observation, not a statement for or against any particular form of education.
It isn't statistical evidence because the sample size is too small. If you want a statistical observation you are going to need to look at thousands of home-schoolers compared to thousands of publicly educated students.
When the Spanish language had a spelling reform, they didn't reform the grammar. To do that would make the way the language is used more different from how it is written. The goal of spelling reform is to make it less different. Just look up Spanish verbs like ir, saber, ser, etc. to see that they didn't fix the irregularities in conjugation. But all of the conjugations are written exactly the way they sound.
Anyways, I'm not too frightened by English conjugation issues. There are a lot of irregularities, but there are very few different types of conjugations compared to most languages. In particular, the English language almost doesn't have to deal at all with subjunctive clauses.
“It isn’t statistical evidence because the sample size is too small”
I didn’t posit it as statistical evidence. I observed the numbers, and having known kids who have attended the bee, I know a little (albeit indirectly) about what it takes to win such an event.
The poster I replied to gave these numbers on school makeup:
School Type:
192 public (67.13%)
38 private (13.29%)
36 home (12.59%)
14 parochial (4.9%)
5 charter (1.75%)
1 virtual (.34%)
I’d say that this is not a statistically invalid population...but that’s as far as I would go in describing it.
It is invalid because it is not a random survey. It is only a survey of students who are very smart. If you wanted a random survey you would pick home-schoolers and publicly schooled children from around the country at random and then test them. With a distribution size in the millions you can't draw a conclusion just looking at the end of the tail to determine if home-schooling is more effective than public schooling at teaching spelling. This is like saying that men are many times better at governing just looking at the composition of the House and the Senate--which again is hardly a random sample.
Some fun.....
See if you can figure out what these words have in common.
Banana
Dresser
Grammar
Potato
Revive
Uneven
Assess
Answer: In all the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.
See if you can figure out what these words have in common.
Banana
Dresser
Grammar
Potato
Revive
Uneven
Assess
Answer: In all the words listed, if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.
What is things you figure out when you have way too much time on your hands, Alex. :)
You are assuming that those who did not do as well in homeschooling would have done better in government school.
But...it is very possible that they might have done far worse.
We caught the end of the Spelling Bee last night and my kids said the same. Homeschooler. Let the weeping and wailing begin.
Boo hoo. A public school kid didn’t win. It would have been a different song if one had.
Those kids that make it are the cream of the crop.
It’s interesting how Homeschooled students keep winning these things. They win spelling Bees far out of proportion to their share of the American population of children as a whole.
I think that this is yet another reason to homeschool.
My kids got a kick out of the commentators. They said they were making really stupid, pointless comments. It fits.
There's an understatement if I ever heard one.
When my daughter wanted to go to the National Spelling Bee, I couldn't stop her from studying, but try to get her to do something she doesn't have her heart set on? Might as well try to move Mt. Everest.
BTW, she did go.
Like the kid who wrote *Eregon*.
“Hopefully he has found a balance. I also hope that he has developed a sense of humor.”
We’ve met several home-schooled kids through our church, most of whom are kids of missionaries. Without exception, they’ve been incredibly poised, intelligent, and funny. They interact comfortably and appropriately with everyone from the babies in the nursery to the golden-agers. Impressive.
“A homeschooled kid can more easily devote his/her full time to studying spelling, and the top finishers probably did just that.”
Reasonable, yes. But, I have met many kids who are being home schooled. There is a pattern of early maturity, compared to kids entrusted to gov’t schools, that is manifestly evident. I don’t think the study time given is really the pivot point of why the stats get skewed towards homeschoolers - I think it has to do with how they learn to win to begin with.
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