Spelling: A Clue About Why Some People Spell Wrong(ly)

‘’─“”

In a recent post, Australian commentator Misty Adoniou might have put her finger on the roots of poor spelling.  It brings together several things things that I’m interested in: poor spelling, cultural continuity, etymology, and elementary education.

I keep talking about how important elementary education is, but I don’t think I usually succeed in making my point: we have to take a greater interest in elementary education.  Why we fail has slipped through the cracks, and I think I can answer this a little more effectively at the end of the post!

Anyway, Ms Adoniou addresses the problem with English spelling head on.  We all know that English spelling is notoriously inconsistent; there’s no percentage in deploring that.  But what I had not really noticed is the connection between spelling, speech, and etymology.  Sister Misty points out that if a kid focuses on how he or she pronounces the word that she is trying to spell, she is at the mercy of yet another problem with English, namely the notoriously enormous variety of pronunciation styles that exist across the globe.  This is the price we pay for popularizing this incredibly disorganized language among such a variety of peoples (and putting such morons in front of the TV cameras.  Just don’t get me started ...)

The example she uses simply makes the whole point.  She was describing how, in a memo, an adult spelled the word “resident” as resadent.  The man (or woman) had been taught to spell phonetically, so he or she chose the wrong unit of spelling to represent the syllable ‘si’.  The point here is that the poor numskull is not thinking about the meaning of the word, which means to live, or reside somewhere.  What’s the point?  The origin of the word "resident", which is the word reside, helps us choose among possible alternatives for the troublesome syllable here, which appears to be the middle one, and pick "si" over "sa", which many Americans pronounce the same way.  (In other countries: who knows?  I say "rez-ee-dent," but I’m funny that way.)  Studying the origins of words has such great uses, and spelling is just one of them.  In these days of every tom, dick and harry coining his own word, and words becoming current based not on their importance, but just on how catchy they are, it is good to spend some time looking at words that have persisted in use for centuries, and have brought the connotations of their origins with them, to add richness to English.  The decline of interest in etymology (the study of the origins of words) probably correlates perfectly with the rise in bad spelling.

Shortest-path, Least-resistance minimalists among our educators have little patience for etymology.  But think: etymology is an enormously useful tool for teaching a child how to connect itself with the past, and with the roots of words.  Some of us may have no Italian ancestry whatsoever, but linguistically we are the descendants of Nero and his buddies, and more importantly, the Romans who colonized Britain.  We may have no Greek ancestry, either, but intellectually we’re descended from Pythagoras, and Archimedes, and Aristotle, and Alexander, and Socrates.  A little at a time, we can teach spelling and history, and entertain our students with stories.

Here’s the idea to which I was trying to give birth.  Just because a young person loves kids, it does not qualify him or her to be an elementary school teacher.  I think this is where we fail.  An elementary teacher must be, first and foremost, an intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, well-informed adult.  Some of the pre-service elementary teachers I see should not be in the classroom.  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that I don’t like these people.  Most of the young people presenting themselves for elementary teaching are lovely, but their interests are too narrow.  Elementary school is too hard and too important to hand over to well-meaning, lovely people who love kids.  Keeping them out of elementary school ensures that they continue to be this way; the elementary classroom can turn such an innocent into a homicidal maniac.

A visit to a typical elementary school will reveal a population of elementary teachers that is an interesting mix.  There are a few who could take on almost any job anywhere: engaged, aware, skilled, able to talk intelligently with anyone (but perhaps not willing, after decades of dealing with people with a mental age of 5), capable with literature, mathematics, social sciences, history.  But the vast majority are people who could barely function outside an elementary classroom, and who would be at a loss with kids of even slightly above average intelligence.  We must stop thinking that people who can barely function in society, and barely function even in college, should be safely channeled into elementary classrooms as teachers.  This is what has to stop.

At the secondary level there are other difficulties: there is a tendency to put methods specialists in secondary classrooms, rather than content specialists.  We need people who are both good at their subject, and good at handling students, but that’s another fight for another day.

Testing teachers constantly does not help too much, once someone who does not belong in a classroom has been hired.  It simply annoys the poor misfits, and forces them to keep memorizing the same material that they never really understood, and still don’t understand.  I suppose it is possible to annoy a frustrated adult who should never have been forced into teaching in order to earn a living, into giving up a career in education, but it is unlikely.  Many adults continue in education because they have an enormous capacity to tolerate frustration.

It is time someone tried to discern whether teachers in Finland and Japan and places where education proceeds beautifully were better students themselves than their counterparts in the USA.  If Sunday-School teachers were better paid, we might have a better education system; it would be something to do, for someone who can’t do anything else!  But it might spell death for religion.

Arch