The BBC1 TV show Hard Spell is big news in India, because girls of Indian descent came first and second.
This BBC report tells more, although "disequilibrium" is surely a poor example of a word which is hard to spell.
Much of the coverage that I read in the Sunday papers yesterday was were very critical of the show, on the twin grounds that it was cruel, and that in any case spelling doesn't matter.
A. A. Gill, for example in his TV complaint column in the Sunday Times Culture section, had this to say:
No television ever made is worth an 11-year-old’s tears. I was really shocked by this show. How could anyone imagine that it was entertaining to watch small children being pressured to the point of breaking down with so little enjoyment? It was cruel, plain and simple. The evening news had just told us that umpteen kids are being excluded from schools every day. Last week, Tony Blair made tackling bullying a priority. Well, you get out of children what you put in. This programme publicly picked on, humiliated and bullied kids when we should all be respecting and protecting their status and their importance to our future.Now, you may think I'm overreacting to a game show. Well, perhaps I have an interest. I'm excused spelling – I have a note from my mum. The truth is, it doesn't matter, not a jot, not a tittle. Spelling only matters in Scrabble and to retired civil servants who write dull letters in green ink and teach their budgerigars not to split infinitives. I just pressed the spellcheck on my computer – 805 words misspelt out of 1,200 – and you know something, the bottom line is I get paid the same for the wrong ones as for the right ones.
The claim that spelling is unimportant is bollocks, or bolix as A. A. Gill would perhaps spell his proudly illiterate version of that ancient insult. The proof? That if the Sunday Times were to print Gill's writings in the misspelt form that he boasts of submitting them in, they would make very, very public idiots of themselves, and in fact would never live it down. (Look what has happened to the reputation of the Grauniad, as it is affectionately known, on the strength of about as many typos in a year as A. A. Gill claims to perpetrate in each of his pieces. Clearly someone at the Sunday Times has to be able to spell, even if it isn't him. Imagine what A. A. Gill himself would say if road signs, or the writing on the front of CDs, or the instructions for his DVD player, were routinely miss-spelt. What a W-A-N-K-E-R.
Nor is the perhaps excessive pressure that this first batch of kids have been put under an incurable state of affairs. The show just needs to be managed a bit differently and a bit more humanely, and no doubt it will be next year. Because this thing is here to stay, I'll bet you. And a good thing too, I say.
Anything that gives the swot tendency a bit of national recognition is surely worth encouraging. I'm not saying that we should deliberately make children cry on national TV and on principle, merely that this is a risk worth taking in order to create what I will, I feel sure (I hope anyway), soon become an impressive national institution.
Here's a headline writer who could maybe use a bit of "speacial" (naybe later it will be corrected) education. But then again, I spelt Jacqueline du Pré as Jacqueline "de" Pré yesterday, twice, and only corrected it this morning.
Is correct and standardised spelling something that was born with the printing press and is now dying with the printing press? You can correct it later, so you are less inclined to obsess about getting it right to start with. I fear so.
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.
Since this posting includes a request to send information, and since it is about two comments which appeared on a Samizdata posting, I posted it first on Samizdata, with its larger readership and helpful commenters. I reproduce it here, because of its obvious educational vibes.
Two comments have appeared on a long ago posting of mine here (i.e. on Samizdata) about the menace to Western Civilisation posed by people dropping chewing gum all over the damn place.
Comment 1:
i like chewing on gum^^ It should have neva been banned!!! I feel sooooo sorry for the singaporeans....owell beta get on wiv my english assignment nowz...byebye :)Lana
Comment 2:
Hi its me again (Lana) if anyone noes any interesting facts about Singapore then can u plz email me qt_mashi@hotmail.com, bcuz this is for my english assignment and its very important THANK YOU :)Lana
You know what? Lana likes chewing gum, and I like her. She has her own individual take on English spelling, although maybe it's her whole generation and they all spell because bcuz. But, she seems to be able to spell in the regular manner when she wants to ("any interesting facts about Singapore") or when she is forgetting not to, plus she has a nice ingratiating manner and understands the value of a smile. I think she should be encouraged.
So, if anyone has any interesting facts about Singapore, please email them to her.
How long before the whole "Spelling Bee" thing catches on here in Blighty? Read Friedrich Blowhard on a documentary about this fascinating and also rather scary phenomenon.
It will catch on. Someone will want to make it happen, and although many others will be tremendously bothered, none of them will be sufficiently bothered to stop it. It's only a matter of time. This movie sounds like it could light the blue touch paper.
At which point British geek children will be allowed to compete ferociously with one another on national TV, but British sportsjock children will only be allowed to participate in ridiculous everybody-wins events. (And the day they legalise marijuana will also be the day that tobacco is finally totally illegalised.)
