Highlanders test their spelling skills

This scene is set in the halls of Homestead High School as ten students receive three life-changing tests: spelling, geography and common sense.

Blood was shed, brains were twisted and egos fell to the ground as these students were given ten words to spell.

According to Dictionary.com, words are dying right now. Words are dying as a result of the competition between words and technology. They are competing against phones and spell check, technologies that make people unable to spell words.

People have started to become dependent on spell check to spell words correctly. As shown in The Idiot Test, given by Highlander journalists Molly Riebau, senior, and Tori Cayle, junior, even words like “definitely” and “cantaloupe” had students at a loss for words.

“Why in the world would I ever need to spell cantaloupe?” Johnny Erpenbeck, junior, screamed.

The students had a harder time with the spelling than they expected; they had been using spell check as a helpful tool whenever these types of words appeared.

Afterwards, these ten Mighty Highlander students took the geography portion of the test.

According to Jon Mixon, the reason why so many Americans are bad at geography is because “most American schools no longer teach geography as a separate subject and combine it under an umbrella course, colloquially termed as ‘social studies.’”

As shown by the results of the test, geography was one of students’ least successful subjects.

For example, Abby Pippines, senior, only got one correct answer in the geography section.

However, there are some students who performed well. For instance, JR Reardon, junior, soared to the top with a 100 percent on the geography test.

At the end of the day, questions that seem to be easy may be difficult due to gaps in what is taught at schools. Hopefully, these students, as well as many other Americans, will take the test to heart and will show their desire for a richer education in the future.