If you teach a foreign language to young learners, chances are you have already held a spelling bee at least once in your lessons. It requires no preparation, and the rules are quite straightforward: the winner is the student or group who spells the words correctly. In the United States, however, they have become part of pop culture and the later rounds of their national spelling competition are usually broadcast on ESPN. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, there were bees in American charities and even bars. In other English-speaking countries across the world, spelling competitions are also quite common.
Having first emerged as a party game for adults, the bee was popular in the US by the mid-18th century. Gradually, it was introduced to American schools as well. As for the use of the word “bee”, there is no satisfactory explanation yet. It refers to a community social event where people engage in a single activity, such as sewing or quilting, often to help a person or family. However, scholars argue that the social nature shared by both these human gatherings and beehives is not where the term comes from.
We may ask ourselves why spelling bees are still so beloved in this day and age. According to Paige Kimble, the executive director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, it has to do with the fact that literate people need to spell on a regular basis. For this reason, they are quite accessible overall. As for its benefits, advocates of the bee margue that it improves students’ speaking skills, it teaches them about the importance of discipline, and it also extends their knowledge about word roots and origins.
Regardless of its advantages, the American penchant for the spelling bee may be related to its meritocratic nature: a system in which people are successful due to their abilities alone is quite cherished in the land of opportunity. It is only natural, then, that a competition in which contestants must rely solely on themselves and in which anyone can achieve victory should be popular in the US. Nevertheless, how desirable is such a winner-take-all ethos? Perhaps this question is much more relevant than common criticisms regarding the supposed uselessness of several words students may need to spell in a bee.
All in all, it seems that spell check and autofill will not be able to render spelling bees obsolete. On the contrary, the prestige of national spelling competitions in Englishspeaking countries suggests they are here to stay. If that is the case, we can only hope that spelling bees encourage more children – and adults – all over the world to love languages and their idiosyncrasies as a result.
SOURCES
- Fogarty, Mignon. “The History and Glory of the Spelling Bee”. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/the-history-and-gloryof-the-spelling-bee Accessed May 30, 2021
- Sealfon, Rebecca. “The History of the Spelling Bee”. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/history-spelling-bee-180971916/ Accessed May 30, 2021.
