For those who don't think spelling is important

[Quinn]

My impression is that the majority of young people today have poor to mediocre vocabularies, spelling and grammar. The real concern for me isn't so much these deficiencies in and of themselves, but rather, I think it's an indication of how much TV and internet we consume, where everything (more so in the case of the former) is packaged into bite-sized pieces, with very little real substance or value. Watch a one hour Discovery Channel special, and then spend one hour reading about the same topic in a book (or on a good website), and see which one you gain more from. As individuals we probably know more on the whole than people 50 or 100 years ago, but I think we're very much generalists, and areas where we do specialize, especially for young people, are areas of debatable value, such as music, sports and pop culture.