Spelling the Dream Parent Guide

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is the Junior Olympics of spelling; a chance for the best spellers in the USA to compete for the coveted trophy. Over the past three decades, a new trend has emerged: 26 of the past 31 winners have been Indian Americans.Figuring out how members of such a small minority group, which makes up less than 1% of the population, manage to dominate spelling bees, is the purpose of Spelling the Dream.

The documentary quickly eliminates theories of innate racial or ethnic ability, focusing instead on the way the immigration system self-selects driven, highly educated new Americans. And director Sam Rega has chosen to devote some of the movie’s runtime to interviews with South Asian American luminaries like Fareed Zakaria or Sanjay Gupta for commentary on the Indian American cultural experience. The most interesting parts of the movie follow the competitors as they explain their passion for spelling. We meet a precocious seven year old who began spelling at age two. Teenager Shourav Dasari wears his lucky Nike hoodie in competitions and has a database of over 100,000 words that he uses to study before spelling bees. And Tejas Muthusamy carries his lucky purple rock to every contest. These interviews pull us into the kids’ lives and make us care about their success. I found watching the spelling bees just as edge-of-my-seat tense as a sports event – but I am a word nerd who spent part of my childhood reading dictionaries for fun. Your experience might differ.

Spelling the Dream is a completely harmless film to watch, with no negative content, not even a swear word. This doesn’t mean it’s perfect family entertainment. Most young children (and plenty of older ones) will find it boring. Kids who love to spell, on the other hand, and youngsters who know what it’s like to struggle to achieve a long-term goal, will enjoy watching their contemporaries shine in their chosen field of expertise. As for adults, this is one of those films that makes us feel like we’re standing in the dust behind high-achieving juniors. I am a writer and editor with a university degree – and there were plenty of words I couldn’t spell or even define in this film. It certainly serves up a massive slice of humble pie for most viewers.

Overall, Spelling the Dream is an interesting look at how immigrants assimilate into American culture and how an ethnic group can enthusiastically adopt local traditions as their own. For a nation built on the concept of a melting pot, that’s spells “s-u-c-c-e-s-s”.