[Note: Feel free to read this post-T-day break update. It started as a response to Lynn's comment on my Movies, movies, movies post and got way too long ....]
Hi Lynn, We should be asking ’bout your knee, methinks. Yes, the tooth is much better; thank you for asking. Only sort of half repaired, but no longer infected or in pain; two very valid and relevant [in the fullest LIS sense of that word 
] points, and also ways of being.
Break was reasonably relaxing. But then it was mostly me. I spent a couple hours with some folks Sat. eve, but I think that was the extent of my ’socializing’ over the “break.” I did got to work and run a few errands Mon-Wed, but then it was just me. That can be a blessing sometimes; at least it means no one else’s hangups and stressors become yours as they are wont to do at holidays. This time it was all to the good to be alone; me and myself got a couple things worked out I think, educationally.
How is your knee? And why was your break less relaxing (of which I am sorry to hear)? Did you go back to work?
Spellbound was good. You have to have something for spelling or 5th graders or an odd view of humanity that involves 5th graders in single elimination spelling, or something like that. There are few sports this exciting. Seriously, it was good. A couple of the kids are a bit too privileged and too clueless to recognize it, but then there’s the tiny little kid who should be on pure liquid Dexedrine (a lot like a certain very small 5th grader I once knew; one who lost the school-wide spelling bee and forever after knew who to spell ‘thoroughly.’ Oops!).
These kids certainly have issues with words. But this is an issue with words that I can more fully understand. To spell well, which is its own odd talent, requires the kids to know the meanings of the words, their etymology and to be able to recognize/use them in context (in a sentence). This is a skill, but it doesn’t make one intelligent, smart, etc. (spelling well, that is). We were talking about this today at lunch, also standardized testing (esp. GRE). They are such narrow intellectual specialties. And there are so many more of these narrow talents. Spelling competitions, in this manner, and all the various skills and knowledge needed to spell those words that you don’t know or have forgotten (for that is what this extra knowledge of words is really for; to help with the ones you don’t ‘know’ at the moment) seems pretty broadly (traditional) disciplinary and also culturally [in a Western-sense of 'cultured'*].
I guess what I’m trying to say is that spelling well (at least at the national level) requires a fairly broad base of knowledge. It is also a base that then ties well back into all of recorded knowledge (and much not recorded), allowing one to find and make interesting connections across languages, domains, disciplines, times, and places.
Vastly different than knowing words for Scrabble.
* Folks, I am not claiming that this [Western culture] is the only way of knowing, nor that it is the best. It is neither. Thus, while I feel that this form of ‘word issues’ has educational value for bringing so much into the speller’s world, it also excludes much from the world.
I guess I ought to quit babbling, but I’m enjoying myself. And, in case of you forgot Lynn, the movie was good.
[And, Lynn, feel free to respond via other means if you prefer. ;)]
2 responses so far ↓
1 Benjamin // Nov 30, 2006 at 11:11 am
Ha! I still haven’t seen this movie, partly out of fear…I have flashbacks to when I won the 5th grade spelling bee, which was a weird time in my life. I was 10 years old, and had read through the entire Merriam-Webster…kinda like people who read the Bible from cover to cover over the span of a month or two.
Spelling bees create weird children.
2 Mark // Nov 30, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Ben, being a 5th grader is pretty a weird time in everyone’s life. Just wanted to set that straight. Of course, if any of you felt like life was perfectly “normal” when you were 10-ish, please let us know. I, for one, would be interested in your definition of “normal.”
You are going to get me mistaken here, Ben. I avoided this originally. *sigh* I don’t think I read the dictionary like that, but I honestly do not remember how I prepared; other than a few rounds of preliminaries.
I was very little for a long time. Smallest in my classes until 4th grade, when I was the 2nd smallest. I didn’t win at much of anything; even all of the girls were bigger than me. But I had a mind that (well, first off, was a mess) kept me in trouble.
I made it to 2nd place in the area-wide bee. I lost to a girl by missing “thoroughly;” a word I shall never misspell in my life, although I may mistype it.
I think this may have been one of the 1st times I was miffed that I was beaten by a girl. [I was routinely "beaten" by girls at many things.] At least, it was one of the first I remember. It was also one of the last [thankfully]. Human variability is just too much, boys. There is pretty much anything for which some woman somewhere can “beat” you. Doesn’t even matter if it is physical. Unless you are one of the extreme few who are the best in the world, there is a woman who can beat you. The same goes with age. And other axes of differentiation. It is simple human variability and statistics. I guess I’m saying that, all in all, as much as it seems to have stayed with me in ways over the years, it has been a multi-valued lesson. Then, and now.
Yeah, 5th grade is freakin’ odd. That, Ben, is a fact.
We’re *all* weird children. And while your claim may be true, they are less damaging than, say, beauty pageants.