OK, I'm not the spelling police, and gosh knows I make mistakes posting here, BUT, I just now heard a news story where a school in pulling teaching spelling out of the curriculum in grade school!!!! They will only teach spelling based on misspelled words the kids do in regular work!

OK, for my school tax dollars this is NOT a school - just what the heck do they actually plan to teach in grade school??? They're dropping cursive writing, I guess spelling makes sense because if you can't write why spell, and it will follow - if you can't spell how can you read! so maybe that will fly out the window too.

The person representing the school's decision looked about 22 - this makes sense, too, what with the pigin english people his age now use to text. I never used to like the idea of home schooling; but now I'm seeing the best way for kids to be educated is to take that tax money and give it back to parents to home school, or home school collectively where a few families get together and school their kids in very small groups.

No more school board paychecks, superintendant's pay, all manner of admin on all levels, teachers, teachers aides, janitors, bus drivers, buses and building costs. They could also do away with the cost of state level school depts too - they do nothing but suck up tax dollars.

I'm sure kids could at least read/write/ and do math if this happened. They have an online alternative school accredited in SC called SC Connections Academy - they had a yahoo group I joined because I was curious about how this works. It seems to work just fine! Its online, you get all books and materials per school year shipped to you free and can return all for free at the end of the year - your kids learn at their own speed, they have real teacher inter action online for all subjects so you're not all alone trying to teach your child, and they take tests that show their proficiency.

Man, this no spelling just leaves me fabbergasted! sharet

We can only hope and pray someone in higher places will come to their senses.

I'm appalled to hear of this. I was also horrified when I learned they'd stopped teaching cursive writing, too.

Wow, this is hmmmm.... can't quite think of the correct word!
I know things are changing but..........

I hate to hear that! It was bad enough when they stopped teaching cursive!
I am assuming they are relying so much on the computer that spelling won't be necessary as they spell check on all computers will do that for them as well as eliminate the need for cursive.

My question being - how are they going to be able to read all the wonderful things we, our parents, grandparents and earlier generations wrote in diaries, books and notes that were done in cursive?

I love reading my grandmother's diaries.

Phyllis

Our children are so behind most of the other education systems. My granddaughter ended up going to a private school because the public school was dumbing down the classes. And they got rid of the gifted classes. Now granted some kids need extra help but what happened to keeping kids back in school.
I hate seeing kids today that don't know how to write, spell, make change, do simple math, and even read. I am no genius but I can do all those things.
Well except when loss of memory gets in the way. lol

Our schools here haven't taught spelling for a few years..and you wouldn't believe how awful it is to try and read some of the things they write. I worked in a school system and saw this first hand.
We need to get back to the basics!!

Like you I occasionally make mistakes but try to spell properly. I cringe at text message spelling. To do away with spelling when children are young is ludicrous. Children learn and retain things when they are younger.
I'd like to see the three R's return as these form a solid base for further education. I made my girls learn multiplication when their school no longer taught it and always checked their spelling and got them to learn words they had spelled incorrectly.
They all practiced cursive writing at home once they started to learn it at school. They complained at the time but appreciated it as they got older.
Your idea of spending monies on home schooling would certainly save a lot of money but there would be a lot more unemployed. Maybe showing your idea to the powers that be might shake the system up and get it back to teaching kids things they will always need in life. In your country and mine.

It is almost like the No Child Left Behind. That was someone's stupid brain fart too. No way are they ever going to get every child, because it is so costly to try to do. A lot of the schools out there just do not have the money or the teachers to do it with. Some of our best students come from home school also from small schools where teachers are actually allowed to teach, not to follow some idea that higher ups have planned and yes more of our tax dollars going to waste. Her in our small town the board voted to increase the tax mill (because they didn't have enough money to teach the kids) and then on the same page and in the same article they tell of how they were donating $25,000.00 to a walking path of CONCRETE that goes a mile around the school area for people to walk on. What a waste. They also forget that some places may not have computers or calculators so if they don't teach spelling, writing and math, how are the kids supposed to make it out there in the real world? Setting them up to live on the State system.

