Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990 TAG: 9006180179
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE SHENANDOAH BUREAU
DATELINE: BUENA VISTA LENGTH: Medium
But when a crop of letters to the editor arrived from some of the near-graduates recently, many of them marred by misspelled words and grammatical errors, he decided to make a point.
So he ran them verbatim.
"Usually, we fix spelling and grammatical goofs in letters," Harwood wrote in the accompanying editorial. "This is our graduation issue, and we didn't fix them this week because they make a sad point about the state of education. . . . Some of the children are obviously being robbed."
Mistakes in spelling and grammar were simply followed by a "sic" - showing it was reproduced accurately - in the newspaper, to indicate the mistake was the letter writer's.
School officials were dismayed by Harwood's action.
"I think it is totally unfair to publicly embarrass these young people," said Parry McCluer Principal Wayne Flint. "Some of them, their letters were their best efforts."
"I wanted them to know they had a forum, and they could make a difference in the community," said Glenn Rose, the Parry McCluer English teacher who made all of his seniors write letters to the editor as a class assignment. "How many of them are going to write again now?"
"The point of it wasn't to embarrass anybody. It was to raise a few questions," Harwood said. He noted that the writers' mistakes wouldn't look good on job applications, either.
So how bad were they?
Well, judge for yourself:
"The teachers at P.M.H.S. have taught there students well," one senior wrote.
"I am writing this letter in respect to the Parry McCluer teachers for a wonderful job in shapeing our future, and helping shapeing our values . . ." wrote a second senior.
Several other student letters in the newspaper were error-free. As for the misspellings, Rose argued one reason for the exercise is to prove to students that writing is something they can apply even as they are still learning the rules.
And in any case, Rose said, the newspaper didn't have to run them. The assignment only stipulates that students get a letter published, he said - and the student newspaper counts as much as The Rockbridge Weekly.
Meanwhile, other letter-writers quickly took The Rockbridge Weekly to task for its own alleged shortcomings.
"While we hate to be personal," tweaked one letter that ran in Wednesday's edition of the newspaper, one week after the unedited student letters, "we feel that we must note that we have heard, from inside sources at your newspaper, that the editor himself has trouble with spelling."
"I can only say that if they hate to be personal, they shouldn't be," Harwood said. But he also conceded there are some words he has a chronic tendency to misspell.
"Then again," the editor said, "I'm not doing it for a grade."
Rose said all of the students who wrote letters to The Rockbridge Weekly got an "A" on the project, misspelled words notwithstanding.
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on June 15, 1990\ Corrections Because of an editing error, the term "sic" was incorrectly defined in a story Thursday about high school students who wrote letters to the editor of the Rockbridge Weekly. The term is Latin, meaning "thus."
Memo: CORRECTION