Forgive me as I hop up on my soapbox briefly, but, a friend reminded me of my biggest pet peeve the other day--red ink. The ink itself is not the problem. It's this idea that if we use red ink, our children will be scarred! Scarred, I tell you!

I have a friend who taught first grade, and he was told that if a child got the sounds of a word right on a spelling test (as opposed to, you know, the actual spelling), that it would count, and he should just write the correct spelling next to it. E.g., if the kid wrote "kat", points for effort. And I just...is teaching c-a-t really that hard? Will these children truly believe they're worthless just because they misspelled a word?

So I ask you--parents, writers, people who I assume came of age in a time of red pens and spelling tests that tested spelling--do you think we would have better, more confident, well-rounded children if they were rarely, if ever, corrected?

Now, I do mean just correction. Obviously telling a child he or she is stupid isn't helping anyone. But I find it hard to believe that telling a child he or she can do no wrong is any better. Part of my job is to criticize--am I ruining authors' self esteem??