I was the spelling bee champion in the 6th grade, but I am the worst typist. As a former schoolteacher, I would be appalled to send an email out with a spelling error. Why doesn't Outlook enable auto spell checking by default?

No worries. You can enable that feature yourself. Navigate to File>Options. On the Mail category click to check "Always check spelling before sending". Going forward, you will not need to manually spell check your messages