Spelling Bee

Although it was long over, I happened to see the "Scripps National Spelling Bee" championship on ESPN, only last weekend. On seeing that, I was pretty surprised for two reasons. One, what has a spelling competition got to do with sports and two, why on the world would some one conduct a 'good-for-nothing' competition like this.

I fail to figure out any logic behind testing kids by asking them to spell words which they probably would never use in their life time. You must see the words that were asked... sciolto, yizkor, croquignole, psittacism, bdelloid, ursprache... are a very few that I can recollect. The rest were even more weird. (Aamam... ivaru Shakespeare-ku pakkathu veedu... vandhutaru pesaradhukku-nu neenga thittaradhu enakku kekkudhu)

I wonder how this competition would help the kids to hone themselves. Obviously, the kid with the largest hard disk space and fastest RAM on its head would win the competition. Anyway it doesn't improve their analytical skills. I am just curious to know how these kids fare in their lives.

I had yet another interesting observation. There were many kids of Indian origin in that competition. Dabba adikkaradhula namma pasangala minja yaarala mudiyum :)