Does Spelling Still Need to be Taught?

OK - I set up this next blog to discuss a few Nobel Literature Laureates of Poetry, but something else has come up.  Flexibility serves the better cause.  The following is a post addressed to a ListServe of Creative Writing Teachers I've been a constant respectful reader of, but infrequent contributor to, for at least twenty years.  


Yesterday, a member posted this message:  


Someone told me the other day that a teacher said there no longer is a need to teach spelling because students are using computers to write and word processing programs correct the spelling errors.
Has anyone heard this?

This is my response:


 I've not read that, but can see where it might be assumed.  I'm
dyslexic, or was, and I've been an English teacher for - er, fifty years. Tough career choice but I loved teaching, reading, writing.  That's another story. Until computers and Spellcheck I spent a great deal of my time checking my spelling with a dictionary because I switched letters, spelled "creatively." After Spellcheck, my life improved far more than I imagined
it could.  By continually using Spellcheck, my sense of letter order, of spelling reasoning, improved to such an extent that now, although I always employ Spellcheck by habit - there are never any errors.  A matter of no small pride for me.  The point is - maybe, with Spellcheck, there is no longer a need to teach spelling per se, because students' habitual use of
Spellcheck teaches them to spell better than lessons ever could.
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That is my experience, my thinking.  What are your thoughts about teaching spelling?