Does public education support or discourage young writers?

My youngest son starts school for the year the day after tomorrow.  Aside from reeling from how quickly the summer has gone by, I'm contemplating the mixed feelings I have about public education and what it does for (and to) young writers.

I started thinking about this (again) several months as I read a very interesting book by Kelly Gallagher,  entitled Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. In the book, Mr. Gallagher discusses how schools overemphasize literary analysis at the expense of leading kids to a lifelong love of reading.  As a result, children end up disliking reading because they think of it as an academic chore, rather than as a tool for learning and enjoyment.

I have similar thoughts about writing education. I remember when schools were criticized during the whole language era for not focusing enough on the conventions of writing (for example, proper spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc.).  So the pendulum started swinging the other way, and there's lots of emphasis now on the conventions of writing, and not much allowance at all for creativity.

I'll never forget something that happened about 4 years ago with my oldest son.  He had written an excellent short story for his English class.  It was creative - very creative.  Not only that, but he had experimented with several literary devices that we had talked about while reading a book together at home. It was not completely technically correct, but none of the errors affected the meaning or flow of the story.  I encouraged him to correct some of the more egregious errors, but I chose to ignore the rest (and there weren't many others) because I wanted to focus on the great content and structure of the story, and encourage him for that accomplishment. As a writer, I was impressed.  I was excited for him to get positive feedback from his teacher.

Several days later, he came home from school dejected.  His teacher didn't like his story.  I asked to see it, and I saw that she had marked every single tiny technical error in red.  She criticized several of his word choices (words he had very carefully chosen--I know, because we had discussed those choices), and took issue with how he chose to end the story. The grade was nothing close to what either of us had expected. I remembered how I used to get two grades on writing projects in school - one for content and one for conventions.  In this case, putting it all together in a grade most heavily impacted by conventions had a devastating effect.

I was angry.  I was torn between wanting to support the school, and wanting to encourage his gift. Writing is hard enough - both technically and emotionally  - writers do not need teachers to use their red pens to gouge the love for writing out of children's hearts.  Yes, I realize that sounds harsh, but that's exactly what it is.

My oldest son's story has a happy ending.  He knows he has a gift and he's developing it now as an adult.  He blogs.  He experiments with his writing.  He's developing his own voice, and it's creative, unique, powerful. I read his work and smile at its maturity, it's complexity, and it's clarity. He still has some issues with writing conventions, but he's working on those and making good progress. He understands that writing is his opportunity to get his voice out to the world.  He knows it's all about communication.  Unfortunately, he didn't get that from the school. He got that from having a parent who saw his gift and refused to let the school kill it.

It shouldn't be that way. The word educate comes from the Latin root meaning "to lead out."  Educators should lead the talent out of children.  It's already there.  Educators don't need to implant it into kids. In fact, efforts to do that end up stifling it.

I look at my little one who already loves to write.  He doesn't read yet so his writing is....interesting.  But he loves it.  He writes letters in combinations that form words, and sometimes they look like real words and often they don't, but he takes great joy in sharing his writing. Will his teachers lead his gift out of him, encourage it, help him to continue to discover the joy in it?  Or will they slowly extinguish it?  How hard will I have to work to keep it alive?

It doesn't matter what it takes.  That's my job.

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