I read that kids who win spelling bees Google their names like crazy. If that’s the case, to this year’s winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Evan O’Dorney, congratulations! But I hope he never Googles this page and that his parents have some child filter on their computer because man I wouldn’t want Evan to have to go through reading what’s being said on the internet about him.
First, though, a few facts. He’s 13, a math wiz, studying calculus, composes piano concertos.
In truth, Evan doesn’t much like spelling
His real loves are math and music, in that order.
“In general, I like things that are logical,” said Evan, who studies piano and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
“I like the way that math works. It’s not like spelling, where you have to memorize all the exceptions to all the words. Math is orderly. It makes sense. You can always figure out whether something is true, and once you figure it out, it will always be true, if the logic is correct.”
Ken Perano, a computer scientist at Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, calls Evan a “one-in-a-million student” who likely will begin placing at the top of national math exams soon.
“It’s just an extreme aptitude,” he said. “He’s a genius.”
Perano first met Evan three years ago while speaking to students on a field trip touring the lab.
“At first, I thought he was a younger sibling of one of the advanced students,” he remembered. “Then Evan started asking some very probing questions, which proved he knew what he was talking about.”
Perano, whose children also are home-schooled, began spending an hour each week mentoring Evan.
Source: Contracosta Times
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_6019445
I don’t follow spelling bees, myself. I don’t care about them. The only reason I know about this…and care about this…is I first read about it on Gawker and their lead sentence is, “The 13-year-old winner of the National Spelling Bee, who is home-schooled, subjected CNN’s Kiran Chetry to an extremely painful live interview…,” which unleashes guess what in the comment area? Which is my concern, the outcry of (paraphrase) “Lookie here! We’ve got a homeschooled idiot who isn’t socialized like the public-school-graduate I am!”
They have a vid of the interview and I watched it, and what do you know, it’s a vid of a kid who’s 13, who has been flooded with interviews, who is exhausted (he said so on another interview I found), a 13-year-old who is dealing with glossy, superficial television inanities, trying to answer their questions as truthfully as he can, and then he has the indignity of trying to spell a word that the anchor mispronounces, and she’s the one who can’t seem to get through her head that she’s mispronouncing it.
Now, after the post at Gawker comes the flood of comments from people who know nothing about Evan, who don’t know that he is a “one-in-a-million student”, that he studies music at the San Francisco Conservatory, that he’s mentored by a computer scientist and that he loves logic. And perhaps you can imagine what these comments are like, coming from people who count themselves as better socialized than poor Evan? I’ll get around to them in a second.
First, you’re probably thinking, “You’re interested in this because you’re homeschooling H.o.p.?”
I’d be interested in this even if I wasn’t homeschooling H.o.p.–who is not a “one-in-a-million” student, hates math, who cares not about logic but instead loves fantasy and talks incessantly about how HIS stories will be better than the stories he reads or watches and then details how, who will never win a spelling bee and doesn’t care, whose personality happens to be one where he’s animated as hell and is pretty much eager to perform, perform, perform, as long as it’s his own idea. He’s obviously different from Evan in the logic department. As far as what Evan’s general disposition is, how animated he may or may not be, and if he’s “socialized”? Y’know? I couldn’t give a guess because I can’t tell from a couple minutes of interview with a tired 13-year-old.
BUT there are a lot of people out there who CAN say exactly what Evan is like, though all they know of him is that he won the National Spelling Bee and that he made sure the news anchor PRONOUNCED his name right because she’d MISPRONOUNCED it and when challenged to spell a word he tried to get her to say it correctly, because you can see his confusion and that he suspects she’s not saying the word correctly, not to mention he’s got a lot of pressure on him because now he’s national news and if he doesn’t get it right he’ll probably be very hard on himself about it in the way that a 13-year-old is going to be hard on him or herself.
Anyway, these people who comment on Evan take it upon themselves to guess JUST how socialized he is (because they are so very socialized adults themselves and are a model standard against which to compare Evan) and how well-adjusted he is (or not) and plunge into hazarding diagnosis. These are some of their comments…
I think he’s officially the new poster child for why you should send your kids out to school.What a weirdo.
and
Holy fuck, I will never home scholl my kid or else he’ll turn into a walking beatdown like that boy.
and
By homeschooling this child, his parents have doomed him to a lonely, isolated, socially awkward life. The good thing is he’s a sort of overly-focused prodigy. He’ll be dressing up in firefighter outfits and setting up smoke bombs to flaccidly fondle women and steal their shoes by at least 20. What a go-getter.
and
total Asperger case. why do people home-school their children? my goodness. this is like child abuse. how can this child possibly function in the world
and
That was painful for all concerned. The home school vibes make me want to take 20 hot showers in a row.
and
Wow, I would have thought a home schooled kid who spent every waking moment of his life with his parents and a dictionary would have been a fucking social dynamo. Someone give this kid a beer or something before he gets accepted to Virgina Tech.
