Spelling Bee Protest: When Enuf is Not Enough!

On Friday June 4th, The Scripps National Spelling Bee aired on ABC. After having attended the District Championship spelling bee with my son, Patrick, on June 1st, I got a feel for what the spelling bee is all about. My son won 1st place for the 3rd grade in the District Championship spelling bee and I thought that perhaps he would be going to the next level. We were told that only those who are in 5th grade and higher can move on to county, state and then National spelling bee contests.

We decided instead to sit down at home and watch these brilliant kids from all over the world spell complex words like engysseismology (dealing with earthquake records), juvia (a Brazilian nut), and Laodicean (indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion).

As I was getting ready to watch the spelling bee with my son, something caught my eye on the computer. Yahoo! News, was reporting that there were protests being held outside of the bee. I believe I shook my head and said, "What could they possibly be protesting at a spelling bee?". I mean, it is not like these kids are discussing politics, global warming, or abortion rights. They are spelling. How could anyone possibly have a problem with kids spelling. Well, some do.

In fact, according to the Yahoo! News report, four people some who dressed up in bee costumes showed up at the bee to peacefully protest wearing buttons that read,"Enuf is enuf. Enough is too much." The group of objectors, including a former elementary school principal, want to make words easier to spell because they believe that the current English language obstructs 40% of the population from learning to read, write and spell.

Some words they believe should be changed include, "fruit" to "froot", "enough" to "enuf" and "slow" to "slo". According to the Yahoo report, The controversialist represented the American Literacy Council and the Spelling Society with one message: Simplify the way we spell.

The students who try out and compete for the Scripps National Spelling Beestudy Latin, Greek, Japanese and many other languages to become familiar with word origins, word histories and word complexities. This helps them figure out how to spell the words better. The spelling bee showcases etymology at its best.

If the meliorist make headway with their cause then we will see the end of the spelling bee. However, the Scripps National Spelling Bee took place without a hitch and Anamika Veeramani, 14, of Royalton, Ohio took home the trophy when she spelled the word, "stromuhr" which is an instrument for measuring the velocity of blood flow, correctly.

Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_re_us/us_spelling_bee_protest
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_spelling_bee
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/stromuhr
http://www.spellingbee.com