My children all read well. Their spelling skills are all over the board; one has near-perfect spelling, as do I. Mostly, though, they spell intermittently. Handwriting is again, all over the board; they’re artists and well-educated people but they don’t all care what their handwriting looks like. My third child did not care about it at all. Rather than have them weep over handwriting exercises, I had them write a couple words a day, a few times a week. Once they could write a legible phone message, I dropped it. The only things I’m writing by hand are notes in church, my paper planner (theirs are all digital), and paperwork at the doctor’s office. Printing is fine, and if I’m in a hurry my handwriting becomes a print/cursive hybrid that lost me a spelling test in fourth grade, “because the letters weren’t connected”.

I chalk that test up to envy; we students were grading each other’s spelling tests. I was on track to get 100 percent on Every Spelling Test that year, with a McDonald’s burger meal reward. It was near the end of the year, and the other students were desperate to find anything I might miss. Fourth grade was also the designated year for perfecting our cursive handwriting, so when I wrote in a mixture of connected and unconnected, perfectly legible, letters, the student with my paper asked about that. They marked most of the words wrong. I’m sure the teacher counted on this being a preliminary test; there would be a second test Friday on the same words. On Friday I wrote my spelling words in perfect Zaner-Bloser cursive, every letter connected. I aced them all.

At the end of the school year I walked to the park in pairs with the other students. I held hands with the boy who had ingratiated himself into being my partner, probably so he could get some fries. There was no McDonald’s in our northern Wyoming town; someone drove 80 miles round trip to bring my burger, fries, and shake. It tasted good enough. The experience has stayed with me, though. I remember having perfect spelling; I remember sitting in the grass under the trees, eating fries.

I’m proud of having figured out the pattern and quirks American English is based on. It has a certain grace, principles both egalitarian and esoteric. To me the correct spellings Look Correct. I’ve tried teaching my children this pattern sense, but I refuse to drill it into them. The problem is, it’s hard to practice spelling without handwriting. By the time a child has the hand strength and coordination to write a lot, the time for phonics has mostly passed.

So I’ve settled for children who read well. They can express themselves; they know how to write and they can use a spell-checker. There are more important things to learn.