96 Replies to “S-C-O-M-B-R-I-D-A-E (Corrected)”

  1. I have to disagree with Kathy Shaidle about spelling bee champs just learning long lists of words (and it kills me to disagree with her!). There is some of that, but those spellers disappear in the very preliminary rounds. True spellers look at the meaning of the word, its origins (French, Greek, Latin etc) and pronunciation in order to spell the word – all of those factor into how a word is spelled. And that is something that is just not covered in the public school system and one of the reasons I have such a hard time even guessing at the spelling of a word that I have never heard before. A work colleague was homeschooled (not because of any political bent of his parents, but just because he lived in a isolated community) is a whiz at such things because his father made him learn some those basics (and as he says ‘there was no TV and little radio so reading absurd works of literature was the only entertainment”). The clip showed the young lad having a difficult time because the CNN woman could not pronounce the word and then had very little information on its origins (for example the ae spelling/sound is particular to a specific language origin – Latin I think but my spelling is bad, bad, bad so don’t trust me.)

  2. Public school kids only socialize with kids in their own grade. Not a year older. Not a year younger. The only time in your life you socialize exclusively with your own age people is in the hothouse atmosphere of the government school. How does this prepare you for the real world?
    Socializing with all ages teaches you compassion for people younger than you and respect for people older than you. This is the homeschool socialization model. And not just within in their own family.
    With the opportunities the world has to offer, I can’t understand why ANYONE still confines their kids to an institution which holds the entire family hostage to its timetable.

  3. “And here is a word you may not know: antidisestablishmentarianism.”
    Actually, anyone who grew up in America in the fifties probably has heard of that word. The word was used to settle a national spelling bee, and its meaning was widely promulgated.
    As for teaching children to deal appropriately with “Aspergers-tending kids”, I think the operative word is compassion, not “tolerance”. There is really nothing that this kid’s classmates need to “tolerate”. They need only outgrow a tendency to inflate their self-esteem at the expense of an easy target. Compassion is an essential component of real class, whereas tolerance, though valid if properly understood, easily shades into moral relativism and a suspension of standards.

  4. Nice reminder of why I don’t watch CNN. Here’s a neat kid who obviously has some Asperger’s-like issue (kudos to the mom for home-schooling him). He gets his 15 minutes of fame, I’m sure the whole family is watching, and this dopey anchor completely messes it up. Her job is to ask questions, not come up with clever tuna-sandwich jokes.
    For instance –
    how many people were competing?
    what is his next competition? Worlds?
    how much does he practice?
    Dumb.

  5. Justthinking,
    I believe it was the fact that they dropped phonetics to use the “whole language” system. They taught the children to read (?) by using pictures on the page rather than sounding out words.
    My eldest was taught with phonetics before the curriculum (in Ontario) changed. She reads (and therefore spells) with ease and voracity, and is the only person I know who uses punctuation correctly. My other 2 children were not taught phonetics and struggled for many years to read and write properly.
    I was in private school from grades 1 to 6 and if I could have afforded it, I would have ensured my children would have attended as well.

  6. Ah, another thread that ends up slagging the current generation because they were screwed up by yours. Good stuff, cranky seniors and seniors-to-be.
    Oh yeah — Phonix and phonetics were the best thing to hit the schools in decades. Learning started to slow when they stopped using it, not started.

  7. Norman:
    I disagree with your take on the CNN woman. I’m no fan of CNN, but I think she handled the boy beatifully. I saw real class in her, at least at that moment, in that situation.

  8. Erik – “I bought a back-up battery for my alarm the other day – $40 in Alberta – I gave the clerk $42”
    Hey how’d you do that without passing $40 on the mark?

  9. He’s a little bastard if your really want my opinion. That’s quite common in home schooling. I know a few neighbours just like him. Their mother claims that she’s home schooling them , of course what they’re really doing is sitting in front of the computer and wasting their lives away looking at porn sites.
    As for spelling scombridae, if in’t “spell check” on your word program, who gives a hoot if you gets it right or not.
    Tomaz7
    If you want to have a laugh, go to a convenince store and buy something that’s say, $6.42. Give the kid $10.42, so you can get four bucks even back.
    Watch the long duuuuhhh! Home scholing.

  10. He’s a little bastard if your really want my opinion. That’s quite common in home schooling. I know a few neighbours just like him. Their mother claims that she’s home schooling them , of course what they’re really doing is sitting in front of the computer and wasting their lives away looking at porn sites.
    As for spelling scombridae, if in’t “spell check” on your word program, who gives a hoot if you gets it right or not.
    Tomaz7
    If you want to have a laugh, go to a convenince store and buy something that’s say, $6.42. Give the kid $10.42, so you can get four bucks even back.
    Watch the long duuuuhhh! Home schooling.