The kids who don't learn spelling will get jobs doing menial work - their bosses - the kids who DID learn spelling.

My DGD use to get teased by the boys in like 3rd grade because she was smart and got good grades in most everything. One told her that boys didn't like girls who were smart just pretty. ACK!! I just told her to tell him that one day She would be signing His paycheck.
She is now at GA state with a full scholarship. Him hanging out no job.
I made sure she could spell and knew what words meant. With real dictionaries.

I can't wait to tell my MIL, a retired school teacher. She gets so livid about things that aren't taught in school now that were when she taught. She has been retired for 20 years now.

It is very frustrating, but it isn't the teachers making the decisions. It is the administrators trying to make their "scores" look better. I don't want to get on my soap box, but so many of them want to keep costs down and make scores go up. In our local schools, you can't hold a student back unless the parents agree. So you child can't read, but you can keep advancing him anyway. That makes no sense at all.

Our retirement savings are going quickly to educate our grandchildren. We've co-signed for the whole 4 years of one daughters university cost (she worked, had every financing help she could find, we did the rest)
another 9 year old is in accelerated classes which are a joke and we are paying $45 per hour for additional tutoring to teach her better study habits and hoping to find a way to make her an interested not bored student. I wish the schools could work for these kids. They worked for my generation and for my kids and two of my GD have their master degrees with honors - but the lower in the grades you go the worse the instruction is. It is costing us big bucks to try to give these grandchildren a future.

THIS IS INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Years ago, when I was a beginning teacher, I was assigned to teach English grammar in middle school. The principal came by and found me teaching diagramming-I got called out for it. She said that "research" has proven it's a waste of time-that a "whole language" approach was much better and that the students lost their "creativity" when forced to learn "unnecessary" grammar rules. Well-I also taught German as a foreign language, and the kids had absolutely no comprehension, since they didn't .know a subject from a verb from a direct object. . .The idea is that if they speak the language, they can write it. My grandfather grew up speaking German as a child, but couldn't read or write it. Whenever he got a card or letter from a relative in Germany, I got a call to come over and read it to him. I didn't have to translate-just read. Now-if you also take out the spelling component, how will any one even be able to read it??? I know that as a teacher, I used to feel stressed when the students "creatively" spelled whatever they needed to write, especially when a word was spelled correctly in the typed question they were answering.

How in the world is our country going to keep going when our kids come out of school not being able to do the basics. Judge Judy said it well the other day while trying to read a message on a phone. She said our kids are loosing the ability to speak the English language. I totally agree.

My son and I were discussing just this week that his daughter's 4th grade teacher had told him "not to be concerned unless her grades fell into the 70's. At that point the teacher would assign some homework but no homework is needed until then. He is going to ask the teacher what is her goal for his daughter. Where does the teacher expect to see his daughter accomplishing education-wise? He expects her to be able to enter any university she applies for and to have at a minimum her master's at age 25. I doubt if her teacher has even thought about it. Probably just to be able to go to the next grade, and just going to the next grade year after year will not have you qualified for a top notch university.

There are schools that have been doing this for years.

I was too. I can't imagine not being able to write in cursive.

Are you serious??? Have they really stopped teaching cursive writing in school????

It seems like a lot of people are afraid that a child will be damaged for life if held back in school. How is that child being helped by letting them continue? What are they learning about dealing with everyday problems? Now lets take spelling out what's next? Maybe we should just send the kids to school and tell them they don't need to learn anything except how to feel good about themselves. This makes me mad and I'm worried for any future grands I might have.

If I were to guess, I would guess spelling was removed from the curriculum several years ago. I work with girls who are just out of high school or in the first year or so of college. To read the papers they prepare for their classes is an adventure. If I had turned in a paper of that caliber in high school I would have been given a failing grade! The spelling mistakes alone were enough to fail; forget the grammatical errors!

I don't go ballistic over punctuation because I'm not good at it, but I believe my posts are understandable, even with my mistakes.

