The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1955-07-29

dials. Let us look through the narrow window
which is increasingly the Americans view of Amer,
icas life and manners. Are all thy conquests.
glories, tributes, spos, shrunk to this little meas
ure?"
crowded theatre A rowing lad with micro
phone and trailing cable. He challenges spoilers
Many hands go up. One swarthy lad with crew-cut
presented as notable contender in the inteec
tuat pastime called golf manages, with hesitancy,
to spell champion Wild applause, and a prize
Then woman in twenties perhaps or thirtes
is gwen the word disappear, She spells it with
p, No applause; prize Next, housewife, portly
and competent looking, and surely in her fifties,
essays the spelling of newsstand She spells il with
one s. No applause; no prize.
Finally schooboy fifth or sixth grade at
guess is offered five hundred dollars for the
rect spelling of diphtherio. He begins with diff,
pauses, is encouraged 10 try again. Once more he
starts with dtf,, and the prize is lost The brief
spelng,bee is over -Four words offered three
msspeed.
This is America. mind you; educated America
America schooled and hgh.schooled and colleged
at an annual expense of billions of dollars This is
America where no sin is considered so great as the
sin of illitefacy. And what illiteracy? AT bottom
il is the ability TO read and write And has
the ability to write inteliigently to read in
tegently for that matter - without some ability
to spell.
No one is expected to be able to spell off-hand
all the great multitude of words to be found in
the unabridged Webster No amount of schooling
can equip a person for that But very small
amount of schooling ought to enable pupil to
spell the more common or ordinary words Of our
language .--
We might even in this over-schooled age, for
give the schooiboy for missing the spelling Of
dphtherid Yet the chances are that the schoolboy's
greatgrsndfather would have spelled the word
recty with prize of five hundred dollars offered,
but only the threat of abysma shame if he missed.
And the greatgrandfather had very few of the
opportunities for learning that lavishy supplied
to the modern eschoolboy.
The mature ladies who eagerly offered them
selves as candidates in the spellingbee are not 10
he forgiven for their failure They we're not forced
10 the test They chose to enter the lists. And
chose with such confidence Of manner as comes
from secondary school training college course,
Here and there in the cataog of famous per
sons - sometimes called genuSes by enthusiastic
newspaper men, -- there has been man or wo-
man notably weak in the art and science of spelling.
But each of these persons had the sense 10 use
eye they had the wisdom land the money! to
employ secretary who could spell And, despite
the cynical opinion of many some secretaries act
ually spell
Such random spellingbee that here de
scrlbed is surely fair test of what modern school
ing has accomplished in fundamental subject
of instruction Or rather of what il has not accom-
pshed. One wonders whether the thing called
iliteracy is overcome by our methods of schooling
One wonders whether person may not be Ph.D.
and still be an iterate.
A re~ years ago there was classical confer.
ence" at notable university A group of teachers
read tiresome papers at one another, One season
ed lady spoke at length on duasms in Latin, -
such expressions as may be illustrated in English
by the phrase with might and main" A professor
bearded like the pard put hand in his trousers
pocket and stammered through treatise on the
recurrence of the particles te and KAT in Greek
manuscript. The occasion was a tedious presenta
tion of Much Ado about Nothing demonstration
of sterile and piddling scholarship.
Then arose husky individual who wished to
shed some enlightenment on the subject of Scandan
avian Versions of Virgil He had such difficulty
in reading his paper that was forced TO con
cude that either he had not written the thing
himself or had written II so long ago that he had
forgotten what il was all about And not one Of
all these representatives OF Intellectual Brass was
either good reader or fully articulate speaker
Give you level money that they were poor spoilers
too
For more than hundred years now America
has been hipped education Everyone has been
grounded solidy in the dogma that the Schoolhouse
is the temple of mans highest aspirations And the
schoolhouSe has widened its character to include
college and university. that old married men
still trotting off TO classes, And yet America can.
not spell
Here are interrupted. indeed. are brought
to full stop We shall say no more Of spelling
just now For last weeks Times comes 10 hand and
our little column is as, unfortunately Is often the
case) besprnkled with errors Some printers devil
has changed our "abiured" to "adjured" He has
omitted the phrase "of peace" after high advoca-
tes" and thus trampled to death not too subtle
bit of satire. He has left out the mot in our wish
that the Americans at Geneva might not have only
the simplicity of doves, r. leaving unexpressed the
wish that they might have also the wisdom Of
fnr all mph have said LING