  11. Osumashi Kinyobe (I refuse to shorten it to “OK” because it’s fun to type out) @4:45 – I thought you mentioned that you’d been a teacher, but you did actually say @11:19 – “I’ve taught public school kids”, which probably means that you were tutoring the little swine, so okay, you’re off the hook re. the collapse of civilization 🙂

  12. Gussie at August 30, 2009 10:52 AM
    This “socialisation” argumnent is always trotted out against home schooling.
    This kid is a brainiac, and they often have issues with interacting with others.
    I know many who home school and they certainly have well “socialized”, but not propagandized, kids.
    BTW How would you fare on prime-time TV news?

  13. This kid was thinking. He asked whether the word was French or Latin. There are definate spelling implications in the answer. He knows his languages.

  14. Black Mamba, I should have explained myself better. For four years, I taught in South Korea (there is a completely different view of education there). I tutored public school kids in Canada. One can see the marked difference. Believe me when I say to you, no kid I taught would get away with such obvious spelling or grammatical errors. This country has dumbed everything down so much so that when the kids get to high school, you are really just going through the motions. We’ve set our kids up for failure.
    RSP, you are right about compassion. It is taught at home, however, not in the corridors of schools- public or separate.
    I used antidisestablishmentarianism as a word game. How many words can you make with this one word? My students really astonished me. Smart little guys!

  15. Joe Citizen pipes up: “He’s a little bastard if your really want my opinion. That’s quite common in home schooling.”
    Yeah, you can tell that from a TV clip Joe? Uh huh. And you know how many kids that are home schooled?
    Behold the tolerance that has me working in the trades. You’re the very model of a perfect socialist, Joey. The nail that sticks up shall be hammered down.
    With any luck that kid will be protected from the likes of you until he’s big enough to take that hammer off you and shove it up your @ss. That’s kind of the whole point of home schooling. Kids grow up smarter and stronger if they don’t get beat down every G.D. day when they’re little.

  16. Anne (not from Cornwall – and, by the way, just where the hell else aren’t you from?!) is quite correct – phonetics was not used to teach spelling, it was used to teach reading. When the idiots-that-be replaced phonetics with “whole word” teaching, reading skills plummeted. Since English and all Western languages are based on phonetic alphabets, it makes sense to use phonetic based teaching. Eastern ideographic languages have to use whole language, which is why it takes longer to learn to read them – you have to memorize every word.
    But my daughters, 13 and 15, are quite capable of doing addition and subtraction in their heads. They can even multiply and divide without a calculator. But, in a way, I regret the demise of the slide rule. With a slipstick, you didn’t have to worry so much about the actual digits as you did the precision and the exponent. I think it would be great to teach kids how to use one, just so that they think about arithmetic in a different way.

  17. The Phantom:
    Sure–let’s raise little bastards that have no social skills, no sense of belonging, and who sit in front of a computer not knowing if it’s raining outside or if the rest of the world around them is alive or dead. .
    I’ll give it to you in plain English. If my kid treated a journalist like that little moron treated that woman, he’s be shoveling snow and sweeping sidewalks for a looooong time!!
    I hope the little bastard runs into a street gang on his way to the spelling bee.

  18. PS: if there was nothing wrong with the kid–do believe he’d be on Youtube or on SDA?? The circus takes on a new monkey every day!

  19. Keep talking, Joe Citizen. With every word you just make it clearer who you are and what you’re about.
    Everybody has their skills, Joey baby. Some are good at socializing, others are good at things which are actually USEFUL. Like spelling. Or logic, math, problem solving, blah blah blah. You know, the smart kids. The ones you can’t stand because they don’t schmooze right.
    Additionally, just to be clear of the regard in which I hold the journalism profession, I wouldn’t let one of those f-ing vampires within 40 feet of a kid I had charge of.

  20. The Phantom:
    You asked that I keep on talking–I will.
    Just what everone needs. A spelling genius–twenty five years after “Spell-Check” was invented. What next? Home educated children who can braid buggy whips? Just make sure CNN doesn’t interview them. They may get “spooked.”

  21. I’ve taught spelling—the “right way”: heavy on the phonics AND meaning—for decades, as well as many Asbergers kids. I was on Evan’s side in an instant.
    It’s not his fault that his total honesty—an absolute lack of guile—made the interviewer look insincere and rather silly. IMO, it was her mispronunciation of the word that accounted for Evan’s error. Once that detail was resolved—at his request—he adjusted his answer.
    That the interviewer was thrown by Evan’s request for the language base of the word—yeah, Evan!—shows how shallow her interest was: to do what she did—put Evan on the spot, trite tuna sandwich and all—seemed pretty underhanded and calculated to me. As far as I’m concerned, in the frankness department, Evan scores much higher than the disingenuous media hack. Social skills? She didn’t deserve any!

