LETTERS: THE LOVE OF WRITING

To the editor:

As the mother of a second grader, I cannot let Peter Kinder once again attack public education. In his Feb. 16 column, Mr. Kinder's latest criticism bemoans creative spelling. I base my comments on personal observation. My 8-year-old daughter loves to write stories every day. She includes creative spelling that does not distract from her delightful stories on topics ranging from horses to camping to grandparents. She could not write three-page stories if she worried about spelling all her words correctly. The content of her stories would be limited to the words an average second-grader knows how to spell. She would find these limitations greatly restrict her topic choices. She would not find writing fascinating, but frustrating. She would probably choose not to write her stories. One of her greatest pleasures is to write a story and then read it aloud. One of my greatest pleasures is to hear her read these stories. Is Mr. Kinder suggesting that a second-grader should not be writing stories if he or she can't correctly spell all the words he or she wants to use?

I have some other questions for Mr. Kinder. When is the last time he was in a second-grade classroom? I hope he visits classrooms regularly. If not, I encourage him to visit local public schools or to stop criticizing what he is not observing directly. His so-called expertise on the state of education in Missouri surely comes from personal observation and not from reports from citizens or newspaper examples. Did he question the teacher whose students used invented spelling in their Thanksgiving stories before he criticized the methods? The teacher is the educator. Mr. Kinder is a lawyer, journalist and legislator. Who is the expert on the topic?

Another question for Mr. Kinder is, does he know for a fact, or is he assuming without questioning the classroom teacher, that second-graders who use invented spelling "aren't drilled in correct spelling" as he states in his column? My daughter has a weekly spelling lesson from which she must learn the correct spelling of 15 words. Along with "drilling" her students in correct spelling, my daughter's teacher encourages her to be a writer.

Lastly, does Mr. Kinder really think the 1988 version of these Thanksgiving stories contained the "nearly error-free work" of second-graders or the editing work of their teachers before publication? Mr. Kinder's reasoning is faulty if he assumes invented spelling has turned second-graders into poor spellers. Second-graders are 8 year olds who know and use many more words than they can correctly spell. Would Mr. Kinder prefer that second-grade teachers sacrifice a beginning writer's creativity for correctness? Is correctness what school should be all about? Mr. Kinder's column suggests that this is his position.

CHRISTINE WARREN

Jackson