Last night's National Spelling Bee final, broadcast from a convention centre in suburban Washington, was meant to celebrate youthful brilliance. Instead, it became a stark referendum on American literacy. The champion, 13-year-old Dev from Houston, correctly spelled 'logorrhoea' while the runner-up fumbled 'cymotrichous'. The audience applauded. But watching from my sofa in London, I felt a chill. This wasn't just a contest. It was a mirror held up to a society where functional illiteracy is a silent epidemic.
Consider this: the bee's word list this year included 'pulchritudinous' and 'sesquipedalian'. Beautiful words, yes. But how many American adults could spell them? And more importantly, how many could use them in a sentence? The bee has become a bizarre spectacle of rote memorisation, a gladiatorial arena where children regurgitate etymological trivia while the rest of the country struggles with basic comprehension.
There is a cruel irony here. The event is sponsored by a major tech company that profits from a world where autocorrect and voice-to-text erode the need for spelling. Meanwhile, in Britain, our own spelling bee remains a more modest affair, but it reflects a different cultural value. We still test children on 'queue' and 'yacht' in primary schools. We expect a baseline. The American bee, by contrast, has become a circus of elite accomplishment, a yardstick for the few.
But the real story is what happens after the trophy is lifted. The winner's parents are likely middle-class professionals who drilled Latin roots at the kitchen table. The rest of the country's children are on tablets, sliding through phonics apps. And in the poorest districts, even those apps are a luxury. The bee celebrates a tiny elite while highlighting a systemic failure. Last night, as Dev spelled his final word, I wondered how many children in Detroit or rural Mississippi could even spell 'because'. The answer is uncomfortably few.
This isn't about national pride. It's about class and opportunity. In Britain, we have our own spelling bee champions, often privately educated. But our national curriculum ensures a minimum standard. In America, there is no such guarantee. The bee is a triumph of the haves over the have-nots. And the English language, our shared inheritance, is being policed by an event that excludes the very people who need it most.
So let the winner enjoy his moment. But let the rest of us ask why a spelling bee feels like an anachronism in a nation that has forgotten how to read a book. The words themselves are beautiful. But the context is ugly. And that is the real story.
