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Homeschoolers win spelling bee ... again... *yawn*
Congrats to Evan O’Dorney, winner of the National Spelling Bee (where "nation" apparently includes not only the United States, but our Canadian friends as well.)
What's interesting about this is that the distribution of homeschoolers v. nonhomeschooled kids was unexpected (for me.) Here's the breakdown, according to Cato@Liberty :
5 Homeschooled
2 Private-schooled
3 Canadian public-schooled
5 American public-schooled
Wow... but not "wow" for the reasons I expected. I actually expected more of the top spellers to be home-schooled (even though I was a spelling-bee winner in my youth - well, to some degree, since I froze in competition - and I was public-schooled.)
However, there's some information missing here - for example, my sons are home-schooled, and yet I'm not sure what their classification would be according to the above categories. The reason is that in many states (including the one in which I live) home schools are required or suggested to be registered as private schools (although certification is optional for many places). So my sons would fall under two of the categories.
I'm proud that our kids are home-schooled - for lots of reasons. For one thing, it means they're not being inflicted with much of the crap public schools offer - substandard education, rote learning, awful socialization. It also means that our sons' specific limitations are managed properly (one of our boys has Aspberger's syndrome, we believe - we expect confirmation from a neurologist soon.)
On the other hand, our kids are (so far) awful spellers. :)