Is this English? Really?

Today, I happened to read an article on how a lot of schools do not mind the odd American spelling. Students, apparently prefer the all-American spelling because it is shorter!

I find it shocking that schools, which usually preferred the ‘old’ English, are today, ignoring what we used to treat as mistakes in the earlier day as perfectly correct. Why am I not at all surprised, by this? Shocked but not surprised.

Call me narrow-minded, but this kind of thing is what irritates me the most. ‘But hey, it is shorter. You can miss the odd use of letters just as long as they fit in.’

While we have used the British spelling for years, and the Americans have used their kind of spelling for ages, I do not understand why we have to change the way we learnt our English. While we cannot be strictly distinct about our English, we have still managed to write in with our bit of flavour. Why then should we leave it behind, and use the American spelling?

Today, we find a lot of Indian writing in English, writers are preferring the use of this ‘adopted’ language. Should we change it? Should I change my honour to honor? Or perhaps the colour of my language to the color of theirs?

While many Indians in the US and finding it difficult to write ‘colour’ , as opposed to color, we in our own country are preferring the use of color to colour? I have enough trouble changing it on MS Word, I would not want my teacher correcting me, too. It is not that I am against the use of the American spelling, use it, but use it in their country.

I guess many would disagree with me, but English is at its best the old way, the all Indian way. It always was and always will be my favourite mode of writing, not my favorite mode of writing.