http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/local/6-year-old-wins-spelling-bee She won the state of VA already and will be the youngest competitor at national. *Go, Lori!* *woo-hoo!*
The danger, though, is that some families will use homeschooling not to provide a well-rounded education but to achieve celebrity status for their child. Each of us could assign ten hours a day of geography lessons, for example, to the exclusion of all else just so our student could win the geography bee at a young age. I'm not suggesting that happened in this case, but someone might be tempted to do so - and that would reflect poorly on homeschooling.
That's actually the standard argument for excluding homeschoolers from these kinds of national competitions. Folks say homeschoolers have an unfair advantage, since they can devote all their time to the study of just one subject. Although, my own thought is that the wee smart kiddo may actually have the advantage of youth, over the older kids. She mentions that she has a really good memory... when my daughter was that young, she could memorize anything. All the countries of Africa? No problem. Animal names from babirusa to zebu? Easy! We used to joke we could put her on Jeopardy - if she heard it, she knew it. Interestingly, as my daughter got older, that ability to rattle things off from memory began to fade. It's as if her ability to rote memorize decreased as her ability to analyze logically increased. She still has a fantastically good memory, but if she follows her grandma's example (and she's like her in everything else), that eidetic memory will be gone by university. That's when my mum actually had to learn to study, for the first time in her life.
That's why the classical method of teaching is gaining popularity again... there's a ton of rote memorization in the early years, because kids are sponges. But for any 6 year old to be able to spell her way to nationals? No amount of force-feeding can accomplish that, homeschooled or not. She's definitely a natural speller!
