Should accurate spelling be required to win the state geography championship?
A panel of five judges said no, declaring the winner of the 10th annual Illinois Geography Bee a 6th grader whose misspelling of his answer on a tiebreaker question was “close enough” to be ruled correct.
The contest last Friday at Illinois State University was narrowed to two finalists. Left were Adam Janzen, 12, a 6th grader at Illini Bluffs Middle School in Glasford, a town of 1,115 people 10 miles southwest of Peoria, and Jessica King, 13, an 8th grader taught in her Springfield home by her mother.
Rules of the National Geographic Society, the competition’s organizer, say that when a bee is down to two contestants, a series of three specific questions are to be asked. The pupil answering the most correctly becomes the champion. But Adam and Jessica each answered two of the three, requiring individual tiebreaker questions to determine the winner.
Both failed on the first tiebreaker, and both were correct on the second. Then came the third from moderator Robert Corbett, chairman of the department of geography-geology at Illinois State:
“Since ancient times, marble has been quarried on an island that shares its name with the sea that lies between the European and Asian parts of Turkey. Name this island.”
Both were required to write their answers on a sheet of paper, then give their responses orally and show judges their writing.
Jessica thought the answer was the Dardanelles, which she spelled wrong.
Adam held up his sheet, which read: “Marnama.” Asked by judges several times to pronounce his answer, he said, “Marnama.”
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The correct answer is “Marmara.”
Adam patiently held up his answer for six minutes while the five judges debated how to rule.
Finally, one judge, Norman Bettis, an Illinois State education professor, speaking for all five, said, “We’re going to go with it.”
Adam was declared state champion for the annual elementary school geography bee and will represent Illinois in the national competition May 19 and 20 in Washington, where “Jeopardy” television game show host Alex Trebek will moderate the finals.
At the outset of the contest, Corbett explained several rules developed by the National Geographic Society, and said judges’ decisions are final. One rule is that answers need not be pronounced or spelled accurately to be right. Some required oral responses, others must be in written form.
Nobody in the audience of 400 people questioned the ruling, but Bettis explained the decision to a questioner.
“The judges felt that it was close enough that we believed he knew the island,” he said. “The rules say they don’t have to pronounce the word correctly or spell it correctly as long as the judges feel that they have the right place in mind.
“If we insisted on correct spelling on some of these names, we would have no children left. Some of them are extremely difficult.”
Asked after the contest how he knew about the island, Adam replied that during his contest preparation, “By looking at a map I saw between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea was the Sea of Marnama or whatever it was.”
In finishing second, Jessica placed higher than any other girl in the 10 years of the contest. As in previous years, only 10 of the 100 Illinois elementary pupils who reached state competition by winning local school events were girls.
“It’s what they read,” said Joan Longmire, social studies teacher at Eastview Middle School in Bartlett. “Girls check out romantic novels from the library. Boys check out non-fiction. They have a broader knowledge of the real world.”
The other eight finalists were: Jack Scheff, King Laboratory School, Evanston; David Slichter, Countryside School, Champaign; John Luporini, St. Tarcissus School, Chicago; Michael Kososki, St. Joseph School, Downers Grove; Colleen Kaul, Locust Elementary School, Marengo; Louis Young, Hanson School, Rock Island; Ravi Palakodety, Hawthorn Junior High, Vernon Hills; and Ryan Clark, Holmes Middle School, Wheeling.