GoBigEd |
Reporting on key Nebraska K-12 education issues on a daily basis from Susan Darst Williams, a writer who lives at the base of Mount Laundry, Nebraska. To subscribe to this blog's mailing list, and see a variety of other education features and information, visit the main education website, www.GoBigEd.com |
Monday, October 25, 2004
Posted
2:01 PM
by Susan Darst Williams
What are you going to be for Halloween? How about something scary -- an educator who doesn’t believe in correcting kids’ spelling errors. By all accounts, despite the fact that we’re spending enormous amounts more cash on K-12 education than in past years, academic fundamentals such as spelling are getting worse, not better. People who dispute that might want to take a look at some student writing samples. They’ll have you howling at the moon. The ghosts and goblins of lackluster and downright lousy language arts instruction are apparent in student papers, and it’s getting scary. My daughter played varsity softball this past season. I occasionally visited with the JV players as they did their homework during varsity games. Naturally, being snoopy, I peeked at what they were writing. It curled my hair, the spelling was so bad. One girl actually thought ‘’husband’’ was spelling ‘’huzzbun.’’ And these are freshmen and sophomores in one of the state’s best-regarded high schools. My softball daughter carried on a penpal correspondence with a couple of grade-school students during the season, set up by a teacher who wanted to encourage the younger students to do more writing. I totally approve of such mentoring. But I’m saddened by the utter lack of language facility I saw in their notes: cryed for cried allot for a lot Hellow for Hello movei for movie lik for like scard for scared noise for nose first for first cetch for catch realy for really Tinnisy for Tennessee none for known hole for whole qwit for quiet werd for weird were for where costom for costume probaly for probably brot for brought starded for started springkool for sprinkle wasent for wasn’t minet for minute pord for poured lod op for load up clos for clothes woch for watch iny for any kam for came dor for door faforiet for favorite naem for name sester for sister Scary, isn’t it? And yet teachers indoctrinated into ‘’progressivism,’’ ‘’constructivism’’ and Whole Language don’t believe it’s a good idea to correct misspelled words like that. Their theory is that the kids will learn the proper spelling later, on down the road. Suuuuuure they will. Wish I could put this in every educator’s treat bag this Halloween: it takes a WHOLE bunch more effort to undo a bad habit than to teach it correctly in the first place. No wonder spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and reading enjoyment, for that matter, are in the cellar. We’re turning the English language into a secret code, and denying these kids the secret decoder ring! This is no Halloween trick. This is serious. I say the kids deserve a treat . . . proper spelling instruction. And I spell that N-O-W.
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