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The National Spelling Of America Essay

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Every year, millions of students, no older than in eighth grade, compete in local level spelling bees with hopes of making it to the ultimate spelling competition, the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Held at the end of May or beginning of June each year, millions of spectators around the world watch the bee, which is held just outside Washington, DC. The Scripps National Spelling Bee, while a fantastic educational experience, both for learning the ins and outs of the English language and for learning about the history of America, is in dire need of reform. I propose to you, the executives of the E.W. Scripps Company, that the Scripps National Spelling Bee reform the competition by determining the number of spellers from each state in a way that is proportional to the state’s population, standardizing the difficulty of bees prior to the national level, and decreasing the value of points earned from the new addition of vocabulary. While spellers competing at the national level follow various paths to earn their coveted spots, people from certain geographic areas have a tremendously easier path than others. This difficult discrepancy is largely based on the number of spellers that each specific state allows to progress to the national level each year. In the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, sixteen states, including Hawaii, Mississippi, and Nevada, sent only one speller from the entire state, while states such as Ohio and California sent nineteen and seventeen respectively

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