  22. Phantom:
    Joe Citizen is definitely angry, but it has nothing to do with that kid. And the best possible outcome for the boy is not to become strong enough to pound the crap out of Joe, but rather to realize that he himself is OK and that Joe’s attitude doesn’t matter.
    Osumashi Kinyobe:
    Yes. Good parents are the key. Without them, just about everything is difficult if not impossible. Still, amazing success stories abound, and a good teacher in the right place at the right time can make a difference. We are amazingly resilient.

  23. Osumashi Kinyobe (mind if I call you OK..regards to BM !!)..all this is making me hungry. I think I’ll just have a toasted scombridae on rye with a bowl of ‘clucker’ soup and call it a night. What think ye? Some good points expressed, as you said and some not so….
    Cheers.

  24. Garry – of course it’s up to Osumashi Kinyobe if she minds you calling her OK, but I beg you, if you have an ounce of humanity, please, please, don’t call me BM!
    Mamba works.

  25. Black Mamba,
    All in humour…but never again!! You have all the humanity you need from me but I do think that was about an ounce (maybe a little more) of scombridae in my sandwich !! I responded correctly (in the Late Night Radio thread) and left you a question.

  26. RSP, I must respectfully disagree. Joe’s attitude is such that one cannot avoid conflict with him. He’s a bully.
    You find Joe lots of places. Middle management and academics usually, where they have risen to the level of their incompetence via the Peter Principle. There’s no getting around him.
    Conflicts with the likes of Joe are resolved when he is defeated.
    According to Sun Tsu, the best possible outcome is for Joe Citizen to be so daunted by the prospect of taking on our little home schooled prodigy that dear Joe adjusts his own attitude to avoid it. This is the highest victory, winning before the fight starts.
    I’m not such a great sage as Sun Tsu, I’d be satisfied with the kid giving ol’ Joey a good kicking. I swear, that’s what half these morons seem to need.
    Bring back the Code Duello, most of the BS in our society would be gone in a month.

  27. I agree with Doogie: That said: spelling bees aren’t a sign of intelligence.
    — So how self-possessed and articulate would most kids his age be on TV? The usual interviews with kids that age come about with a certain amount of pre-screening for the kids who are good at performing on camera.

  28. Omyashi Kimyobi: “was sorely lacking in social skills.’
    ___
    I disagree. He was simply lacking in television-performance-in-front-of-a-camera skills. No shame in that.

  29. Another Kate: “looks like Aspergers to me” — Yes and it also looks like he was not able to hear properly with whatever kind of audio connection they set up.

  30. Joe Citizen: “Just what everyone needs. A spelling genius–twenty five years after “Spell-Check” was invented”
    ____
    This kid and his home schooler mom did not invent spelling bees. Also as a general rule, home schoolers receive very good educations.

  31. RW at August 30, 2009 8:09 PM
    BTW How would you fare on prime-time TV news?
    Probably not well. I truly appreciate the luxury of time afforded by the comments thread. However, inasmuch as the arguments presented here are backed by anecdotal evidence all I can offer is the following: most of the people I know are reasonably considerate, industrious and thoughtful and a majority of them, I believe, are products of the public education system. The much smaller number of people whom I know to have been home-schooled seem to be no more considerate, industrious or thoughtful but I don’t for one minute believe they have been less “propagandized”.
    I think Garry at August 30, 2009 12:50 PM said it best:
    We were all “homeschooled”. Some just had better ‘teachers’ than others. And the report card doesn’t appear ’til we’ve breathed our last breath……
    Posted by:

  32. Speaking of spell check, there is a good program Spell Check Anywhere (SpellCheckAnywhere.Net) it adds spell check to all programs.

