The mere “hearing” of spelling lessons is happily a thing of the past in
most schools. However, teachers cannot be too strongly impressed with the
worthlessness of such exercises. The primary object is to instruct, not
to examine—to teach to spell correctly, not to find out how many words
may be spelled incorrectly. Review lessons should be given frequently,
and these are sufficient for test purposes. All other lessons should be
thoroughly taught with instruction the aim and object of the lesson.