Friday, May 30, 2014

One weird rule is narrowing Spelling Bee field

One weird rule is narrowing Spelling Bee field | Detroit Free Press | freep.com:
"Here’s the newish rule (it happened last year too, but that doesn’t make it right): the Spelling Bee decided that midway through the competition on Thursday they would just kick out half the remaining spellers. 
Boom, gone. 
No words spelled wrong. 
They just kicked them out.
At first I didn’t understand what was happening.
I was half paying attention, and then all of a sudden they started naming names and handing out medals.
What was happening?
There were still so many spellers left?
Then it dawned on me — they were booting kids. Kids who hadn’t spelled a word wrong. 
To speed things up, they weeded out the field by removing kids who hadn’t done that well on a vocabulary test administered BEFORE the Bee even began.
This is hogwash.
This is an outrage of the highest order.
And I am calling shenanigans on the entire thing."

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