As part of
whole-language (or "balanced") reading-instruction philosophy, many public schools now teach what they call “invented” or “creative” spelling. Under this theory of spelling, teachers believe that forcing a child to spell a word correctly thwarts child's "creativity." So in classrooms across America, many public-school teachers now encourage children to spell words any way they like. Also, many school officials now believe it is not important to teach correct spelling because, so theory goes, a child will “eventually” learn to spell correctly. Unfortunately, millions of children who start out as poor spellers, stay that way. How, in our Alice-in-Wonderland public-school classrooms, will a child learn to spell correctly if public schools think that correct spelling is meaningless?
Charles J. Sykes, author of "Dumbing Down Our Kids," provides following real-life examples of invented spelling in our public schools:
“Joan W. and Beverly J. [last names omitted for privacy] are not experts. They just didn’t understand why their children weren’t learning to write, spell, or read very well. They didn’t understand why their children kept coming home with sloppy papers filled with spelling mistakes and bad grammar and why teachers never corrected them or demanded better work. Mrs. W. couldn’t fathom why her child’s teacher would write a “Wow!” and award a check-plus (for above average work) to a paper that read:
“I’m goin to has majik skates. Im goin to go to disenalen. Im goin to bin my mom and dad and brusr and sisd. We r go to se mickey mouse.”
"On another assignment where children were told to write about why, where, and how they would run away from home without their parents knowing about it, here’s what one child wrote: “I would run awar because by mom and Dad don’t love me. I would run away with my brother to musan in mlewsky. We will use are packpacks and put all are close in it. We will take a lot of mony with us so we can go on bus to musam. We will stay there for a tlong timne so my mom and dad know they did not love us.”
