Dear Laura Fitzpatrick,I appreciate your article about Ken Smith, senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, in Buckinghamshire, England, who finds so many spelling mistakes in his students' work that he proposes that several misspellings simply be accepted as variants. However, you may have missed a larger issue: Based on the picture accompanying your article, I think Mr. Smith's students are simply too young for university--let alone old enough to study criminology. These students haven't even learned cursive yet.
I think we push students far too hard nowadays. Really, now! At what age would we expect a budding criminologist to know how to spell "accidentally" or look it up in a dictionary? Not enough attention has been paid to the physiological effects on young arms being asked to open heavy boring books before they are ready--merely to find out how a word is spelled!?
Jack Bovill, chairman of the British-based Spelling Society, is certainly correct in saying that people who have trouble with spelling are punished when it comes to applying for jobs or even filling out forms. At a time like this we can hardly afford to see such people waste valuable education time learning how to put letters into arbitrary rows when there are so many bigger ideas to be learned about! I’d feel a lot better knowing that my physiologist concentrated on *physiology* rather than worry about not spelling it “fizzyollogee”! And what is this business with filling out forms, anyway! Is it just me or do we fill out way too many forms? What do they do with these forms? Where is the British-based Forms Society when you need them?
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