Copyright 2019 by Shalini Shankar
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First Edition: April 2019
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Shankar, Shalini, 1972 author.
Title: Beeline : what spelling bees reveal about generation Zs new path to success / Shalini Shankar.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Basic Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018043156 (print) | LCCN 2018044318 (ebook) | ISBN 9780465094530 (ebook) | ISBN 9780465094523 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Success in children. | Generation Z. | Spelling beesSocial aspects. | Performance in children. | Achievement motivation in children.
Classification: LCC BF723.S77 (ebook) | LCC BF723.S77 S53 2019 (print) | DDC 155.4/19dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043156
ISBNs: 978-0-465-09452-3 (hardcover), 978-0-465-09453-0 (ebook)
E3-20190313-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
For Shyamala and Ratnaswamy Shankar, who told me I could be whatever I wanted.
For Anisha and Roshan, my Generation Z loves.
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O n a Thursday night in May of 2012, I sat in my living room folding laundry and watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals on ESPN. Only 10 finalists had advanced from 278. If those odds sound bad, consider that those 278 emerged from over 11 million children. The kids I saw on-screen were confident, poised, and diverse, representing an amazing cross section of America.
The oldest spellers on that stage were fourteen; spellers as young as six had been eliminated earlier in the contest. Born after 1996, they were the first competitors of Generation Z, the generation following Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) that still awaits an official name.
It had been a few years since Id caught the contest live, and things looked different. Cosmetically, the kids were no longer all wearing standard-issue white shirts bearing the spelling bee logo. The backdrop was a gorgeous blue honeycomb that changed color to reflect the onstage action. The competition was fierce, more so than I remembered.
Despite the stakes, some spellers made funny quips when they came to the mic, while others greeted the pronouncer (the person who gives each speller their word and any information they request) in Latin, Hindi, or Spanish. Clearly, they were enjoying their moment in the spotlight. No one I went to middle school with had this kind of game, especially with ten cameras pointed at them as they performed an astonishing cognitive task. Who were these kids? I started to wonder why any young person would take this competition so seriously, what it meant to them, and how they managed to stay so effortlessly cool under pressure.
The producers had anticipated my questions and frequently cut to captivating human-interest feature stories. Some were shot in kids homes and schools, capturing the hometown flavor of a spellers life. Not only were these kids orthographically advanced, but they were also dancers, magicians, model car racers, horseback riders, and aspiring chefs. They spoke eloquently about these interests in scripted voiceovers. In other feature segments, spellers engagingly held up oversized cards comically explaining the rules of the Bee or otherwise had what looked like a fun time. Apparently, the kids had been there all week, making friends as they attended social events and presentations about the dictionary. They eagerly anticipated a banquet and dance party with lots of candy the following night.
Over the course of the broadcast, I got to know so many of these telegenic, camera-ready kids that I became conflicted about whom to cheer for. I wanted all of them to win, but which ones actually could? I realized I could answer this question if I listened more closely to the commentators as they analyzed each spellers turn, treating them like professional athletes. They knew each ones strengths and weaknesses, telling me about their favorite languages of origin and their foibles with the dreaded schwa (the unstressed vowel sound in the middle of many words). Spellers were ready to break down their strategy for sideline reporters who occasionally pulled them out of the lineup to comment on an especially tough word.
The spectacle called into question so much that I thought I understood about childhood and young people today. The kids at the spelling beewith their intense approach to competition, their confident personalities, and their drive to succeedembodied key characteristics about what it now means to be young in America. It foretold something about the future of my own children, then age six and two, who were blissfully asleep while I watched. Whether they would ever participate in a spelling bee was not important; this is what childhood had become, and this was their generation.
In the end, there were no participation trophies. Not even a runner-up trophy. Just one giant, shiny trophy that fourteen-year-old Snigdha Nandipati from San Diego, California, clenched and hoisted, beaming a smile too victorious for her mouthful of braces to diminish. For the next week she was ubiquitous on the media junket of morning shows, public relations appearances, and even Jimmy Kimmel Live! When the media buzz wore off, she could start to imagine what to do with her $30,000 in prize money.
What started with my television viewing would develop into a major research project that extended far beyond spelling bees. Through the lens of the Bee, I began to explore the nascent shape of Generation Z. These kids lives are filled with competitions, many of them brain sports like the spelling bee. More than just fun, the careersand I do mean careersthat elite spellers develop open doorways to other aspects of Gen Z life, including greater participation in entrepreneurial activities and social media as children. Their parentsmostly US-or non-US-born Gen Xers who want their kids to thrive in a world they know is highly competitivehelp them accomplish as children what previous generations may not have even attempted until adulthood.
