Are We No Longer Teaching Effective Communication?

I know evaluating any single slice of the world at large and drawing a conclusion from it is bad science, okay?  That being said, I guess I am not just looking at the internet on sites like Gather, Yahoo Answers, and social networking sites.  I also look at signs at churches, roadside advertisements, and the "continuing news" part at the bottom on the local network's news broadcasts. 

 The complete inability for the population at large to spell absolutely floors me.  Sometimes, the person who creates whatever (the blog, advertisement, running feed) doesn't even misspell the word the same way each time. 

I was googling around about ticks (got bit by yet another one of the small ticks today, pretty sure it was a deer tick, but wanted to see pictures) ended up curiously reading a question on Yahoo Answers, and began reading other questions.

For someone like me, who can be tolerant of a few typos or imperfect but still understandable English, Yahoo Answers alternates between being absolutely hysterical to downright maddening.  I actually let myself be a little bit evil on one answer about what is proper to do when unrestrained dogs attack you when you're walking a leashed dog.  In my response, I suggested that it sounded like the walk was being done in town, and most towns in the US have leash laws.  However, since it appeared that English was not the author's first language, I couldn't assume she was in the US.  My response pretty much left it at that.

 I actually know a (thankfully now retired) teacher who refused to insist her students learn spelling words.   Instead, she gave them the test, then twenty minutes with the dictionary to correct their work before handing in the tests.  She said it wasn't important that they know how to spell.  It was important that they could guess close enough to use a dictionary to make sure they spelled the word right.

 I don't believe I've ever agreed with her.  She has never been able to spell, and I suspect she has an undiagnosed learning disability.  However, her inability to spell should not have allowed all the students who went through her classes to spend an entire school year having no encouragement to learn something she wasn't capable of.

If we have grammar check in MSWord (which, by the way, does not always apply the rules correctly) and spell check almost everywhere, do we really need to know these things?  How important is it that we know how to communicate effectively outside of the assistance of computer programs?  Aside from the obvious issues that arise when you write or spell SO badly that the computer program is incapable of suggesting how to fix it, should we be concerned when we see so many people who write in a way which suggests they are functionally illiterate?

It scares me.  I was just curious if I'm over-reacting, or if maybe I'm just looking at the wrong "slices."  I look forward to your thoughts...