Boy Wins Spelling Bee With ‘Serrefine’
Conductor Tullio Serafin Denounces Verdict: ‘Fix Was In’
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."
If we were to reform our spelling, we would lose much meaning. How would you differentiate between sight, site, cite, and cyte?
Well said. English is an exceptionally powerful language because we're not sticklers on where words come from, or their history, or some silly list of rules of how things "should" be done. If we find a word that better describes something than what we had available to us, we take it and make it our own.
Witness the French obsession with their language. You see, they have nothing left. We have bigger horizons.
LOL. You are certainly welcome to take up esperanto.
Classical Spanish maybe. But how about various argots of it. Languages spoken by people who just want to talk about things without asking the dictionary editors how, WILL break the rules.
Ha ha. You respond with an extreme. As I pointed out, almost every other language has had spelling reform and they are now much easier to use. We don't need to invent a new language due to the difficulties in English. We just need to simplify the spelling system in English. What is so frightening about fixing our language so that it is written in the same way that it sounds?
Hey, this isn’t the geography bee. You can’t expect them to be clear on whether or not Canada is part of the United States. You can just expect them to be able to SPELL both place names.
The funny thing is, the winner boy loves math and music so much, and doesn’t care much for spelling or spelling bees. After he won, the tv announcer asked him if he liked spelling just a LITTLE bit more, now that he’d won, and he was dead silent, trying to figure out a way to be polite. He obviously still didn’t get his kicks from it! Sweet boy. As was the cute little Canadian runner up.
We had fun spelling along with the bee at my house. I am pretty good ONLY because I am fluent in French and German, and so many of “our English” (?) words are flat out French and German. But I am too old to enter, alas. :)
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that they are staggered to actually make it more difficult for home schoolers to attend those universities.
Woo hoo! Home schooler won the National Geography Bee, too!
I love all the kids, no matter where they go to school. But you have to understand, in most of this culture, we homeschoolers are always having to justify our existence. That’s why I get a charge when a home schooler wins a national competition.
Boy Wins Spelling Bee With ‘Serrefine’
Conductor Tullio Serafin Denounces Verdict: ‘Fix Was In’
The US and Canadian dollars will be equal in 2/08.
I’m just surprised others didn’t notice this and think twice about it.
The most common vowel in the English language, the schwa, doesn’t even have its own letter of the alphabet! Latin was sparse on vowels, so when we adopted their alphabet, we forced each vowel letter to represent TWO sounds.
“That is why homeschooling is far and away the best academic option, since the public schools no longer allow mention of Him that created all things.”
Just because your wealthy or attend public school doesn’t mean that you don’t have the Lord God in your life. She does, and is able to contribute a considerable amount of money to her church. She also volunteers at church.
Does your household benefit monetarily in any way from the police enforced, compulsory, monopoly, government schools?
It is becoming plainly evident that homeschooling is the superior way to educate and raise up a child. This year’s National Geography and Spelling Bee winners are simply tiny pebbles among mountains of evidence.
It is a shame but not every parent can homeschool. Their child will need to be institutionalized.
Hopefully he has found a balance
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How much experience do you have with homeschooling?
There is no possible way that any parent can force this level of achievement. It is almost impossible to hold back a child who is educated at home. Learning is like breathing. The only thing a parent must do is eliminate the distractions of TV, computer surfing, and video games.
My own children were in college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All had finished all college general courses and calculus III by the age of 15. Two finished with B.S. degrees at the age o 18. One of these recently finished a masters degree in math at the age of 20.
The oldest took a different path. He majored in accounting. He is a nationally and internationally ranked athlete and has traveled world wide. He also served 2 years for his church in Eastern Europe and now is fluent in Russian. In spite of all this, he will earn an MBA ( accounting) at the same age as his contemporaries.
There is no possible way, for any parent to “push” kids to do the above. They simply can not be stopped.
Unlike the child in this article my children are merely normally bright. They are likely not any smarter that any of the kids of the posters on this board. It is the institutionalized child who is artificially retarded in their educational and social development.
Well, please tell his mother for ME that I’m so proud of him. Her kid is amazing.
It is.
Am I ever grateful for spell checker.
“Success has nothing to do with home schooling, if you ask me. Could it be the will?”
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If she had been homeschooled, she may have been making a million a year at age 11.
But,,,of course, it is impossible to do a double blind study on individual children.
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Success has everything to do homeschooling!
Homeschooling is very, very efficient. My own kids rarely spent more than 2 hours a day with their formal studies. The remainder of the day was spent playing and developing their interests. Even with that minimal amount of formal work, they were in college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13, and two graduated with B.S. degrees in math at the age of 18.
This spelling bee champion is able to do all that he does, because he is not wasting time riding buses, doing mindless homework, siting in classes waiting for others to catch up, standing in lines, walking two by two, or being distracted by other misbehaving students.
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We are stuck with it.
If we invented a more rational way to spell the English language, then all of us would need to learn two methods of reading and spelling. One to read the new material being printed, and the other to read the old material that was still in the old form. Since not everything would be translated into the new form, a great body of human knowledge would be forever lost.
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