Ooops! I knew something just didn’t seem right…

A nightmare for any roadside crew is to misspell a word on any street or road sign. When the mistake happens in a school zone, the issue becomes a whole new ball game and everyone has to put their 2 cents in. In the picture above, you may notice a redish-brick structure at the very top of the photograph. That is a North Carolina public school; which is trying to educate students and be a place for higher learning in this city, county, state, and in our country we know as America. Not very far in front of the school, a crew of workers were hired to zone off an area of the road in white paint. A couple of horizontal stripes, a vertical stripe, and the word “school” in block letters were the instructions.

Well the Carolina sun must have been pretty hot on this particular afternoon; when the private contracting company put their men to work on this school zone project. It seems a huge error got made and instead of spelling the word “school“, this crew spelled “S-H-C-O-O-L” for everyone in this school district to see. Maybe only a few observant adults would notice the mistake and the kids wouldn’t catch this NC school spelling blunder? Perhaps a bit of wishful thinking, but that wasn’t how this story would play out. Who knows who the first person in N.C. was to notice the school road spelling mistake, but it didn’t take long for the kids to catch on and pass this around, to all of their friends on Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, text messages, cell phone calls, and a few emails.

The positive thing from this mistake, is young students talking about education and at least getting school on their minds. Even if it is at the expense of a person’s shameful mistake. Notice in the picture above, the boy in the blue shirt has a message written out behind him on a yellow sign. We can only see the first part of the message; which says “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it“. This is exactly how this North Carolina spelling error is playing out and Yahoo users have already left well over 4,000 comments related to this spelling error story. A lot of finger pointing going on and not many willing to just chalk this one up as a mistake.

While Yahoo has the story front and center on their homepage, this story is spreading just as fast on the World Wide Web as it is through the North Carolina school yards with smiling and giggling children of all ages, races, and backgrounds. No matter your age or race, you can see the humor in this story or most people should be able to. Others are coming up with their own conclusions and probably reading much deeper into this school road mistake; than really needs to be.

Yahoo Users have left no stone unturned and after reading through a few hundred of the comments, I can see just how sad things can be at times. I have seen several comments related to political views and how President Obama, Democrats, or the Republican party is to blame for one person’s spelling mistake in North Carolina. Others point the finger toward Mexico and say how an illegal immigrant is probably responsible for one person’s spelling mistake in North Carolina. Since North Carolina is a southern state, there was no shortage of redneck jokes or how some backwoods southern hick from North Carolina was the person responsible for one person’s spelling mistake in North Carolina.

Women were probably the only group of people in the whole entire world who was spared from being blamed on one person’s spelling mistake in North Carolina. I’m sure this upset some female folks; that no one is assuming a woman did this spelling error. Nothing wrong to assume a man made this mistake. Since mostly men work and apply for these types of road crew jobs. No woman should be offended that women was left out of the debate at Yahoo; well at least they were spared until this blogger threw their name into the mix of name-calling online. I believe the big picture and small picture all boils down to one thing. THIS WAS ONLY ONE PERSON’S SPELLING MISTAKE IN NORTH CAROLINA!

Let’s also keep in mind that painting letters on a road is a lot different from typing or writing words out on a screen or piece of paper. Fast food workers who often make spelling mistakes on their big signs, are not always poor spellers. The school zone mistake in North Carolina is really not about spelling and how the education system in America is going down the drain. Displaying letters in this fashion on a road or a fast food sign is not a IQ thing, like so many Yahoo Users are trying to point out. It’s actually a job or a task of a different sorts and it’s about organizing the work, before you begin to display it. The fast food worker stacks his/her letters before they begin to put up a message on a fast food restaurant sign. If he or she stacks a letter in the wrong place, the outcome of the job could result in a spelling error, but in no ways suggests the person doesn’t know how to spell.

The person in North Carolina may or may not know how to spell the word school. Taking the letter “h” out of school, still sounds like it would say the same thing. So not a big reach to see how someone could misspell the word school. We don’t know if this person can spell school or not. What we do know, is their organizational skills failed on this hot summer afternoon in North Carolina and that’s the only thing we can be certain of. A simple excuse or good explanation could also erase this person’s organizational habits on this spelling blunder, so even the thing we are certain on, could also have a very understandable explanation.

Kids are laughing in North Carolina. The private contractors are having a good laugh back at the office. We on the Internet are speaking what’s on our minds. A simple 2 letter reversal in the word school, painted in white on some hot asphalt street in beautiful North Carolina, should be getting a lot more credit for the positive things it has brought out. Even though its mostly negative at Yahoo, at least we get to see into the minds of Americans and none of us are mind readers. People in power could use this story to help make positive changes. The education system in North Carolina has the most to gain, by taking full advantage of this world-wide attention and taking their levels of education to places where it has never been before.