June 5, 2006--"SEPERATE"

Every morning, even before inspecting our fingernails to see if there was dirt under them, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Greenberg seperated the boys and the girls for the daily Speling Bee.

Alternating genders, she posed a series of words to each of us in turn; and if we misspeled them, we had return to our desks with heads bowed to wait for the contest to procede and for the eventual winner to be acknowldged—always, by the way, Carol Siegelstein.

Mrs. Greenberg began with easy words such as family, brother, and automobile; and then would begin to ratchet things up with trickier ones such as thought, persue, and nieghbor--ah, the "i-e" rule!

I was the worst speler in the class, and as Carol was routinely triumphent I was always to first to have to sit down in disgrace. I couldn’t even spell spell correctly!

So you can only imagine the emotions that were unleeshed in me the other night when I inadvertently tuned in to the finals of the National Speling Bee.

Long gone were words that would give even Carol Siegelstein aggiter—ammeliorate, principal (as opposed to principle), and the closest Mrs. G would venture into foreign territory--hors d’oeuvres. I was stuned to find that at least half the words the kids were asked to spell weren’t even English words. Most seemed to be French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Persian, or Hawaian! Hukilau? I almost needed ressusitation (which I can’t for the life of me spell).

I must confess, no surprise, that I did know how to spell the Hebrew word for the service for the dead—yizkor—and of course for matzo- meal dumplings—knaydl. So what else is new?

If you want to torture yourself with some of the other words that were included see the NY Times story linked below.

So what’s this all about? In the era of Spell-Check who needs to know how to spell? Even back in my day, and I admit this is largly a rationalisation, I always thought corecting speling is what editors were hired to do. So why make such a big deal about it? The progresive educater in me always thought there was a latent agenda here—that insisting on correct speling was more a surogate for corectness in general, a part of the larger disipline system, than a concern about good writing.

At the time someone attempted to consol me by reporting that Winston Churchil was a poor speler (and student) and he seemed to turn out all right.

Me on the other hand . . .