Professor Ken Smith is so fed up with endlessly correcting his students’ spelling that he’s throwing in the towel.
Why not just accept that you’re never going to iron out the most common spelling mistakes and simply accept them as “variants,” he suggests.
“Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such,” he says.
He’s thinking of words like argument, that often comes at him as “arguement,” or twelth (twelfth) and all those words that break the i-before-e rule like weird and seize.
What do you think? Is correct spelling just for pedants and crossword fiends nowadays?
(P.S. We promise not to put your replies through spellcheck)
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I’ve noticed that certain words and phrases have been misspelled for so many years that they’ve almost become accepted as the correct spelling. On roadside signs and especially on the internet I see the same words misspelled consistently. Don’t they teach basic grammar in elementary school anymore? Shame on spellcheckers!
- Posted by RRRVERY MUCH SO!
CHILDREN SHOULD LEARN TO READ, WRITE AND DO BASIC MATH IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. ENGLISH GRAMMAR IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
THEY SHOULD NOT BE PROMOTED UNTIL THEY CAN PASS THE TESTS FOR THAT GRADE.
WE ARE PROMOTING IDIOTS THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. DO YOU WANT AND IDIOT DOCTOR PERFORMING SURGERY ON YOU?
- Posted by AMERICA-FIRSTWe should not take up this opt-out suggestion, if only to preserve the correct meaning. Spelling points to origin and that points to meaning.
- Posted by Peter CrossSomeone on another website drew an interesting parallel between this subject and the teaching of sport in schools. It seems that it is no longer acceptable to have “winners” and “losers” in this society, and that we should never tell a person that they don’t make the grade for fear of being accused of harbouring an “elitist” mentality. Universities are, by their very nature elitist, that is supposedly the point of them, to gather the most able minds and educate them to the best available level. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work that way, it seems to matter more how rich mummy and daddy are than how talented you might be, they would rather take a rich oaf who can’t spell than a talented working class person with little money. If you can’t spell to a reasonable standard then you shouldn’t be in university in the first place.
- Posted by TimThe real problem is that the English language doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. We did not establish a Language Academy of our own to control the language as did other European Countries.
We now have the situation that an individual from OED and the British Council speaks for Britain, on all matters of the English Language, to the EU.
- Posted by DougalThe attitude “Ihave more important things to do than to check my student’s spelling” is not only more correctly called laziness but is also indicative of the teacher’s own spelling ability.
- Posted by LW CollinsAll my teachers could spell and ensured that I could do so by the simple expedient of deducting marks from my home work, coursework and exam papers for spelling mistakes.
Bill
This is a horrible idea: There are so many possibilities with phonetic spelling, that the lack of uniformity will just slow down readers. It will force everyone to read phonetically, rather than, as should happen with experienced, adult readers, let us grasp the word as a whole. Phonetics is the [best] way to study spelling, including the exceptions and quirks, but normative spelling simplifies reading. With purely (pyurly, pyoorly, peurly, pyurlie, peayourly, …) phonetic spelling, the variants will be too numerous to allow for fast reading.
- Posted by MayerMy name is Hannah and I’m in my third year of an English degree… I haven’t sweated through all those essays, labouring away to make sure everything is perfect, just for them to be slapped back into my face with this new proposal of phonetic spelling as acceptable… no. It’s something basic that everyone needs to learn to do properply, not dodge past (like everything else).
- Posted by Hannah DunnOne of the frequent misguided top-down directives issued in a large company I once worked for was “Don’t waste time on the spelling - just get your point across”.
My own response was to continue with my existing practice, which was that if people couldn’t be bothered to spell correctly, I couldn’t be bothered to read the rubbish they sent to me.
It was always the case that those who had something important to tell me could spell correctly.
- Posted by PeterI think the root cause is that school teachers think correcting mistakes is belittling children, but it is the only way to learn. When I was in school 60 years ago we were given a notebook to record words that we came across in books we read, and the teacher would look at it.
Surely the purpose of a written text is to convey a message that is readily understandable and free of ambiguity. Is it too difficult to learn the correct usage of [so,sow and sew ] [to,too and two] [cue and queue] [complement and compliment] [its and it's] [their and there] [hear and here] [ware and wear] [or,ore, oar and awe] [stationery and stationary].
Unfortunately a spell check on the computer will accept all these words without comment.
- Posted by John TannerLowest common denominator again….how typical of the era we live in! How is it my grandmother who died in the 1960s could spell accurately when we are told by this government how standards of education are continually improving? Perhaps accuracy in interpreting evidence of improvement can be accepted as a variant of accurate too!
- Posted by Joan LilburnSam Butler @ 1.46PM…’Teaching does not mean however, that you throw words and numbers at children or get them to chant things and hope they remember enough to regurgitate it onto an exam paper for which they have prepared the night before.’
- Posted by Michael BondThis was exactly what the vast majority of my classes were like in school from 1986-1995, also, half the subjects in the exams we took had not even been studied during class. Instead I read Roald Dahl, an author who, although we never met, has influenced me far more. Thank you for reassuring me that my schooling wasn’t ‘unique’…
I had to check it wasn’t 1st April.
As a person who started secondary school in 1975, I am dismayed at the lack of grammar and spelling skills today. I also hold in contempt the new breed of sneering working class who celebrate ignorance, take no responsibility for their or their children’s future. “Idiocracy”, though not a good film, made a frightening point.
Teaching is so important to our development. I was lucky enough to have had an English teacher who managed to inspire a single-parent working class lad to see the wonder of the words in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. Equally, the history teacher bought the subject alive. I did well at maths and science despite the teachers.
That students can attend university unable to spell is tragic. I like to think we are not entering an Orwellian future, but with such a malleable uneducated populace, amongst other things, perhaps I am being too optimistic.
Yes we should learn to spell. We should also learn to want to learn, and be shown how to learn. Bring philosophy into the classroom.
Nwotnot.
- Posted by NwotnotMr. Smith’s proposal has so many red flags, it’s not even funny! Aside from all of the points raised above, there has to be the question of national heritage, and pride in that heritage (whether it be American, British, or any other flavour/flavor of English). Also, as a programmer in several different programming languages, I have learned (or is that learnt?) that not only is there almost zero-tolerance for incorrect spelling, but that there are also subtle differences in syntax from language to language. To plant the seed that it’s ok to make changes to spelling because of ignorance or laziness is surely inviting disaster in the highly structuralised world of technology? I try to keep politics out of posts, but in this case, it smacks of the liberal fringe not wanting to spotlight individuals who for whatever reason are unwilling or unable to conform to the languages rules. Next we will be trying to ban sports where there are distinct winners (and by definition, losers)… oh, wait… they have?
- Posted by David B.