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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joana Tides who wrote (2604)	5/23/1999 1:40:00 PM
From: jbe	Respond to of 4711

Joana -- Wow! You've hit so many bases in your post that I can't possibly get around to them all in a single response -- at least, not if I am going to get my lawn mowed. <g> But I will try to address a couple of them now. Personally, I am very ambivalent about any theory that argues that "setting spelling standards too high and too early causes inhibitions in the creative flow." Your daughter may have been one of those blessed with an innate language ability, so that she did not NEED the drill that others may require. My late husband would not have been a good argument for your case either. For one thing, he was of a much older generation (older even than mine, if that is possible). Secondly, he was not a bad speller; he was just not as good as I was. And, being a man of his generation, and an English Professor to boot, he did not like to have to ask me how to spell anything. <gg> In fact, the theory you refer to is not so novel as all that. The principles & practice of "progressive education" have been around for a long time. (I myself, at one point in my childhood, attended a school called "Manumit"-- which says it all.) But for some reason, they are constantly being rediscovered as if they were something "new." I guess it is a good thing that there has been this ongoing tension between the principles & practice of progressive education and those of traditional education. They both have their strengths and their weaknesses. The biggest problem with the "progressive" approach, in my experience & observation, is that those children who lack a natural aptitude for a subject -- language, say, or mathematics -- will fall further and further behind, without all that dull but necessary drill. It is only the ones with a real aptitude that will pick the subject up easily, because they do not NEED drill. You sound as if you have been a teacher. Have you ever had to correct college-level Freshman English compositions? Good God above!!!! jbe