How Do You Spell $99 Entry Fee? O-U-T-R-A-G-E-O-U-S

In a world of war, poverty, and corruption, permit me a moment to rail against a small but galling injustice against smart kids: After 80 years of no entry fees, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has imposed a $99 entry fee.

The immediate result: fewer entries. KELO reports that the Corn Palace Regional Spelling Bee has taken a big hit. Last year's spell-o-rama under the corn domes drew 160 eager orthographists from 25 schools. This year, only 48 students from 8 schools.

Now those numbers are bad, but let's not burn the Scripps folks at the stake. They're a non-profit organization, and they are just trying to cover rising expenses as revenues decline. The KELO story cites Mitchell Middle School Principal Brad Berens as saying cost is just part of the issue; there's also a decline in student interest [AP, "Fewer Schools Entering Spelling Bee," KELOLand.com, 2008.01.25]. The $99 enrollment fee is per school, not per student: I suspect if a school had to come up with $99 extra to send kids to a traditional basketball tournament, they'd find a way to shake that money loose from the boosters or some obscure corner of the budget. But if kids aren't interested -- i.e., if parents and teachers and coaches aren't encouraging kids to make some extracurricular effort in intellectual activities along with athletics -- well, extra funding won't do much good anyway.

That $99 enrollment fee does look like a disadvantage for homeschool families, who don't have public tax dollars to draw upon. But the Scripps website notes that the $99 fee applies to homeschool associations, not individual families. An individual family that isn't part of an association can enter their kids for $10, probably not an unreasonable price, especially for a homeschool family already looking ahead to taking their kids to the big spelling bee in Washington, D.C.

So maybe Scripps isn't the bunch of greedy heartless SOB's I was ready to lambaste them as when I wrote my headline. Still, there's a bad trend here. Whether students are being priced out of the contest or whether administrators are just using cost as an excuse to drop the program, it's a shame to see healthy academic competition like this attracting fewer students. Sports are good for promoting physical agility and brute strength, but brainpower is the engine of the modern economy, and we need to encourage all of our kids to take part in spelling bees, debate contests, and all of those activities that kids can win by sheer wits.

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But if you'll allow some Friday fun, let's step into the world of the vast plutocratic conspiracy:

The last thing the globalizing plutocrats want is kids who are smart enough to figure out the shenanigans the plutocrats perpetrate. And they certainly don't want poor kids developing their intellect and getting ideas. An educated workforce is a dangerous workforce... for corporate profits. The plutocrats put the screws to the Scripps folks and said they had to start discouraging poor kids. Presto! An entry fee, and another victory for the plutocrats against intellect and liberty. Ha ha ha!