In mid-December, the Oregon Department of Education announced that middle and high school students would be allowed to use spell check in standardized tests and work samples in 2011.
In defense of the plan, Oregon superintendent Susan Castillo told The Oregonian, “We are not letting a student’s keyboarding skills get in the way of being able to judge their writing ability.”
There are merits to giving students spell check, letting them to worry more about their ability to express themselves within the state’s standardized tests than their correctly spelling “fluoride,” or a tricky technical term. It gives students more of an opportunity to concentrate on what they are trying to convey, and it allows them to work more efficiently by spending less time in a time-limited environment trying to decide how to correctly spell a word. It also doesn’t punish students for terrible typing, as Castillo alluded to.
However, Castillo overlooked the most important reasons why students should not be have the chance to spell-check their work: Spelling can be an important aspect of one’s ability to communicate, and letting students artificially enhance their ability to spell does a disservice to students and the educators who teach them.
People aren’t always going to have spell check by their side. Getting a note from your father that says “I love you. Bye, son,” has a far different meaning than “I love yew bison.” Don’t you feel better knowing that your dad cares about you, instead of him professing his adoration of his hand-carved “Wildlife of the West” collectable figurines? Spell check isn’t going to know what a student is getting at, and sometimes, it’s easier to understand someone when they sound it out and get close, instead of guessing the wrong word.
As outlandish as that sounds, there are plenty of practical scenarios where spelling is important and checking spelling is cumbersome. If you are putting letters on a sign board for instance and you don’t know how to spell, your business can end up advertising a showing of the “Chronicals of Narnia.”
Spell check doesn’t always save someone from an embarrassing spelling error either; for example, there was an e-mail circulated by the University’s athletic department that asks Duck fans to “Commemorate the 12-0 season and BCS National Championship birth.” Granted, Oregon’s football team made a push to the top of the polls this season, but every one of our mothers would agree that push was different than the one that brought us into this world.
Spell check may know the difference between right and wrong, but it’s not going to know the difference between “write” and “right.” Even if students sound out a word to try and spell correctly, they could spend their entire paper joining clauses with the wicked “witch” instead of the good “which.”
The biggest problem with enabling students to use spell check on their standardized tests isn’t a laughing matter, however. The entire concept undermines the education system instilled starting in elementary school. The once-daunting third-grade spelling tests are proven irrelevant, as long as the student knows what the word means. It goes from being able to master a word and knowing when to use to being able to regurgitate a sentence overheard once, as long as it’s close enough that the computer recognizes the words involved.
Castillo’s comments are off-base, not because of intention, but because of the effect the mandate will have in practicality. Even if the system was designed to try to save troubled teenage typists, it instead lets students exploit the system and make their communicative abilities look far better.
Regardless of the good intentions behind the choice to put spell check in the hands of every Oregon middle school and high school student, the state should revert to its old system of letting students’ writing abilities do the communicating.
And yew better believe there’s not a read line under a single word in this peace.
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