Watching Spellbound again tonight, I was struck by a comment made by Neil's father:

There is no way you can fail in this country. That's one guarantee in this country, that if you work hard, you'll make it.

Much later, near the end of the movie, the late Alex Cameron, official pronouncer of the spelling bee, observes:

In America back in the eighteenth century, people had this sense of opportunity. You could leap out of one social class...you could move up...and I think they understood that education was a basic part of that.

Sigh.