Why Can't Johnny Spell

by Pat Behnke

We all complain about it. Students are graduating from high school without the basic skills necessary to survive in the work world. One of the biggest complaints usually involves the lack of spelling finesse by our young pupils. I often wonder if we as a consumer-oriented society should take part of the responsibility for the loss of spelling ability. Imagine a typical day in the life of a high school student in order to understand what I mean. Our fictional student, Johnny turns in a paper to his English teacher, Ms. Thorn. She is puzzled by the gross errors in spelling and wonders why one of her most intelligent and promising students can't spell the simplest of words. She asks Johnny to stop by her desk after class. "Johnny, did you proofread your paper?" she asks gently. "Sure, I did." he tells her. "Well, there seems to be a problem. Look at this first sentence." She holds the paper toward him, pointing to the sentence in question. "Almost every word is misspelled, Johnny." He looks closely at the paper. "Where?" he asks when he doesn't see anything amiss. Ms. Thorn tells him to take the paper home and revise it. She points out some of the basic errors, but asks Johnny to use a dictionary for the rest of the questionable words. Before Johnny goes home to work on the paper, he has a few things to do first. After school he stops by Kash N Karry for some supplies for the weekend camping trip with his church group. He also goes to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts. He promised his homeroom classmates that morning that he would bring them to school the next day. Then he passes Photos Ar Nice and decides to buy some film. He wants to be sure to capture the beautiful scenery and silly antics of his friends as they enjoy the rustic beauty of a Florida autumn. He decides to stop and buy a present for his little sister. He feels guilty about neglecting her in the last few weeks while he studied for school and prepared to take the SAT. At Toys R Us, he buys some Play Doh. He is sure that she will enjoy that. One more stop at the grocery store and then he will be free to go home and revise that English paper. He wonders again what Ms. Thorn meant by the "gross errors" in spelling comment scrawled across the top of his paper.

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