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I don't understand the hostility some people have towards the spelling bee. Some kids enjoy spelling and learning words, just as some kids enjoy football. Not every kid who plays football will become a pro. Should we get rid of P.E.? Not every kid will become a musician or an artist, but still every school kid takes those classes. Some kids will excel and enter competetions and even have career in those areas. Once again, I don't understand the outright hostility on this board.

Kudos to Evan on his success.

I'm not hostile to the spelling bee or the child in it. I'm hostile to the stupidity of our spelling system and the needless energy we spend learning spelling when we could have a standardized system. The spelling bee is just an example of how this stupidity is manifested. The great advances in English spelling in the last 300 years has been pretty much centre to center and colour to color. In contrast, most other languages have adapted at least to some degree to standardizing spelling and accentuation, with the Spanish language being the cleanest example. Are you really happy with having 12 ways to make the 'sh' sound, 14 ways to make the hard 'o' sound, 20 ways to make the hard 'i' sound, etc.? We have students memorizing hundreds of different ways to spell words that could be standardized instead of learning word meanings or other subjects. It is such a huge waste of energy.

Our family gets really involved in watching these spelling bees. We watch every televised moment and even watch reruns. Thanks to ABC for televising this in primetime.