Are we deliberating creating a new class of citizens who won't be educated, therefore will have much lower economic earning abilities? What would be the purpose in a dumber populace?
Just having one that wouldn't be able to question the ruling class? Nothing about that idea seems American to me, but I think we are seeing it happen. Our public schools are failing to educate on so many levels.

Oh, man. I'm so glad my kindergardener is in a school that believes HEAVILY in words, taking them apart, putting them together, sounding them out, using the rules, etc etc.

YES! YES! YES! I also watched MSNBC yesterday - they talk was jobs in America (what else anymore), the guest said: "there are 300,000 jobs here not being filled because the workforce doesnt have basic skills,"
commentator1: " what are the basic work skills?"
guest: "well, typically many people can't even read rulers, or do basic functions on computers."
comm1: "so, schools dont teach the right things? cant the companys train help?"
comm2; "we have to get back to basics in business, we used to train our help for specific jobs, we dont do that anymore, we need to do that."

Here's the ice water! guest: "Yes, we should take someone who needs a job and tell them we will give them on the job training AND PAY THEM LESS UNTIL THEY SHOW PROFICIENCY and then pay them the going rate for the work."
so guess who gets to judge when you're ready to go up to minimum wage in this world?!

All you need to do is dumb down 1 generation so much that they can barely function (read-write-do math)and they become the property of business. They will work at the discretion of anyone who can mold them to their needs, at whatever they feel like paying for their work. Do you actually think all the kids on up to adults in Asia working as vertual slaves in sweatshops because they are over educated??? these are an ocean of uneducated humanity, and if you think working 12-16 hrs a day, every day, is good cus "at least they have a job" you are deluded.
sharet

I home schooled my kids without one government dime. The all are healthy well adjusted adults with jobs and not collecting government dimes. They read, write, make change, hold jobs and actually work for their pay, carry on adult conversations, obey the laws, vote, understand business - I could go on. None of them bothered with college. They just took nothing jobs and the cream rose to the top.

my son is in his early forties but had an English teacher in the 8th or 9th grade I couldn't believe. she couldn't even write a complete sentence, much less speak one to teach.

these days with electronics to do everything for us, why should we take the trouble to learn? seems to be the logic behind this.

Please don't trash us. We're doing our best in a very bad situation to educate your children and grandchildren Children are being forced to learn more at an earlier age than ever before. And many of the children have major medical, emotional, and psychological problems then when we were in school. Many children have no parent taking care of them much less making sure they do their homework or even see that they get dinner and a bath.

We are told what to teach and how to teach it. Schools have embraced a business model that we must follow so that our product (the kids)all turn out the same. Trust me, we're as frustrated as parents are.

Cursive writing is an art but it is becoming unnecessary. As long as a child can write their signature they're fine. You generally print on forms if you;re filling them in by hand.

Wow, I've really been out of the education loop. My boys are all in their 30's and their curriculum was like mine at the same age.
NancyBelly- I don't think people are trashing the teachers but rather the system. It must be very frustrating for many of the teachers. YIKES!

Frightening!! No matter the country.

I agree!

You are definitely not being trashed! My best friend is still teaching, and she is looking forward to being able to retire. There is not a whole lot of enjoyment in teaching some subjects where you have to read the teacher's guide word for word. Kids are not robots and you need the freedom to teach in all different ways to help them. I know some parents who homeschool and others who send their children to Christian Schools, because they want the best for their kids. They don't do it to trash public schools, they are just doing what is best for their children.

I want to repeat what Susan Margaret said that we are not trashing the teachers. We want a reform of the system. I have two children who are teachers and two grandchildren who are teachers. They are so disillusioned and feel so frustrated! We have to get this teaching the tests idea out of our schools and go back to teaching knowledge. Our kids seem to be able to pass the tests that the government requires but have not learned to understand, they can make boxes to indicate their answers but not think through and write out a solution. My son says that each year the graduating class is dumber than the class before it. What will these kids do as adults?