Kidds Kant Spelle

As you might know, I have been trying to immerse myself in the realm of education as much as I can lately. One of the things that I have observed while tutoring and subbing, is that KIDS CAN NOT SPELL!

 With the growing abundance of technology, and with it a lessening of the necessity to be able to spell correctly, kids can no longer spell.In fact, when corrected, many can grow hostile, or say things like, "Who cares?" or "Sorry Mr. Spelling police man". So why the seemingly sudden devolution of the language I love? Technology.

When the English language was in its infant years, just emerging as a written language, there were no right or wrong ways to spell words. If one could write a word so that it could be effectively sounded out orally, it expressed the meaning it was supposed to (i.e. "Cat" v. "Kat"). The message would be received, and there was no need for a universal spelling of the word. This was fine when the English vocabulary was so limited, that there were few words that sounded the same, with different meanings. This was fine when there were few people that actually knew how to, or had any use of, writing in general.

"Then his cosin ascried and cried full loud: 'Thou has killed cold-dede the king of all knightes." (King Arthur's Death, the Alliterative Morte Arthure).

As the language entered its pre-pubescence, writing became more available to regular people, and was seen much more. In this time, Shakespeare, Donne, and the likes graced their manuscripts with not only brilliance, but inconsistent spellings. Indeed, Shakespeare did not even spell even his name consistently. True, Shakespeare's more common spellings helped shape the eventually "permanent" spellings of words, but at the time no one cared how anything was spelled. Shakespeare wasn't trying to shape the written word. Truthfully, in this day and age when writers can spend a career toying with the meanings and spellings of words (e.g. Nietzsche) it is amazing how much genius Shakespeare was able to convey without universal spellings.

"When my love sweares that she is made of truth,
I do beleeve her, though I know she lyes,
That she might thinke me some untuterd youth,
Unlearned in the worlds false subtilties." 
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 138).

As English reached adolescence, people like Noah Webster printed dictionaries with decided spellings and definitions for the language, growing rapidly in both size and complexity. For the next 200 years, people began to embrace spelling for the first time. It became important to express one's thoughts with assurance that they would be understood, and also seen as a sign of a good education. People's handwriting was not only in cursive, but readable, elegant, and fluid (ever wonder your Grandma has such nice penmanship?) Of course, it had to be. Even the advent of the typewriter didn't kill spelling. Everything you wrote was proofread to the brink of insanity, as one typo on an otherwise perfect document meant it had to be typed up again, from scratch.

As radio, and later television become better, and more affordable, they began to replace reading as a favorite past-time. Children no longer had to scour through pages of novels looking for adventure, it was right in front of them, with bright flashing pictures. It is unfortunate too, as not only the book version of a story is almost always better than the movie, but because they would have been exposed to words. They would have been exposed to new words, and most importantly, the correct spellings of words. The more you see a particular word, the easier it is to spell it. Sadly, many of us that have grown-up with television hardly ever pick up a book unless forced to. In fact, the shelves of public libraries are giving up more and more space to DVDs, instead of books.

Somewhere in the last 20 years or so, spelling has again failed to be viewed by most people as important. As technology nurses us all with spell-checks, (this document was spell- checked) and we find the need to communicate faster and faster with more and more people, phrases like "Idk y, but I wan2 fuk u @wrk l8r" and "GoIn' Ouuuttttie wit Da DZ Gurlllllieeeez!!!!" are not only commonplace on the Internet and in text messages, but we UNDERSTAND them! Sound like Shakespeare? Not quite, but the idea is the same: Sound it out. Does it sound like a phrase you can decode and understand? If so, then the message has been communicated, and the end may justify the means.

 I detest that "Lite" is growing in popularity as a spelling, especially in advertising (a market that is aiding in the slow death of spelling like mercury to a baby) but, it is reality that I must face.

As I labor over correct spelling and punctuation in the text messages I send, I cannot help but admit that when I'm driving (yes, driving) and trying to express a simple thought to a loved one, I too find myself typing a quick, "Luv U 2 bye". Is it inevitable that our language will devolve from universal spellings to universal inconsistent spellings? How long before we see this kind of spelling not only in texts, but on legal documents and job applications?

It is for all of the above mentioned reasons that I plead with you in the words of McLovin: "Read a fuckin' book!" And if I correct some misspelling of yours in a text, don't take it personally, It's not you I'm after, but the future of a good friend of mine that I met when I first uttered "Ba-ba".