a few weeks ago I posted on an Australian story of a university pfoessor calling for a re-evaluation of plagarism. Today comes news from England of a university prossor there saying we need to give up on spelling:
A British university lecturer has published an essay arguing that students are so inept at spelling that academics should just accept alternate spellings of words that are typically spelled incorrectly, The Times of London reported. “Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem, or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such,” wrote Ken Smith of Bucks New University.
‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’. Or maybe not – Times Online
Seeing that the spelling of the word “judgement”, for example, is now widely accepted as a variant of “judgment”, why can’t “truely” also be accepted as a variant spelling of “truly”? Dr Smith asks. “I am not asking [people] to learn to spell these words differently. All I am suggesting is that we might well put 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words in the English language on the same footing as those other words that have a widely accepted variant spelling.”
Shaun McElroy is a High School Counselor at Shanghai American School - Puxi Campus. He blogs at 
New blog post: Education 2.0 http://www.utechtips.com/?p=792Reply – Quote
Education 2.0 /U Tech Tips/ – a few weeks ago I posted on an Australian story of a university pfoessor … http://tinyurl.com/65h7v4Reply – Quote
Hey, Jeff,
Are they kidding? First of all, Dr. Smith is proposing something that is and has been done for years, so long as it’s limited to just the few, most common examples. I’ll give an example. When I was a child, we learned the rule for writing possessive nouns. Singular nouns ALWAYS were made possessive by using an apostrophe+s. After years of people butchering this rule by writing things like Texas’ or bass’, the “rule” was modified to allow folks to use only the apostrophe when the singular noun ended in an “s.” (Still makes me cringe.) So, the modification of spelling and grammar rules has been an ongoing process, which is fine. The bigger concern is the basis for Dr. Smith’s suggestion. Kids lack the skill, so do away with it? Wow! What determination and dedication to high standards that reflects (sarcasm intended). Didn’t we cover this back in the 80s and 90s with whole language? Newsflash to the good doctor–any activity requiring a high degree of skill will involve a great deal of failure in the learning process. It doesn’t mean you should just skip to the medal ceremonies.
Thanks for the laugh, Jeff!
I have to agree with working on his doctorate Mr. Rodgers. Sounds a bit like the IBM commercials, “I haven’t made in money with my avatar but I have one.”, etc. I can not tell you the number of times even today I recite the “i before e…” when spelling a word. Sometimes I think things have to be hard to achieve in order to fully apreciate them.