TIP Students Are Letters Winners in N.Y. Times

The New York Times receives more than 1,000 letters to the editor every day and prints only about 15. Who, then, would have thought that 15 ninth and tenth graders in Duke's Talent Identification Program (TIP) could be published in The New York Times in less than one month?

Mark Duckenfield did.

An instructor of international relations in the TIP program, Duckenfield gave his 29 students this summer the assignment of regularly writing letters to the editor on international issues. By the end of the summer, slightly more than half of the students had succeeded in getting published. Topics ranged from the involvement of South Korean troops in Iraq to a comparison of how Americans and Europeans value their leisure time.

Duckenfield had the students use their home addresses to throw off the Times editors some. And, in some cases, students used alias if they had already had a letter printed.

When The New Yorker magazine asked Times editors about the class' subterfuge, the editors said they were disappointed. "We're not pleased with people who are dishonest with us," Times letters editor Thomas Feyer told The New Yorker. "If somebody has a legitimate letter published, fine. And if they send in another letter two weeks later under a different name, and it's a good letter, in effect they're depriving someone else of a chance to get into the paper."

On the other hand, Feyer admitted the students' letters were well written and smart.

The New Yorker story was picked up by the Associated Press this week, and the AP account has run in newspapers around the country.

It was the second year for the letters project at TIP. Duckenfield had also tried the assignment a decade ago during a similar summer program at Johns Hopkins University. Never before had his students found so much success.

So why the sudden change? Duckenfield, interviewed by e-mail from London, where he teachers at the School of Public Policy at University College, said he believes timeliness accounts for some of the success.

The articles were published "probably because we sent them by e-mail and on the same day" as the relating articles appeared, Duckenfield said. "In previous years, we had always sent them by U.S. mail."

Their project caught the attention of The New Yorker, which featured the class in its Talk of the Town section in the Oct. 18 issue. The magazine called the students "the most successful group of letter writers in the paper's history."

Duckenfield came up with the idea of using letters to editor in 1992, when he taught at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youths program. The purpose, he said, was to keep his students "more engaged with their readings" of the newspaper and with current international issues.

This year's TIP students jumped on the idea.

Masha Mitaeva, a tenth grader from Stuttgart, Germany, who had her letter comparing leisure time in the United States and Europe published in the Times, said the project was a great way to have some fun while doing some intensive study.

"I was having so much fun," Mitaeva said. "I wasn't aware of the fact that (the class) was work. The class environment was very relaxed."

Angela Teachey, TIP's educational programs academic coordinator, said projects such as Duckenfield's are part of what makes a TIP classroom unusual.

"These kids are products of very competitive backgrounds," Teachey said. Even though the students are academically driven, "we don't give out grades in trying to take the competition out of learning, so that the students enjoy their experience more."

Actually, Duckenfield did introduce some competition into the classroom. He promised his second-term students that if they had more letters published than the first-term students, he would buy them a Vermonster, a bucket of 20 scoops of ice cream from Ben & Jerry's. The challenge was met and, as Duckenfield said, "greed was a good motivator."

But the students got more out of the course than just sugar highs. They also learned they were capable of being published in one of the most well-respected newspapers in the United States.

"I felt proud and happy. I caught myself thinking that I would leave a little part of myself in American through my article," Mitaeva said.

Sean Canino is a sophomore from New York, N.Y.