>>I do believe that it is necessary to instill a sense of the importance of spelling in students, that it does have a function and that it's not just some form of tyranny by the teacher. But it is even more important to encourage people to express themselves regardless of their competence, especially people with learning disabilities such as dyslexia or aphasia and learners of English as a 2nd language such as... myself! :) <<
Woodbeez,
I totally agree. My children's elementary school did a good
job of this, I think: starting in kindergarten, kids were
encouraged to write stories, and it wasn't for another two years that teachers started working on spelling and grammar.
If you hadn't said that English is your second language, I
couldn't have told it, incidentally.