Bee Season

Every time the Spelling Bee comes around, there are a bunch of posts - and ofcourse, associated comments - criticizing the event. They are quite mean-spirited, making fun of the kids and blaming the parents. So I just felt that someone should stand up for them.

The posts disparagingly call the kids geeks and social misfits. The funny thing is that these posts are not written by Olympic medallists or NBA players. They are penned by engineers and other professionals whose 'geekiness', so to speak, led to the academic achievements that helped them enter these professions in the first place. And is keeping them there. So ridiculing the kids in this fashion is plain hypocrisy on their part and a case of the pot calling the kettle black. That said, this post is more about the kids who participate in the Bee and other similar competitions.

The kids are seen as nerds and bookworms who spend their time memorizing the dictionary . Nothing could be further from the truth. These are kids who love the English language. They love reading, learning new words and understanding the way the words actually came about. It should be obvious that it is impossible to memorize all the words in the language. What these kids do is discern patterns in the words presented to them and then make educated, intelligent guesses about the spelling based on the language the word is derived from, the pronunciation, the definition, etc. Doing this in front of a big audience can't be easy and the kids display great poise and confidence when they do so. Belittling what they do as memorization is a colossal insult to their talent and ability.

The kids also don't focus on this at the expense of everything else. Kavya, this year's winner, learns the violin while Ramya, who tied for fifth place, teaches Tamil informally to other kids in her area. They are kids with great personality, a good sense of humor, nice friends and a wide range of ambitions and goals in life. Language is just a passion for them and being passionate about something does not automatically equate or translate to a neglect of everything else in life.

Now on to the parents. They are called pushy and are characterized as hard taskmasters who exhort their kids to do this. I can only assume that the people who see it this way don't have children. So they haven't experienced the thrill one feels on seeing our child do something well and haven't experienced the pride that comes out of our child winning something. It could be anything. When our child likes doing something, we let them do it. And when the child is also good at that, we do what we can to develop the talent. That's natural and that's what these parents are doing. What's so wrong in that?

Let's say the child of one these bloggers displays an affinity for spelling(which is quite possible because of the 'geek' gene they would undoubtedly inherit :). Is he/she going to be dejected, downplay the child's talent, dissuade him/her from honing the talent and getting recognized for it since its geeky and persuade him/her to enter sports? I don't think so for thats exactly what they accuse these parents of. And when they are melted by the pride on their child's face and cheer him/her on as he/she displays her talent, will they realize the errors in their remarks and insults? I sure hope so.

Not everyone shares passions for the same things in life. But that should not stop us from acknowledging and appreciating talent in others, especially kids, whatever area the talent may be in.