I was born with a snooty spelling gene. As a child, I wasn't exactly prone to feeling confident about anything, but when it came to spelling, well, things were different. I was good at spelling.
In fifth grade, I laughed scornfully to myself during a spelling bee when the boy before me forgot the "n" at the end of "hymn." I was up next. "H-i-m-n," I said. In my proud eagerness to show that I knew about that silent "n" at the end, I had forgotten the "y." I felt utterly humiliated.
In seventh grade, I—a girl who never said "boo" in class—raised my hand in homeroom to show the teacher the error in my spelling book. "Parliament" had an "a" in it in the book, and I was sure it didn't have an "a."
I was wrong. Humiliation again. (In that same homeroom class, I also remember taking a spelling test, writing down the word after the teacher pronounced it, and hesitating, wondering if I had it right. I accidentally—really, it was accidentally— glanced over at Virginia Mason's paper and saw she had written it the same way I had. I knew then that we were right. But was that cheating? I decided it was. As punishment, I erased my word and spelled it wrong on purpose, as penance. Right and wrong was very clear to me in those days.)
When I became an English teacher years later, I figured out ways to teach everything English teachers need to teach, except for one thing: spelling. I never found a way to do that successfully. It always seemed to me that kids had a feel for spelling, or they did not. The good spellers did well on spelling tests. The bad spellers did not. Nothing much helped the bad spellers.
I was mystified because I can't imagine struggling with spelling. If someone asks me how to spell a word, I'll say, "I think it's like this," and then rattle off the first thing that comes to me. It's almost always right. I say this modestly, as I have nothing to do with this talent, if it is a talent. I just, somehow, know. The letters "appear" in my brain. (Okay, sometimes they appear wrong, but at least they show up. I think, for bad spellers, they don't show up at all.)
I've been thinking about spelling because I caught the last half hour of the National Spelling Bee on television last night. My snooty spelling gene was humbled. It is a pale imitation of whatever genes these kids have been nurturing.
And yet I found myself thinking, "What the heck is the point here? Why spend all the hours and hours they have spent learning to spell words that no one, in a lifetime, ever needs to spell? How are they ever going to use that skill?"
Then I rethought my position. Why does a kid spend hours and hours learning to shoot baskets? Or play the drums? Or kick field goals? Or draw cartoons? Maybe it's to be good at something, to enjoy a feeling of accomplishment, to learn discipline, to be proud of themselves. Does it really matter if it's not something they will "use" in later life? Does it really matter what it is?
I don't think so. I congratulate these kids for becoming the best at something, for having the courage to try, for having the cool presence of mind to get up on a stage in front of millions and do something hard.
Wow.







