The Letter Writing Kid


In the Internet age, most kids have never seen or written a letter. But school curriculums still include letter writing. And boy, did I have a tough time getting my 8 yo daughter to memorize the different components of a letter, and the order in which they need to be written.

Getting her to come up with content for the letter was another challenge. Sound happy, write cheerful things, it’s a letter to your friend for god’s sake, you’re describing something you enjoyed, I railed. All I would get was a very resentful kid going through the motion…

Then, a few days later, she was reading a Wimpy Kid book where one of the kids wrote this letter to the author of his favourite series of mystery books:
My daughter pounced on the letter and went to town with her criticism: “Where’s the sender’s address?”, she snorted. “No date either”. On a roll now, she demanded, “Who starts a letter without even a “How are you?””. “And he’s only complaining. He can’t even say one good thing, one happy thing”, she sneered. And topped it all off with, “And he doesn’t even know that you end a letter with ‘Yours lovingly’”, leaving me flabbergasted.

Ask her to apply all this to write a letter in the school exam and she’ll drive you up a wall, but give her a chance to weaponize that very same knowledge to pour scorn and contempt (sigh)...

On the positive side, maybe she’s now eligible for a job writing those Ms. Manners or Ms. Etiquette columns. Or have those jobs gone like the dinosaurs… and letter writing itself?

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarOctober 21, 2019 at 11:04 AM

    So so funny! This blog depicts how well child psychology can be presented in a lighthearted manner, while drawing attention to the way children learn!

    For the children, what is taught is mostly taken unquestioningly, without need to filter out "these have no application potential, hence use it for marks and instantly forget thereafter"! However, innocently children will ask the adult, "You say this is NOT OK. But when I was taught by the lesson to do so, you didn't say "it is not OK" even if the lesson says so? Why?" Children's WHYs are adult ignorance/limitation exposures! There are times adults just shut the children up, because they know they are fumbling and can't get the right answer! :-)

    There is an indirect lament in the blog amounting to a hint of, "Why can't education be wholly for real life application? Huge per cent of whatever learnt has no use at all! Training to write letters is one example."

    Well, the question is so profound that it has no answer - that is to say, "no solutions can be there in real terms!" People keep attempting betterment and much improvement has occurred no doubt in the domain of education - and yet, all solutions worked towards "ultimate way of education" are nothing but "dangling the carrot in front of the horse that pulls the cart! On that day the horse can catch the dangling carrot, our education system too will turn into the "ultimate way of education". :-)

    Flux may be the only truth of life!

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