Personally I would like teachers to concentrate on enabling people to think logically and morally and to be creative.

The most important base for this is a comprehensible language, but comprehensibility does not require standardised spelling or grammar (or is this sentence incomprehensible to US english readers because of lack of a zed {zee}) Mainly comprehensibility requires good listening and reading skills.

However I fear that it is much easier to assess spelling, than to assess comprehensibilty or creativity. Therefore, lazy politicians and teachers set schools targets for spelling. Comprehensibilty and creativity suffer as a consequence.

Or perhaps I'm alone in thinking it would be better to read an inconsistently spelt play by Shakespeare than a correctly spelt essay which mearly repeats what others have previously said.