I REFER to the recent exchange over NTUC Childcare's name change to My First Skool.

The criticism that the deliberate mis-spelling of 'school' only serves to confuse children is made from a conventional, adult perspective. Such criticism is misplaced. As a name for its service to children, NTUC courageously (and playfully) spells 'school' as it sounds phonetically - 'skool' - because it signals that NTUC stands with the child; it sees things from his point of view.

A child will, through his own intelligent blending of the 's' and 'k' sounds, come up with that spelling of the word. It is not phonetically intelligent to spell it in the conventional way. Children have to be 'taught' (by an adult) that 'sch' is also pronounced like 'sk'. At that stage, they have to rote-learn - and that is merely memory work.

Mis-spelling 'school' gives teachers and parents the opportunity to point out that many words in English are not spelt the way they sound. This can lead to all sorts of fascinating forays into the etymology of words, and all the other aspects of our lovely English language.

I do not think NTUC is being 'creative' in that farcical way Ms Jennifer Lee describes ('Criatif structure', last Thursday). There is no call to suggest that NTUC is so misled as to believe that spelling rules should be ignored in the pursuit of creativity. There is a legitimate basis for its use of 'skool', in terms of both recognising developmental stages in preschool learning and expressing its organisational ethos.

So I think it is delightful that NTUC sticks its neck out in this unconventional way. Its competitors fashion their business names after personalities, places and sentiments ranging from pseudo-philosophical to whimsical, all of which are adult-centred. But when a childcare provider starts from where the child is, that is surely something we should root for.

Pauline Koe (Mrs)

This article was first published in The Straits Times on January 28, 2009.