Even as you read this, 288 grade-school and middle-school students are gathered at the Convention Center in downtown Denver for the Rocky Mountain News 67th annual Colorado State Spelling Bee.

Most of them are smarter than I'll ever be. Or as they might say, they're more perspicacious.

They're also at the age when the ability to retain facts for more than five minutes doesn't astonish them. If they can still do that in 40 years, they'll be euphoric.

I've been a judge at the spelling bee for three years - a fact my first newspaper editor probably would chalk up to witchcraft. I still remember the day he called me into his office 30 years ago and handed me a dictionary and said: "If you want to keep your job, memorize this."

I thumbed through the pages looking for a check.

Back in those days I was inclined to spell things the way I thought they ought to be spelled. I mean, who died and made Daniel Webster god?

It took the threat of unemployment for me to appreciate the value of spelling. You might get through life without knowing how to spell, I discovered, but you'll never get through a good book.

I never did memorize the dictionary, but I did the next-best thing: I learned how to use it. It has been a constant companion ever since.

I like judging the bee because it offers hope that there will be future generations of readers, even after the Harry Potter series runs its course. In this age of video games and computer literacy, it's nice to know that words can still compete with images. Syllables still matter.

Still, try telling the average eighth-grader that spell check isn't infallible. You might as well convince them that kids who watched black-and white-TV back in the day weren't being punished.

You might think that spelling is a simple matter of memorization, but the kids at the state bee know different. When given a word, they are allowed to ask such questions as its definition, language of origin and use in a sentence. Then they furrow their brows and cogitate on whether the word involves an "f" or a "ph" sound.

You'd be surprised how many ways there are to be tripped up, especially when you realize that so much of the English language is derived from another tongue.

The kids start with a 50-word written test, and the 40 best scores advance to the oral contest. The contestants are cute and serious and spunky. And invariably polite.

Products of our excellent educational system? Not necessarily. In the past decade, several of the champions have been home-schooled.

I'm guessing most of the kids who make the finals don't have cell phones. Text messaging will be the ruin of formal speech. The only way to abbreviate the English language more these days would be telepathy.

Some kids, like my 16-year-old godson, argue they don't need to know big words to communicate effectively. He is convinced that a grunt and a shrug are as elegant as the Gettysburg Address.

Talking to a kid about the importance of language is hard. Tell them that accurate spelling leads to good grammar, and they'll spend long minutes trying to wrap their mind around the idea. How do you convince them proper grammar means growing up to say "May I have a glass of water" instead of the more colloquial, "Pass me that hose"?

The great thing about a spelling bee is that it tends to be civilized. There are the occasional tears, but I've yet to see anyone curl up in a fetal position and refuse to leave the stage, or parents come to fisticuffs in the audience.

Plus, these kids still think learning is cool. They won't have to wait until they are pushing 50 to acknowledge how much they don't know.

Mostly, these kids are models of grace under pressure. I doubt I could do it. It's a competition without malice that continues until there's one speller left - the one who'll represent the state at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

Adults like to think we rule the world. But when it comes to spelling, the best and the brightest stand under five feet tall.

Mike Pearson is features editor. pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592.