Should students be allowed to exit from college and scarcely know how to read and write? It's pretty clear that people much younger than me and my peers can't spell, and that has to be because they were not taught. Remedial (it's now euphemistically called "developmental") reading is being taught in colleges, at least two-year colleges. I know because I myself have taught it.
We're not only talking questions of the role of post-secondary education. One time, as part of my job (educational publishing), I visited an elementary school in a somewhat affluent suburban community. In one room I saw a student lying on the floor while a classmate was tracing his outline. In another room there was almost an appearance of anarchy: multiple small groups of students were working at their own pace (and maybe at their own projects) while the teacher visited them in rotation. When I was in elementary school, we sat still and listened to the teacher.
I had already had a good idea that teaching had changed. Because I worked in educational publishing—one of my first jobs—I knew that, in the hands of the "educationists" (those with Ed.D. or Doctor of Education degrees), the philosophy was that you can't teach anything if you can't make it into a game. Teaching has to be sugar-coated as fun. To not do so is to "turn the kids off." No idea whatsoever that some things have to be learned by rote memorization.
So kids today don't learn to spell. They can't do mental math and a cashier in a store would be helpless without his or her register to calculate the customer's change for her.
At least this was where education in America was several decades ago. I frankly don't know if it's much different now but I am pretty sure that kids are still not learning how to spell.
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein
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