"Mom, Who Cares About Spelling?"

Family Friday

Although my soon-to-be nine-year-old has long questioned the utility of various school subjects, he has typically discovered their practical applications as he's moved through life.  Over time, he's realized that reading Harry Potter independently, or figuring out how much spare change will add up to ice cream, could not happen without the skills he's learned in school.

For less obviously applicable subjects like algebra and geometry (yes, today's third-graders are learning both), he seems to understand the "muscle metaphor:" mental exercise makes your brain stronger and more flexible, just as weight-lifting increases your muscle mass.  And he grudgingly accepts that, without proper grammar, people may misunderstand you – as the popular Facebook group (over 173,000 members!) argues, punctuation saves lives, as "Let's eat, Grandma" and "Let's eat Grandma" demonstrate. 

But with spelling, we've hit an impasse.  Exactly what redeeming value does spelling hold, my son wants to know.  After all, he adds, you still know what people mean even if the words are spelled wrong.

The lack of logic in English spelling seems to rankle him more than anything else.  In the Spanish language, you spell what you hear.  But English evolved from such a hodgepodge of different sources that spelling was a do-it-yourself project for centuries, long on creativity and short on logic.  

I squelch the first response that pops into my head: "Other people will think you're ignorant if you can't spell."  (It wouldn't have helped, as my little non-conformist would quickly shred any argument that smacks of What Will Others Think). 

But I'm truly drawing a blank…why does spelling matter?  Why do we teach it?  Why do we give spelling tests?  (And my brain-muscle-strengthening metaphor is strained at best, because what real mental exercise does spelling homework provide, beyond rote memorization?)

Here is the best explanation I can muster:  rightly or wrongly, we (parents, teachers, society) often use spelling ability as a cheap-and-easy proxy for other things that we do care about but are much tougher to measure – like focus, discipline, critical thought, education, refinement.  Or, more accurately, we use lack of spelling ability to judge lack of these qualities.

And I'll admit – I do it too.  I snicker as much as anyone at the badly misspelled Tea Party protest signs, especially the ones that advocate for an English-only nation ("Respect Are-Country!" "Make English America's Offical Lanaguage!").  You may or may not agree with Tea Party sentiments, but you've got to admit that the poor spelling undermines the group's message.  (To be fair – if anyone can find photos of misspelled protest signs for more liberal causes – please post a link in the comments section!)   

Using spelling ability (or lack thereof) to predict level of intellectual mastery is iffy at best.   We all know brilliant people who can't spell – in fact, I know more than a few accomplished and powerful people  who spell and write quite poorly.  But, when it counts, these folks are savvy enough to farm out the spell-check duty to the office nerds. 

So it seems that what kids can learn through spelling instruction is discipline in communication.  Most people dismiss errors and typos in e-mails and other casual situations, but if you're writing a paper or creating a protest sign, thought and preparation count - and that includes spelling.  Encouraging kids to spend a few moments editing their work now may reduce future verbal spew.

So I've been spinning spelling as an annoying-but-necessary presentation issue that supports whatever deeper message you are trying to convey, and this seems to have worked with my son so far.  He's complained less about studying and practicing it, and his spelling grades have improved.  Whether this pattern will hold indefinitely, especially when he hits adolescence (oh joy), remains to be seen.

Comments

[Becky]

I think you can make a pretty strong argument for spelling as a time saver. While I'm not sure learning to spell those massive collections of letters that you might find in a 7th grade spelling bee helps all that much, knowing how to spell a good portion of the English language saves a lot of time. Now that most written communication goes through word-processing, knowing how many t's are in mattress may not be vital but how much time can you waste fixing it every time you type it (which is more than you think, going off my experience)- especially if you are having to go through drop down menus. Knowing the basis of spelling is about as useful as knowing your basic math facts. While your life may not hinge on knowing how many times 6 goes into 30, there are times (perhaps when you have 30 skittles and 6 screaming 4 year olds) that a quick bit of mental math is still more efficient than fishing out your iphone and pulling up an app. Plus, even with word processing, it's important to be able to get at least within spitting distance of how to spell a word. From the readers perspective, having something spelled reasonably correctly is a big time saver as well. Try having your son read a paragraph with a good percentage of the words having common misspellings or spelled phonetically.

