I homeschooled my kids and was able to enroll them in a couple of Homeschooling Spelling Bees that were part of the Scripps-Howard weeding-out process. This was cool, because it was one of the few mainstream school events that my kids were allowed to partake in. But the thing was run by a family of Spelling Robots. This family who was very religious, very isolated, and very what we called School At Home ( just replicated the school experience in their house, with school desks and a flag, and the Pledge of Allegiance, the whole thing) spent huge amounts of time drilling their children in what is essentially a parlor trick. These kids knew how to delay by asking the word to be used in a sentence, to buy time by asking its derivation, and definition, and spelled like the little spelling robots they were. My kids did ok; third place for two of them two years running. But I was left with the profound feeling of So What? Even my kids sensed the other family spent wayyy too much time in spelling drills. Knowledge is nothing without creativity and experimentation and discussion. Good piece, thank you.
