I'm gonna make my own Scrabble bee!

The more I've been going through my Scrabble dictionary and spelling books, the more irritated I'm becoming about what I have to learn for this August spelling bee.

First of course there's the kid's spelling bee. Now, kids in school should be learning stuff that will help them find jobs and get through life. So why in the world do they have a spelling bee that necessitates that these kids learn words that they will never, ever, ever use - even if they were Sheldon Cooper the physicist, they would never, ever use these words in any setting outside a spelling bee.

So such spelling bees are useless.

What they should do - and what the AARP spelling bee should do, is have contests featuring real words that the average, well-read person should know. And if the rounds keep piling up, then the way to solve it is to ask the speller to explain what the words mean, or use 'em properly in a sentence - something useful....!

I have the same feeling about Scrabble tournaments. How many people don't go to scrabble tournaments because they know they'll be beat by all these strange people who know words that no one ever, ever, ever would use in any setting other than at a scrabble table?

Time to remove foreign words that aren't "loan words" at all, words like "airt". Name me one American who has ever used the word "Airt." I was reading today about school kids in some town in Florida. Last year, 80% of the kids who took English tests for No Child Left Behind, passed. This year, because the grading is tougher (kids this year are expected to no how to properly capitalize words, spell words, and make coherent sentences) only 30% of kids passed.

The teachers are blaming the tests. The tests put too much stress on kids, they say, and *they* have to spend too much time giving tests instead of teaching. (I have to ask myself, what are they teaching????)

This is very frightening - we are the United States of America, supposed to be the best country on earth because of our political system and because of "plain ol' American know-how" - and our kids are steadily growing dumber, not smarter.

And the only solution our teachers can come up with is to stop giving tests to kids because that just puts too much stress on them? What happens when they have to enter college - no tests then, either? How about when they have to get a job? (Always assuming there are any jobs for them to get.)

Scary, scary.