Yeah, I know at Gawker it’s all about humiliation, but we’re talking a 13-year-old kid here, and I’m reading these remarks thinking, “This is socialization???” Because even if it is all about who can be first-rate at cutting, I imagine a number of people who comment at Gawker do believe in their comments.
Or how about over here at the Facepunch Studios forum (for videos and flash movies)? They too took an interest in Evan’s problems.
Their “socialized” comments on Evan’s interview?
…sheer insanity…What a dick.
and
What an ass.
and
nerd
and
I seriously want to get homeschooling banned now. I’m a fucking 99% geek and I don’t sound so geekish like that guy does. I can’t even describe how this thing irritates me.
and
wow, that kid need a real life.
and
America’s best speller. World’s worst idiot.
and
Needs more exposure with the outside world. He takes several tens of seconds before he can say ANYTHING, something is not right.
and
I’ve seen worse. He’s still a little asshole that needs his butt home schooled in proper etiquette.and
Autistic boy hangs self after misspelled word.
and
He’s like those ‘special’ people who can multiply 400 digit numbers… smart and dumb at the same time, he should get a medal for that.
and
I want to kidnap people like him, put them all in one room, grab a gun and have a good time. Does that make me cruel?
And that is SOCIALIZED!
Oh, gee, how grand and wonderful that kind of SOCIALIZATION must be. Of the questions that the majority of homeschoolers are asked, the principle one is, “But what about socialization?” And what’s odd about the question is that a good number of them pushing public ed for socialization’s sake (go read around the internet on it) seem to be well aware of the viciousness of that socialization and believe that every child must be subjected to it in order to get a thicker skin and be able to run with the pack in the “real world”.
Referring back to Russell Shaw’s “Let’s Restrict Home Schooling” post at “The Huffington Post” a couple of weeks ago, which I already commented on here.
Hey, RUSSELL! You SAID:
I’m equally troubled by the fact that a non-trivial number of home-schoolers are taught in that way because their parents are overly rugged individualists who lack the impulse or skills to mix in as collaborative members of everyday society.
Well, the world is overly complex. Lots of different types of people, of cultural forces. Hiding off somewhere and teaching your kids away from the influence of a socially formative school environment can make it harder for your children to learn about the give-and-take of life in our present-day culture.
What? They need to be socialized to the absolute lowest common denominator? Because you were socialized to it and went through the ringer and were beaten up a few times before you got your Fully Initiated socialization skills down and fought to maintain some status by making sure there was always some kid next down on the totem pole on whose head you were standing, butting them in the nose with the heel of your shoe?
Damn. Read through the above comments again and then let’s talk about the importance of going to school for sake of socialization and acquiring the kind of social skills that it takes for “the give-and-take of life in our present-day culture”. And don’t tell me, “That’s the worst of the worst,” because it’s not. It’s par for the course.
It’s brutal, it’s brainless, and the majority of those who suffered through public school think that because they had to go through it then THAT’S NORMAL, so hey you, the “overly rugged individualists who lack the impulse or skills to mix in as collaborative members of everyday society”, get a grip and learn to lick the boot above while grinding yours on the face below, the grinding down on the face below being not only hysterical but necessary of course for the education of the one below so that they change their faltering ways and become more NORMAL.
Whatta world. Whatta world.
Hey, you! The ones who were properly, socially adjusted in school and think homeschoolers are “overly rugged individualists who lack the impulse or skills to mix in as collaborative members of everyday society!” Over here! We’ve got SOMEONE WHO’S DIFFERENT! Come on! Let that 13-year-old in on just how ABNORMAL HE IS! Or wait, forget the chump change 13-year-old. Why not let this homeschooling mom know just what a freak *I* am. Better you go after someone your own size, right?
Except I am a freak, I’m not being facetious, despite the fact I went to public school I’m a freak, and I could really stand to be hurt by the pile-up because despite the fact I went to public school as a kid I still have room for some bruises, right uhm, there, and despite the fact I went to public school I didn’t learn well enough the give-and-take of life in our present-day culture so even if I do land a punch I’m going to angst sorely over the brawl and you will be so able to take unfair advantage of that and squash me like a bug while I angst over that and the fact that I am so ABNORMAL. For some reason public school didn’t teach me how to be NORMAL, and it has been a hard burden to bear.
Well, who cares that I really am a freak! Go for it anyway…
And keep your damn paws off the kids.
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