Kindness of correction

SIR – Celia Walden (Features, June 14) is right that education should prepare children for the real world, and that requires getting used to the correction of errors.

“Half of teachers don’t mark pupils’ books,” she says. That is cruelty, not kindness, because if pupils are not shown when they are wrong, they will never learn what is right. They will grow up stroppy, resenting criticism.

Red-pen corrections by our teachers were really helpful and could be referred to as often as necessary. A one-time spoken comment would have been less effective and easily forgotten. It would take too long for each teacher to tell each pupil privately what he or she had done wrong, while written correction can be done at any time, far more quickly. At university level, my students had many misunderstandings that I discovered only through their written work and was able to correct by my red-biro comments.

Correction is to help, not condemn, and is necessary in all subjects.

Dr Bernard Lamb

President, Queen’s English Society London SW14