the fascination with spelling seems to know no end in the USA
It's not unique to the USA - the French could tell you a thing or two about the Championnats d'Orthographe....
I agree with your point though. There is a telling moment in the OP, where it says that the son's reward for working the flashcards is the parent reading him books beyond his reading level. What is the point of spelling words ahead of your reading level? Spelling prowess comes from repeated exposure to written words[1]. It's called "reading" and I can't see any reason (aside from stupid standardised testing) that a kid's spelling ability needs to be ahead of their reading level.
[1] This is if why you are a perl programmer the word "pearl" starts looking wrong.
Edit, due to comments below:
The question is why are teachers asking for words to be spelled essentially out of context. I just can't think of a good reason because the only way you can learn them is by flashcard games, and like the comment above, I just can't see how it is a good use of a kid's time. I certainly do not blame the parent for making sure their kid does well at school, I just don't see the sense of school being this way.
Take the word, oh I don't know. Serialization. Or hypervisor. Or encryption. Most people here can spell them (I assume!) even though you were never required to learn to do so at school - you have learned by sheer exposure. You also know that the opposite of encryption is not unencryption, but decryption, and a decrypted message is not the same as an unencrypted message. Now of course there are linguistic reasons for all this, but the point is that you know these things because you encountered these words in context.
A kid that reads a Star-Trek tie-in is sure to be able to spell "teleportation". Yes, you can also teach a kid to spell that out of context with a flash card. But why? I just don't get it.
[Disclosure: frustrated non-native English speaker who had to teach a first grader to spell "reduce, reuse, recycle" this week, gaaaaah].
You have no idea how many times I've apologized to my son for the fact that English spelling makes no sense and he has to learn it. If I could wave a magic wand, we'd have a good phonetic spelling system. (And there is an example of a word that is not phonetically spelled...)
With that said, let me clarify a couple of potential misconceptions.
The words that I am teaching my son are not beyond his reading level. In fact they are taken from lists of words that he is expected to be able to read, and was asked to spell on tests in his classroom. His spelling winds up beyond his grade level simply because most kids his age don't know most of those words.
The only connection between the reward activity (reading) and the flashcards is that I use the first to make the second pleasurable. I'm not reading to him because it is good for him, I'm reading to him because he enjoys it. I'd be happy playing with marbles instead. I don't put words from the story into the flashcards - he has enough other stuff that he actually needs to learn which is higher priority.
He isn't learning to spell ahead of his reading level, he's learning to spell based on what his teacher suggests.
The reward is that he gets read to, read something he isn't yet able to read on his own because it's ahead of his reading level. The reward is enjoying some good fiction, nothing to do with learning how to spell words from this more-advanced text.
It's not unique to the USA - the French could tell you a thing or two about the Championnats d'Orthographe....
I agree with your point though. There is a telling moment in the OP, where it says that the son's reward for working the flashcards is the parent reading him books beyond his reading level. What is the point of spelling words ahead of your reading level? Spelling prowess comes from repeated exposure to written words[1]. It's called "reading" and I can't see any reason (aside from stupid standardised testing) that a kid's spelling ability needs to be ahead of their reading level.
[1] This is if why you are a perl programmer the word "pearl" starts looking wrong.
Edit, due to comments below:
The question is why are teachers asking for words to be spelled essentially out of context. I just can't think of a good reason because the only way you can learn them is by flashcard games, and like the comment above, I just can't see how it is a good use of a kid's time. I certainly do not blame the parent for making sure their kid does well at school, I just don't see the sense of school being this way.
Take the word, oh I don't know. Serialization. Or hypervisor. Or encryption. Most people here can spell them (I assume!) even though you were never required to learn to do so at school - you have learned by sheer exposure. You also know that the opposite of encryption is not unencryption, but decryption, and a decrypted message is not the same as an unencrypted message. Now of course there are linguistic reasons for all this, but the point is that you know these things because you encountered these words in context.
A kid that reads a Star-Trek tie-in is sure to be able to spell "teleportation". Yes, you can also teach a kid to spell that out of context with a flash card. But why? I just don't get it.
[Disclosure: frustrated non-native English speaker who had to teach a first grader to spell "reduce, reuse, recycle" this week, gaaaaah].