Word: speller
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sixth-grade teacher in the public school in little (pop. 750) Killeen, Texas had an announcement for her class: the prize for the best speller at the end of the term would be a handsome Bible. The dismissal bell was still resounding when a self-assured little girl came forward from her desk, and in a firm, quiet voice told the teacher she might as well go right ahead and inscribe the Bible. It ought to be inscribed to Oveta Culp. Pig-tailed Oveta Culp wasn't being brash or smart-alecky ; she knew she was the best speller...
Fire Fighters. Among the educational toys are light-up maps and the "Magic Speller" ($3) whose picture cards, when inserted in a slot, rack up simple words like "bird" and "bear" for a child to copy on a miniature blackboard. The Tom Thumb typewriter is a real working model ($19.95). Prospective architects can try their hand with "Blockbusters," big, cor rugated-paper blocks capable of holding more than 200 lbs. (twelve blocks for $5.95). Radio hams can assemble their own crystal sets ($2.50). One of the best bargains for budding mechanics: the plas tic "Fix-It" automobile. Its battery, radi...
...that point. Doris Ann had been lucky. She had taken each word slowly, often asking the pronouncer to repeat it for her. But her opponent, Marjorie Foliart of Crafton, Pa., was a speller who could go both forwards and backwards. To add to the tension, the spelling bee suddenly had a visitation: Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer came down from his office to witness the final rounds...
Editor Mathews also does his bit to settle a perennial argument over a unique American contribution-O.K. Some scholars have always insisted that the term originated with Andrew Jackson, a notoriously bad speller who was supposed to mark official documents O.K. for oll korrect. Woodrow Wilson used okeh on the theory that the word came from the Choctaw hoke, meaning "Yes, it is." Mathews' preference: that it sprang up first during the presidential campaign of 1840, when Van Buren's supporters organized a mysterious O.K. Club. The initials were those of Van Buren's home town...
...crusade against ignorance," Thomas Jefferson had cried; but the crusade was to roll and swell beyond even Jefferson's wildest dreams. The nation passed through the age of the one-room district schoolhouse, of the birch rod and the rattan cane, the primer, Noah Webster's famous speller and the Me Guff ey readers. Ever since the indefatigable Horace Mann had stormed through Massachusetts preaching the cause of better schools ("In a Republic, Ignorance is a Crime!"), successive generations of young Americans had been learning the three Rs as Dart of their birthright...