Internet in Disbelief Over Child’s Answer on Spelling Assignment

A picture appearing to show one child’s wild answer to a spelling homework assignment has drawn an astonished response on social media—but not for the reasons you might have thought.

In a post titled “Kids today,” a Reddit user writing under the handle u/moncking shared an answer sheet from a seemingly straightforward quiz asking whoever it was assigned to correctly spell out a series of jumbled-up words.

At first glance, two of the answers filled in appear entirely correct and nothing out of the ordinary. “Gnerey” is turned into “energy” while “etrse” becomes “trees.” However, things take a pretty surprising turn when it comes to the unidentified student’s answer to “srtha.”

According to the sheet, they think the answer in this instance is “shart,” a slang term for the expulsion of feces while breaking wind. This, obviously, is incorrect (the answer is “trash”), but the fact that whoever filled in the sheet put this down as an answer was enough to send social media into a meltdown.

You can take a look at the homework here. Newsweek reached out to u/moncking for comment on the post but could not verify the details of its origins.

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of correct spelling. A 2017 research paper published in the journal Educational Assessment identified a significant correlation between spelling scores among first-grade children and better word reading and decoding.

But while it’s one thing to misspell a seemingly straightforward spelling homework assignment like the one shared on Reddit, interpreting the answer to be something entirely different and of a very explicit nature was what stood out for many on social media who saw the unnamed student’s response.

At the time of writing, the post has been upvoted over 21,000 times with Redditors both stunned and amused by it.

Some admitted that, despite knowing the student’s answer was wrong, they were struggling to come up with the correct one themselves.

“Guys I think I’m stupid…” one user wrote. Another agreed, commenting: “Initially I thought this was one of those ‘the kids are not alright posts,’ like showing what’s wrong with education. ‘I’m reading it like, “damn, I can’t believe that kid wrote ‘shart’ when it’s clearly………'”

A third asked: “Is this really a kids test? Because as an adult, I find it super hard.”

Thankfully, someone else was on hand to provide the correct answer. They explained: “I think this is a recycling workbook of some sort.”

Even so, another who got the correct answer admitted it “took me way too long to figure that out.” Bizarrely, some even wanted to defend the student’s use of the word, writing: “Shart is 100 per cent a legitimate modern word. I’ll die on that hill.”

Others, meanwhile, were left worried for the future of their kids, although that was mainly because they couldn’t seem to work out the answers to any of the questions on the spelling assignment. As one worried parent put it: “My kids are screwed when they get to homework age if they need me.”