  33. Thanks Gussie,
    and right back at’cha regarding your response to “BTW, How would you fare on prime-time TV news”. Bang on.
    There wasn’t “homeschooling”, like what is being touted here, back in my day. Separate and public were the choices. Education is not so much about what you learn (yes, specifics are required for certain professions..but that is acquired later) but that you learn. And an educator’s tool is to find that learning moment and, more importantly, recognize it when it happens.
    I’m a semi-retired professional (chose to take an early departure after almost 30 yrs) and our ‘youngins’ are 18 & 17 (both products of a great school system where we live…public BTW). We also had MANY parents remove their children from the Catholic system to access the wonderful teachers our school provided.
    That doesn’t denigrade the Separate system nor does it say all Public schools are the “Cat’s meow”. What it says is that a school is more than an idealogy or a bureaucratic system, both of which can hobble learning, IMO. One can prosper in either as long as you have good teachers AND good, informed, dedicated parents. And, of course, a child that is prepared to learn. Good parents..good teachers…and…. It can certainly be a “turkey shoot” at times.
    Now to the question of homeschooling. It is fraught with the same problems and some do truly believe (incorrectly, at times) that this, alone, is the panacea for all the schooling ills that exist. This is not always the case.
    One should read “The Man In The Glass” and maybe reflect, daily, on the wisdom(s) contained therein.
    In closing, you may want a quick re-peek at my Aug 30 11:24am post..you can share a sidewalk with me anytime…looks as if Kathy wants to walk alone.
    Cheers.

  34. I hope you guys called Glenn Beck out for spelling “Oligarchy” wrong even though his entire premise was about the spelling of the word
    To funny but I expect that from the far right nutjobs.
    I am suprised he didn’t cry too.
    Come on posters lets see some “fair and Balance” here. You can find it on You Tube.

  35. Erik – “I bought a back-up battery for my alarm the other day – $40 in Alberta – I gave the clerk $42”
    Why would you do that? I think the idiot at the counter was you.

  36. Right of center:
    As long as you’re criticizing Beck’s spelling, you might want to correct your misuse of the word “to”.
    Moron.

  37. What Garry and Black Mamba said. And it’s okay to call me OK as my name is a bit long.
    LindaL, true he may have been nervous in front of a camera but I think there is more to it. As many have said here, schools aren’t necessarily agents in great socialisation. They could be, in some respects, but not always. Usually (as I have seen) there are more negative things at school than positive. Good parents are crucial. And let’s not forget some people are introverts.
    Just my thoughts.

  38. Not being a Trained Professional(tm), I couldn’t tell whether the kid has a “disorder” or not. He looked nervous, as others here have said. But, once he started focusing on spelling the word, he seemed pretty sharp.
    At some point in any discussion that involves home schooling I always eventually have the thought that it must really gall the Trained Professionals(tm), that most normal people with the inclination can teach their kids the skills required to complete an education curriculum.
    Not that my kids were weren’t fortunate to have several great school teachers. They did. But, they had more who were mediocre or worse, in a system that demands conformity not just from the students, but, also from their teachers.

  39. Eye halve a spelling chequer
    It came with my pea sea,
    It plainly marques four my revue
    Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
    Eye strike a key and type a word
    And weight for it two say,
    Weather eye and wring oar write
    It shows me strait a weigh.
    As soon as a mist ache is maid
    It nose bee fore two long,
    And eye can put the error rite
    Its rare lea ever wrong.
    To rite with care is quite a feet
    Of witch won should bee proud,
    And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
    Sew flaw’s are knot aloud.
    Eye have run this poem threw it
    Your sure reel glad two no,
    Its letter perfect awl the weigh
    My chequer tolled me sew.

  40. …Joe, what are you doing with .42 cents in your pocket? I don’t even keep nickels and dimes now, leave them in the penny tray.

  41. Don’t do that, Tomax. I recently broke down and sorted the 40lbs of change I had kicking around. There was about $2k there. A lot of is was nickels and dimes.

  44. I’ve known many homeshcooled kids, and they can be a mixed bag (almost as mixed as regular kids).
    One of the first ones I met I thought should be socialized at a regular school until his mother pointed out to me that at regular school he would be eaten alive.
    Many homeschoolers are perfectly socialized, especially if they have big families.

  45. I can spell correctly all words used in my first language but I can spell of 75 to 80% English word if Heard it right but I am bad fast typist still this test if used for people that English is their second language is good for people that English is their first language is not too much praise for knowing their own wording and it matter of how many books or article you read it made you better understand the word I mean lots of reading make you good spelling skills and how you learn language from basic and having good teacher made you understand word better. I got number one in Math test once when I was teenager
    Majority of gifted are not know they are gifted until teacher recognized their testing skills is proof above average in most of classes in their same age group
    English teacher are not good teacher who teach English for adult school I never liked the method they teach People English and irregularity of their word well
    If you like English you try to say it right ifnot have any passion then you do not care how you sayit when you are using English as second language

  46. I strongly recommend to check the web-link http://aafter.com/?term=s? for those who want to participate any any Spelling Bee competition. The website teaches words at different levels and the words are also pronounced over the microphone for better understanding.
    Tony

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