Are "spelling bee's"—as we were taught by Author and Charlie Brown to be understood as being—still a thing? I feel like they could be more compelling if there was more variety to the challenge then just saying a word and waiting for a kid to spell it. There could be things like: "In British-English, spell cheque," or: "How many 'e's' are in 'arguments?'" More advanced competitons could even introduce phonetic spelling bee challenges as well...I suppose it starts to sound like more of a game show, which might trivialize the competition in the eys of parents & educators...To that I refer back to "Where In The World Is Carmen San-Diego?" —A game show that took seriously multiple fields of study: geography, geopolitics, history, etc...So yeah, make spelling bees a game show. That might actually be all that's needed to revive America's public interest in them...
