At last: A win for smart kids.
Any former ‘brainy kid’ can tell you how it’s not always easy to be clever in school.
Bookworms and mathletes have always been lumped into the ‘too geeky for words’ pile — leaving popularity to be enjoyed by sporty, pretty types who wouldn’t touch a textbook with a ten-foot pole.
Related: How many words from The Great Australian Spelling Bee can you spell?
But The Great Australian Spelling Bee burst onto television screens last night, and it could be the to change all that. Because not only is the series a victory for Channel 10 (as evidenced by the series’ dominant ratings across the capital cities last night) but it’s a win for clever kids across the country.
Yep, Spelling Bee is all about celebrating the smarts. And that’s simply not something we see on television often enough.
There’s no question the contestants on the show, who competed against 3000 other kids just to make it to last night’s group of 52 spellers, are the seriously brainy type. One of them, eight-year-old Harpith, spelled out his ‘favourite’ 29-letter word (‘floccinaucinihilipilification’) in an interview on The Project. Aw, bless.
Other contestants have lofty career ambitions including archeology and veterinary science, despite being just eight years old.
Yep, as the show’s co-host Grant Denyer told Mamamia, the pint-sized contestants really are “wizards and complete geniuses, the doctors and surgeons and astronauts and politicians of tomorrow”.
Related: The Chrissie Swan advice all parents need.
As co-host Chrissie Swan explains, those kids are ‘celebrated’ on the show in a way they might not be in the schoolyard.
“I love this show because it celebrates smart kids,” she said. “It makes heroes of these little people who aren’t always the super popular kids in school. And it shows children it’s cool to be clever.
“I am so proud to be part of a show that gives children intelligent role models.”
Making the show even more inclusive, the super spellers are a fairly even boy-girl split, and hail from a range of backgrounds.
“I kind of expected that a lot of the mums backstage would be the academic version of soccer mums, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Denyer told Mamamia.
“The only common denominator was that… they all seemed to come from really loving homes, just wonderful supportive environments. They didn’t seem to need to come from parents that were academics.”
The super spellers are also culturally diverse. It’s a refreshing change, especially when one reflects on the powerful words of Underbelly star Firass Dirani, who said in 2012:
Bravo, Spelling Bee, for celebrating kids who love their schoolwork. Bravo for making it fun, not funny, to love learning.
Bravo for giving academic types a moment in the spotlight.
Because, as every former school geek knows: It’s about time clever kids were cast as cool.
Click through to see some of the positive Twitter reactions to The Great Australian Spelling Bee:
Twitter reactions to the show
The Great Australian Spelling Bee is on again tonight on Channel 10 at 7:30pm AEST.
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Top Comments
My 6 yr old daughter loves the show so far, she woke up this morning and grabbed her word list from school and asked me to test her just like the show. Its really ignited an interest in spelling and I'm thrilled.
My only issue with the show is that the keep the kids waiting for too long before they tell them if they have the word correct or not. I get that this is TV and they're trying to create suspense, but these are little kids. Perhaps be a little kinder and tell them straight away. Other than that, I absolutely love this show. These kids are amazing!!
Do they genuinely wait that long, or is it edited to appear that way? If it's only a second irl, they could easily stretch that to four or five (or longer) by showing the anxious, 'Did she get it right?' faces of the kid, the hosts, the parents, the guy at the mike, the audience, back to the parents, back to the kid etc etc.
I haven't watched it so I have no idea, just a thought :)
I watched the end of it and I did get the impression it was edited to increase suspense for the viewers. But they do still seem to wait longer than necessary to tell the kid whether they have the word right - it's not immediate. The "pronouncer" does a lot of dramatic pausing.