Posted on 05/31/2007 7:46:53 PM PDT by gobucks
Evan O'Dorney always eats fish before his spelling bees. The brain food apparently has served him well: He's the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.
The 13-year-old from Danville, Calif., aced "serrefine" Thursday night to become the last youngster standing at the 80th annual bee. He won a tense duel with Nate Gartke of Spruce Grove, Alberta, who was trying to become the first Canadian to win the bee.
Evan won a trophy and a $35,000 prize, plus a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond and a set of reference works. He said he knew how to spell the winning word - a noun describing small forceps - as soon as the pronouncer said it.
Evan said he wasn't surprised to win, but he confessed that spelling isn't his top interest.
"My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together," he said. "And with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes - and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization."
Not to mention:
Bough
Rough
Through
Cough
Certainly. There are Harvard grads flipping burgers while someone with a high school diploma signs the checks of the guy who signs the checks of the guy who signs the checks of the guy who signs the Harvard grad's checks.
Individual determination and discipline are usually the key, both in school and after graduation -- and those values are taught at home. Teaching basic values in schools should be a reinforcement of those home lessons; when the parents are absent or simply no good, some sort of education is better than none, but not by much.
Worth note is that there is no single definition of "success." I'm not a millionaire, and probably never will be -- but that was never my goal. Not that I'd turn down a million bucks if it was offered, of course.
“It “self-selects” because homeschoolers have more time than institutionalized children. More time is good. Wasted time means wasted life opportunities”
Ok, so I got my point across.
The rest of your post is a separate discussion, though your approach is suggestive of the same authoritarian problems as the system from which you are railing against.
Why not just quit paying your property taxes in protest, so as not to support all the institutions, cattle, and sheep!
True. The brighter kids in public school who resist the retardation are made to pay in other ways. Bullies serve the same function in public schools as rapists do in prisons -- cowed, humiliated, and beaten inmates are easier to manage, less likely to think for themselves, less likely to escape. See Ayn Rand's gruesome essay The Comparchicos of the Mind, in her Anti-Industrial Revolution.
"It's a pretty poor writer who only knows one way to spell a word." -- Mark Twain
Witness the French obsession with their language.
I have to chuckle every time the Academie Française pops up with something silly like "un ordinateur" instead of the term everyone was already using, "un PC." Even the French tend to tune out, light a Galoise, and say "Quoi?"
Not to mention that they have an amazingly silly system for cardinal numbers 70 and up. The system used by French-speaking Swiss is much more sensible.
The actor who plays Seibei plays the villain in Onmiyoji.
It’s a really good movie and a BIG contrast to the Seibei character.
Yet a ready learner can master English with about 30 hours of intense phonics instruction. True, our spelling system has some bizarre outliers -- including one sound that hasn't been pronounced in 500-1000 years, but still must be included in words like light, thought, though, tough, enough ... and our most common vowel, the schwa, has no letter of its own!
However, a simplified orthography would cut us off from our legacy, our patrimony. For some folks, this is a great idea. Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, imposed a latinate alphabet upon his subjects over the course of six intense months -- and put 500 years' worth of Ottoman archives beyond the reach of all but specialists. Chairman Mao's "simplified Mao script" cut his people off from their literary heritage.
(BTW -- I own a book designed for Turkish sojourners that lists common English phrases, their Turkish equivalents, and the English phonetically spelled out in the Turkish alphabet. It's entertaining to see how others hear us!)
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Bingo! The idea is to persuade enough citizens to demand an end to government school taxes. Do that and the government liberal/Marxist indoctrination centers ( mis-named “schools”) will collapse. The language used will facilitate that.
Oh...and just exactly what is my approach? I use language and persuasion, and the government uses threats of armed police, courts, and foster care to fill and pay for its institutions.
Also,,,are you admitting that homeschoolers have less wasted time?
We've imported one word from Malay -- but it has two correct spellings, and is always combined with the English verb "to run."
Foreigners often conclude that English is an easy language to learn, since we have NO rules of grammar! (actually, we have them, but they're in1visible. The hardest word for a non-native speaker to master is -- the.
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My Costa Rican friends have trouble saying and hearing the differences among the words: beard, beer, and bear.
By the way, I am leaving for Costa Rica for six months. My husband and I will be attending language school and living with a Costa Rican family. So...I won’t be around to get on the nerves of the government school defenders.
“...and the reporter noted that Evan was the third home schooler to win this event.”
One of our local home-schooled girls did very well in this, too. She dropped out in the round before this and the local radio morning host also made a big deal of the fact that she was home schooled and was very complimentary about it; much to the chagrin of the looney leftists around here, LOL!
Nothing like sticking it to ‘Publik Skrewel’ wherever we can, IMHO. :)
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The above is a perfect example of how we must change the language about institutionalizing children ( especially in government schools)
Recently, I invented a two new ones. :)
1) Children at school bus stops look like day laborers waiting for their bus.
2) School buses look like prison road gang buses.
These two should get the government school defenders in a lather, and whining that I have **personally** insulted them. :) :) The madder they get, the more I laugh!
I'm curious as to why you don't take the homeschool course for Costa Rican Spanish...;)
The correct response might be,"You're more comfortable being arrogant than I, at least."
Maybe it wasn’t true when you did your search, but”O’Dorney homeschooled” gets lots of Google hits now.
I should have put a smiley in there. :-)
I understand the problems with english for non-natives. Personally, I don't have much problems with it myself. If you are really a stickler about spelling, most of the time, if you run into a word you can't spell, there are normally at least 3 other ways to say the same thing that you can.
If "we" decide to 'reform' spelling, it will inevitably lead to a 'reform' of grammar as well. I mean, if you really want to get a non-native speaker riled up about english as a language, start a discussion of tenses! If they start revising grammar, they are likely to get rid of zeugmas entirely, as it is a pretty obscure part of speech to begin with. That would suck.
Maybe it's just the old conservative in me, but I can live with things as they are.
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Homeschool Internet web casting is available through the school. But...the whole point of going to Costa Rica is to be immersed in the language and culture.
Even in Costa Rica “homeschooling” with private tutors in the home is superior to institutionalization. One of the major disadvantages to attending the school is that there are so many Americans and Europeans there that avoiding speaking English is impossible.
There is also the matter of cost, and once we are settled down a bit, we will seriously look for private tutors so that we can be taught at home.
I’ve been to Costa Rica five time previously, and private tutors do advertise. It’s been 8 years though since my last trip, and I will need to get reoriented. Regardless of our decision, we will continue to live with a Costa Rican family. Many of the schools will arrange this, whether you attend classes or not.
A father is called in to consult with his son's teacher:
Teacher: "Your son is really having some trouble in school. I think it would help if you got an encyclopedia."
Father: "Heck no! He'll walk to school same as I did!"
Relax, I was making a joke. I hope you have a nice trip. Our cousins just bought a million plus dollar home there. I am sure we will get to visit sometime. Our next big trip will probably be back to Switzerland though.
Be careful, my brother-in-law went there for surf camp and came back with a girlfriend. My sister was not amused.
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