In regard to the story, “Texas pupil jailed for violent essay” (BDN, Nov. 4); when a teacher asks for a scary Halloween essay, what does he or she expect? Guns, drugs, school shootings, etc., are today’s children’s horror stories. To actually jail a child for writing about it is ridiculous.

I thought Maine was supposed to be backward regarding education; if we don’t do better than this (and perhaps we don’t these days; my children have been out of school for years), it’s a crime.

The ones who should be jailed are the school personnel who produced a seventh-grade pupil who can’t spell any better than that. If this is a typical seventh-grade student speller we’d better be sending some teachers back to school. This kid might be the next Stephen King if he had teachers who taught him anything. Margaret Dean Milo