WHY THE BEE IS STILL IMPORTANT: PART TWO

High fives during the bee (Scripps National Spelling Bee/Mark Bowen)

Happy Saturday (or whatever day it happens to be for you) to everyone reading this! I plan to have Saturday be the day I post my weekly blog during bee season (outside of bee season, that is, June through December, it'll be every other week). Since it is Saturday, here's the second installment of the topic I began discussing last week. I'll include two more reasons today. If you haven't read my last post, I recommend you read it for background on what I'm talking about.

Reason number three: sportsmanship. You may laugh and say that spelling isn't a sport. You're right in that spelling is not a sport, but it definitely still teaches sportsmanship. If you've ever been in a spelling bee (especially the national bee), you've probably experienced this first hand. If you've watched a spelling bee, you've seen spellers experiencing it first hand. If a speller gets their word right, they get high fives on the way back to their seat. If a speller misses their word, they get high fives on the way off the stage. Any speller worth their salt will tell you that it's not a competition against the other spellers, it's a competition against the dictionary and yourself. That was one of the most important lessons I learned in spelling: have empathy for those who miss their words, celebrate with those who don't, remember that winning isn't the only thing that matters. Also, don't be a sore loser (or a sore winner, for that matter.)

Reason number four: fun. This probably sounds like an odd reason, but allow me to explain myself. For me personally, and I'm sure for any other spellers, I didn't start spelling because I wanted to win or to accomplish anything. I simply thought that it would be fun. And I continued to participate in spelling bees because I liked words, I liked etymology, and, after a while, I liked the feeling of winning. But if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have done it. We need to keep the spelling bee around because, among other things, it's a source of fun for people, and there's no use in taking that away.

Final reasons to come next week.

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