I have just done a posting for Samizdata provoked by the movie Spellbound. No that's not the Hitchcock one. It's about something they have in American called a Spelling Bee, and if you want to know why Bee? – well, the answer to that has already materialised in the comments section there. Comments also look as if they will pile up on the vexed question of the Spanish Language versus the English Language in the hitherto reasonably united United States of America, at any rate since it was last disunited at the time of the Civil War.

A question I also asked, but have so far not got any answers to, although it's early hours yet, is: do we have anything like Spelling Bees here in Britain, and if not why not?

I think the time is ripe for a national juvenile spelling competition, perhaps organised by a TV company. Not only would this encourage the art of spelling, at a time when many fear that it may be being lost irretrievably and descending into a pre-Shakespearian chaos. It would also do what Spelling Bees have long done in the USA, namely draw the children of immigrants into the national indigenous culture, and enable them to make an early mark on it that is not based on being a criminal, or a mere athlete. (I say "mere" athlete, because athletic success often smuggles in a subtext of "good at running but no brains". The trouble with things like brain surgery is that they take so much longer to make your mark in.) Spelling Bees would challenge that stereotype, but just like sport, the rules of the game would be utterly objective and hence ideal for ethnic minorities who are on the receiving end of racist attitudes in other more complex competitive arenas, or who merely fear that they are.

UPDATE Friday 27th 5pm: the comments on the Samizdata version of this have been trickling in at a nice rate, and are well worth reading - 23 so far.