&ldquo;first there was a three-legged monkey...&rdquo; tag:andthennothing.net,2005:Typo Typo 2007-01-23T13:45:45+00:00 Jonas Bengtsson jonas.b@home.se urn:uuid:62b7a702-81ad-456b-9e53-7e39c5eda59c 2005-09-12T00:48:00+00:00 2007-01-23T13:45:45+00:00 <p>American culture is fascinating. Documentaries about American culture is fascinating.</p> <p>I&#8217;ve just finished watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0334405/">Spellbound</a>, a documentary about American youngsters (<a href="http://www.spellingbee.com/bwg/stats.shtml">9-14 years old</a>) studying dictionaries for hours a day just to be able to spell words like wheedle, distractible, heleoplankton, drepaniform and akaryote during the <a href="http://www.spellingbee.com/">National Spelling Bee</a>. It&#8217;s sort of a children pageant for brainiacs.</p> <p>It&#8217;s very foreign to me as a Swede where competition doesn&#8217;t play as large of a role in upbriging and education as it seems to do in America. The kids are amazingly good at studying and learning how to spell, but aren&#8217;t there better things to learn and shouldn&#8217;t kids be allowed to be kids? Interesting documentary and phenomenon though.</p>