By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Minister of Labour Dion Foulkes sent me a “keepsake” reminder of one of the accomplishments in my life of which I am immensely proud: A program of the first Bahamas National Spelling Bee held in 1998 to select a Bahamas Spelling Champion to participate in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. that year. I often tend to take sole responsibility for introducing the Scripps National Spelling Bee to The Bahamas, but the contributions made by Mr. Foulkes towards my efforts to do so were equally as important.
I previously lived in Washington, D.C., for 21 years before returning to The Bahamas “permanently” in 1996, and for more than 12 years, I was News Editor of The Washington Informer, an award-winning African American-owned newspaper that took over the sponsorship of the D.C. City-Wide Spelling Bee in 1982. I attended my first Scripps Bee in 1983 and was so impressed by its potential to have a tremendous impact on the educational system of The Bahamas that I promised myself back then that whenever I returned to The Bahamas I would make a concerted effort to convince those responsible for the administration of education in the country to support my idea to annually select a spelling champion to participate in the Scripps Bee.
Back then, newspapers were the primary sponsors of competitions through which Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants were determined, and when I became Editor of the Nassau Guardian in 1997, I discussed my idea with Kenneth “Six” Francis, the then Publisher and General Manager of The Guardian, and he threw his full support behind my initiative.
Fortunately, at the time Dion Foulkes was Minister of State for Education. As everyone in The Bahamas should know by now, whatever skills I possess in my chosen profession of journalism were nurtured and developed by Dion’s father, Sir Arthur Foulkes, who was News Editor at The Tribune when I joined that newspaper’s editorial staff as a trainee reporter in May of 1960. I later joined Sir Arthur at The Bahamian Times in 1965 after it was established several years earlier by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) to promote its political message among the Bahamian electorate. So, I have known Dion since he was a little boy who distributed copies of Bahamian Times and consider him to be a “brother.”
My “brother” Dion did not have to do much to convince the then Minister of Education Ivy Dumont, who later became Governor General of The Bahamas, to fully support the first Bahamas National Spelling Bee, given her life-long commitment to the educational development of young Bahamians. A good friend of mine, Agatha Dean Delancy, and Tonya Adderley, who were both then employed by IBM Bahamas, helped to convince IBM’s then General Manager Felix Stubbs to become a principal sponsor along with The Guardian of the first Bahamas National Spelling Bee in 1998.
The winner was Dominique Higgins, a 12-year-old Jordan Prince William High student, and he performed exceptionally well in the Scripps competition, but did not advance to the finals. Incidentally, 1998 was the year 12-year-old Jody-Anne Maxwell, Jamaica’s spelling champion, made history as the first non-American to win Scripps National Spelling Bee.
This was our 21st year competing in the Scripps Bee, and every year our spelling champion has done well, but
none of them has advanced to the finals. I am convinced that this is because our spellers prepare for the Scripps Bee by learning to spell words by rote, rather than practicing to “break down” words based on their roots and etymology — the “study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed” throughout the years. What’s more, in recent years the Scripps Bee has added a written spelling and vocabulary test in the first rounds of the Bee and the scores from that test are added to points awarded for words spelt correctly during on-stage performances. The Bahamas’ champion Johnathan Randall, a 12-year-old Central Eleuthera High School student, correctly spelt both of his on-stage words, but did not advance to the finals rounds.
This year, a record number of 516 spellers participated in the Scripps Bee — a huge increase from the 291 that competed in 2017 — as a result of a new RSVBee invitation-only program launched last year, in “an attempt to open up the competition to kids who’ve had only limited access to the bee before, or no access at all,” according to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It is worth noting that the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion Karthik Nemmani of Texas became a contestant via the RSVBee program; therefore, I think The Bahamas should seriously consider entering a second contestant along with the champion in future Scripps Bees, possibly the first runner-up in future Bahamas competitions.
During the early years after the Scripps Bee was introduced in The Bahamas, I suggested that the Ministry of Education establish Spelling Bee Clubs in schools in the country and schedule competitions among schools throughout the year in the same manner that sports competitions are held. This is still a good idea and I hope that Minister of Education Jeff Lloyd gives this suggestion serious consideration. Mr. Lloyd has shown over the years that he has a deep interest in and commitment to the holistic educational development of young Bahamians, especially youth-at-risk, as he demonstrated during his leadership of the YEAST program.
I intend to suggest this and other ideas I have for the future of the Bahamas National Spelling Bee in a formal proposal to the Ministry of Education before the beginning of the new school year in the Fall of this year.
