invtnv splng

I heard on the radio this morning that more schools are allowing the practice of "inventive spelling," which allows children to spell incorrectly as a reflection of their development as a speller. It does not deem the child's spelling "incorrect," as that would be damaging to the child's self-esteem.

I'm constantly hearing grown ups bitch that their young new hires can't write a sentence, can't spell, and are somewhat illiterate despite their degrees. Heck, *I* bitch about that all the time and in my day, we didn't walk uphill both ways in the snow, barefoot, just to get some good old fashioned book learning. However, we did learn to spell. And I do not feel that my "development" as a writer or a person was hampered by it, in fact, I am grateful that I was taught properly. And I went to Liberal Land for school, if there was ANY evidence that this truly helped our self-esteem, believe me, they would've done it. We had Diversity Awareness Week, for goodness sake, where we devoted time to figuring out that we were mostly white but that Different is Good.

"constructivists are likely to believe that the child is inventing spellings in accord with his or her understanding of language and print," claims Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure this means that NO ADULT READS TO THEM therefore they have NO understanding of language or print. Then again, they also claim that "constructivists" also feel that "because knowledge is cultural, there are no right answers."

Let me get this straight: it is acceptable to allow a child to misspell because you may hamper their development as a speller and harm their self-esteem if you insist that they do it correctly, however, you're complaining because now your workforce can't write and calls mommy every time someone corrects them?

I'm not having children. Not if this is what they have to contend with. On the plus side, I now totally understand all those resumes I'd previously just been throwing out and writing off as "too stupid to work here."