[Karen Paul-Stern]

I love playing Scrabble with my husband the writer and journalist, who, to this day, gets his double consonants mixed up -- hee hee. But seriously, I believe that spelling is one of those life skills that you learn just because, although I have many people in my life who have tried to convince me otherwise. I have a theory, which is that spelling talent is innate - you either know how to spell (as I do) or you have to work at it (as my husband does.) Spell check certainly helps those in my husband's camp, but it doesn't serve you well, as you point out, when you are writing something away from the computer (which, admittedly, happens less and less in our society.) I definitely think poorly of anything I see that is misspelled or has a grammatical inaccuracy, but I think I am dying breed.

[Elizabeth Kuizenga]

The "annoying-but-necessary presentation issue" is a good way to keep your son motivated to learn the illogical spellings of the English language. But I would agree with him when he questions the usefulness of learning English spelling beyond that. There are plenty of reasons why we have all agreed on so many time-consuming ways to spell various sounds in English, but none of them are very good reasons, and it is definitely time to clean up the mess. Perhaps when he is grown he can join the hundreds of others who are fed up with English spelling and find some ways to crack this seemingly sacred cow.

[valerie yule]

Your son will find all the wonders of modern science and wonder why we cannot crack this tiny nut of unnecessary difficulties in English spelling. Only 20% of 'misspelled words' that make all the rest unpredictable. Dictionaries are slowly removing them - but they could be faster. Let's pester them, and try to get an International English spelling commission.
A hundred words make up half of everyday English text. Only 35 are irregular. Keep them. This is counter-intuitive – generally people imagine the most common tricky words should be the first to go - these are: all almost always among come some could should would half know of off one only once other pull push put they their two as was what want who why, and international word endings -ion/-tion/-sion/zion.
Then remove surplus silent letters in words, and we are halfway to cutting out the 149 spelling patterns and exceptions that bother us. Surplus letters are those that do not help with meaning or pronunciation - See http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/16sp.htm and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/spelling/htm. We have now for example demon, omelet, economy, error, ether, exotic, horror, medieval, music, program, develop, salad and satin insted of daemon, omelette, oeconomy, errour, aether, exotick, horrour, mediaeval, musick, programme, develope, sallad and sattin.

[Stacy]

I am one of the last believers in correct spelling. Probably just because I like to spell. And I'm good at it. So, I have to hold my correcting self back when my kindergartener uses her extremely inventive spelling to spin out stories and poems although I have to admit that a lot of her spelling makes phonological sense. And sometimes it fits the word, e.g., "crassy" for "crazy." Still, I'm looking forward to the day she starts to spell conventionally. And I think she will learn to do so because she, like me, loves to read, which is the key, I think, to becoming a good speller.

[Masha Bell]

Your son is absolutely right to question the value of having to learn the irregular spellings in 3695 common English words (listed at www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk) from ‘leave, sleeve, believe’ to ‘blue, shoe, flew, through, to, you, too’. They have no redeeming value whatsoever. They waste learning time which could be put to much more profitable use.
For a year or so, children learn the basic rules of the English spelling system. For the rest of their school days, they have to learn how to break them: bed, fed, led – said, head, Wednesday...
I did not meet English spelling until the age of 14, after Lithuanian and Russian, and found it hard to understand how any people could subject their children to such cruelty. I realise now that this is not deliberate dumbing down of children’s education potential, although there may have been in the past.
It’s just mindless passing on of traditional habits from generation to generation, without stopping to think what harm it does.
It harms plenty. And at a heavy price too, as I have been trying to explain at http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com and on http://www.youtube.com/user/spellmender
Here and now, teachers and parents have to help children cope with English spelling as best they can. But they should keep drawing attention to its imperfections too, so that at long last it gets improved. It’s been extracting pointless sweat and tears from too many children for far too long.

[Craig Douglas]

I think you hit it right on the head...great job "spinning spelling," and the proof is his spelling grades have already improved. It is a presentation issue - and right, or wrong - I still automatically discount anything presented to me that is full of spelling errors.