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Comment by callmeed | Hacker News Reader

This might be a weird question and totally based on anecdotes but: are you a good speller?

I have a lot of friends who were homeschooled and/or homeschool their kids. I've also hired some and gone to school with some. One thing I noticed about several of them is they're bad at spelling. I've always wondered why.

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I'm a decent speller. I was homeschooled starting in the mid eighties, so coursework was done mostly away from the computer (i.e. no autocorrect crutch). Also, my mom valued spelling and grammar and would be quick to point out mistakes.

In general, I mostly saw problems with homeschooled peers being weak at math.

We homeschool. My son spells words fairly well and my daughter spells like a cat.

We've worked with both of them on spelling, in about the same way.

I wouldn't really call this a cause, but my daughter doesn't really believe spelling words correctly is anything she needs to get fussed over. She thinks it's funny to spell words wrong. Me too, sometimes--though I still hope she grows out of it eventually.

I was also homeschooled for the most part (k-4, 6-10, then college) and consider myself an excellent speller. For my fifth grade year, I went to a private school where I competed in a spelling bee and won at the school level, then at the state level against other private schools for my grade level. I have never found spelling to be deficient among the homeschoolers I know - quite the opposite in fact.

Probably anecdotal. In my (also anecdotal) experience homeschoolers tend to read more and be more likely to participate in spelling bees.

I was homeschooled and have many once-homeschooled friends, and the ratio of bad spellers is about normal in my experience.

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