The Spelling Bee

The just-completed Spelling Bee is one of the most interesting competitions of any sort around. The mere idea of pre-teen kids learning volumes upon volumes of words, etymologies, definitions, phonetic patterns, etc. to try to compete on a national level is just incredible despite how unnatural the whole thing seems. I remember participating in a school spelling bee back in middle school and getting killed by other students who had simply studied more words and had had more exposure to language than I had at that point. It was an interesting learning experience.

The Spelling Bee provides an excellent example for the iTest to emulate in many different respects.

First, let's dispense with the obvious. What other academic competition gets more press, more free publicity, and more watercooler buzz than the Spelling Bee? THERE ISN'T ONE. The Spelling Bee dominates all other academic events in this regard...in fact, you could probably add up the entire amount of exposure received by all other academic events of any kind during the rest of the year and it would pale to that of the Spelling Bee.

As a result, this is THE event for kids that want to make a name for themselves. Want to be popular in school? Go get yourself on national prime-time television with the Spelling Bee. You sure can't do it with the iTest, at this point, nor can you do it with the Siemens/Westinghouse Science Fair, nor can you do it with any of the various Olympiads that take place in different subjects, nor can you do it with any debate or speech tournaments.

Since all the exposure in the world of academic competitions comes from a single event, the impact becomes obvious. Parents of these kids are drawn, as if by subconscious force, to the Spelling Bee for the money and fame it can bring, and the kids are down with that as well. It's all too easy to devote time and resources to where the short-term payoff is clear, since the long-term payoff is comparable in all cases among the various academic competitions from which a student could choose.

This is what the iTest has to become. We have the organizational structure in place to achieve high levels of publicity and media attention. We approach academics from a much more practical 'life' standpoint than almost any of our fellow math competitions, clearly differentiating ourselves within the space. Once we reach critical mass with the iTest and our offspring competitions such as the iTest CS, we will likely look for the funding necessary to turn the iTest Tournament of Champions into a live, in-person event that could certainly be televised.

The Spelling Bee makes for great television because the viewer gets to see the drama within each of these young men and women from afar, while also getting to admire the skills necessary to reach that point. Where the Spelling Bee falters, in my opinion, is the mechanism by which a winner is chosen toward the end of the competition. There is no cutthroat, winner-take-all final battle; instead, a winner is determined only when his or her competitor makes a mistake. Not very American, is it? We like a winner and we like that winner to exact his or her victory at the zero-sum expense of a direct competitor...THAT'S the American way.

This zero-sum approach would also be of greater practical, long-term benefit to participating students. This is, after all, the way that life in the real world works. Not everyone's business survives, much less prospers. Not everyone gets the girl. Not everyone's career takes off. Not everyone makes good money, not everyone succeeds in raising a great family, not everyone goes to great colleges (or any college at all), and not everyone WINS. There are winners and losers, always.

And, consequently, there will be winners and losers in iTest events. Always.

There is great, dramatic, compelling, fruitful television out there to be created around academic events. The Spelling Bee is the first event EVER to capture some of this potential and turn it into mass-market success.

If the iTest continues to grow and has any luck at all, we'll get to the point where we contribute to this overall direction by finding suitable partners in the media world and expanding the audience for the great things the iTest organization is already doing and will be doing within the next 5 years.