emajp: 2009

History of Spelling Bee

The National Spelling Bee was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees, organized by The Courier-Journal in Louisville and having nine competitors. Later, the E.W. Scripps Company acquired the rights to the program. The bee is held in late May and/or early June of each year. (Noah Webster, whose spelling rules codified American English, died on May 28, 1843 - so the late May timing of the Bee is a fitting historic tribute as well as being a post-standardized testing period in the academic year.) It is open to students who have not yet completed the eighth grade, reached their 15th birthday, nor won a previous National Spelling Bee. Its goal is educational: not only to encourage children to perfect the art of spelling, but also to help enlarge their vocabularies and widen their knowledge of the English language.
An insect bee is featured prominently on the logo of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The origin of the word "bee" as used in "spelling bee" is unclear. "Bee" refers to "a gathering", where people join together in an activity[1]. While the similarity between these human social gatherings and bee social behavior is evident, recent thinking is that the origin of this sense of "bee" is related to the word "been" [2]. But the link between spelling and bees seems to reach some kind of historical exaltation in the work of under-celebrated natural history genius the Rev. Charls Butler, who combined the study of bees with early attempts to reform English spelling.
The Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion, administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company and 288 sponsors in the United States, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
Sponsorship is available on a limited basis to daily and weekly newspapers serving English-speaking populations around the world. Each sponsor organizes a spelling bee program in its community with the cooperation of area school officials: public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools.
Schools enroll with the national office to ensure their students are eligible to participate and to receive the materials needed to conduct classroom and school bees. During enrollment, school bee coordinators receive their local sponsor’s program-specific information—local dates, deadlines, and participation guidelines.
The champion of each sponsor’s final spelling bee advances to the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Washington, D.C.