LINCOLN -- School officials, who said last week Lincoln wouldn't
participate in the state spelling bee this year, were eating their words
yesterday.
Lincoln's four elementary schools and its middle school will hold school
spelling bees this week and next week, and the winners will face off in
a district-wide bee Feb. 17, the School Department announced yesterday.
"It's something that a lot of people have an interest in doing, so we're
going to do it," Schools Supt. John Tindall-Gibson said.
Now, Lincoln residents will be keeping their fingers crossed in hopes
there won't be a snowstorm the night of the 17th: It's just one day
before the deadline for declaring a winner to participate in the
statewide bee on March 5.
The decision against participating came after last year's spelling bee
when school principals gathered for a "debriefing." They told Asst.
Supt. Linda A. Newman they felt the spelling bee didn't foster
children's self-esteem and conflicted with the goals of the Bush
administration's No Child Left Behind education law because it didn't
allow all students to succeed. However, even the School Committee
chairman didn't know about the decision until newspapers and talk radio
got wind of it last week.
Because three of the five principals who helped make last year's
decision have since retired, Newman and Tindall-Gibson spoke last week
of reconsidering participation for next year.
But when they found out yesterday that it wasn't too late to get in on
this year's statewide bee, they jumped at the chance. The official
registration deadline was in October, but The Providence Journal, the
bee's sponsor, agreed to let Lincoln participate as long as it turns in
the winner's name by Feb. 18, the last day before a week of school
vacation.
Although Lincoln's change of heart came just two days after the
cancellation made the front page of the Providence Journal, the release
said "thoughtful reconsideration" informed the reversal.
Thoughtful reconsideration, and a lot of input, it would seem. "Thank
you for phone calls, in-person conversations, and e-mails regarding the
district-wide spelling bee," the School Department's statement said. "We
heard your concerns and respect your opinions."
While some school administrators and school committee members from other
districts voiced sympathy with Lincoln's concerns for providing healthy
competition and aligning the use of the schoolday's time with
educational mandates and research, it was difficult to find a parent who
supported the decision to cancel the bee. Angela Thomson, president of
the parent-teacher organization at Lincoln's Lonsdale Elementary, called
the decision "reverse discrimination" against students whose talents lie
in the academic, rather than the athletic, arena.
In a letter to the editor, Thomas F. Letourneau, a former School
Committee member in Cumberland, said cancelling the spelling bee was the
first step along the road to making mediocrity acceptable.
"I would also have to assume that geography bees, and/or any other form
of academic competition would now also have to be sent to the scrap
pile," Letourneau wrote. "What about the honor roll? What about advanced
placement?. . . What about grades? What are we going to do there?" he
asked rhetorically.
Peter F. McWalters, commissioner of elementary and secondary education,
called "bizarre" the idea that spelling bees would hamper the aims of No
Child Left Behind.
School Committee Chairman Jeffrey Weiss started pushing to reverse the
decision once he learned of it.
"The world is a competitive place, and children need to learn to
compete, even at a young age," Weiss said yesterday.
George Reilly, one of the statewide bee's judges, said the reversal
didn't surprise him because he figured parents would be displeased when
they realized their children couldn't compete this year.
"The skill of spelling is a strong one that's still needed today," said
Reilly, a retired teacher who taught English for 33 years and chaired
the English department at Smithfield High School.
Reilly said he turns off the "spellcheck" feature on his own computer
because the computer's dictionary is limited -- it doesn't contain most
proper names and won't help a writer who doesn't know the difference
between two words that are spelled similarly, such as your and you're.
"You have to know how the word is spelled to begin with," said Reilly
(who also writes a Journal column on veterans' issues).
Paige P. Kimble, the director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee to
which Rhode Island's winner will get an expense-paid trip in June,
offered Lincoln suggestions for satisfying parents' desire to hold the
spelling bee and principals' worry that losing will wound a young
student's self-image.
"I think it's very important that the adults involved work very hard to
convey the message that there are benefits and rewards in life for just
having tried," she said yesterday.
The rewards can even be material, she said. For example, some school
districts offer prizes to all spelling bee participants. While the
winner might walk away with a larger prize, everyone gets something.
"Spelling bees, when done correctly and in a celebratory fashion, can be
a rich experience even for those who aren't among the last left standing
at the end of the bee," Kimble said.
Tindall-Gibson, Lincoln's superintendent, said he hadn't had a chance
yet to discuss with other administrators how they planned to run the
school-based and district-wide bees. But, he said, "We'll certainly be
giving that a lot of thought over the next week. I would expect at least
we'd be giving certificates to every kid. Everyone deserves to walk away
with something."
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