Spelling in skool (sic!) and how it affected me

[Delanie]

HI,

Who was around when schools introduced the crazy way of spelling things phonetically, I can't remember what it was called but what I do remember is that we were taught luckily it was only for a year in infant/junior school to write in a phonetic style:

What = wat
School = Skool (or maybe Skwl)
Light = lit

these may not be correct examples as thankfully I can't consciously remember too many, but I do know they changed it back to 'traditional' spelling after a year.

I do however find myself even now nearly half a century later having to stop and think of how things are written and blame my sometimes-atrocious spelling during the rest of my time at school and working life on this one period of educational stupidity during my formative years and to be honest I have always had little confidence with my handwritten work because of this.

[Arran]

There were all sorts of weird, and not so wonderful, education strategies thought up between the 1960s and the introduction of the National Curriculum.

My primary school maintained a list of spellings and difficult to spell words for each year group. Most of them were 'everyday' words rather than infrequently used words. I'm not sure if it was an effort by the school or from a national list. There is now a national list of spellings for each year group.

[George 1978]

I think that Slade (as in Noddy Holder's group) had something to do with a generation of youngsters misspelling words to be honest! I also blame Sesame Street for misleading youngsters with spelling and pronunciation as well.

"Playskool" being a brand of toys as well...

[catflap]

I seem to remember we had ita for a while in the mid-seventies.

[Arran]

I'm vaguely aware that ITA (or something similar) continued to be used with immigrant children where English wasn't their first language well into the 1970s after most teachers had abandoned it. Something to do with them reading and writing English more often than speaking it.

[Richard1978]

I remember someone I used to work with mentioned her son had been taught ITA at schoo,l & struggled with it because he then couldn't read any books written normally.

[Arran]

The problem with ITA was that no official procedure existed to transition from ITA to 'normal' written English. As a result, children struggled badly to transition to 'normal' written English.

It was effectively a dead end educational method. A bit like how children were taught ball and stick handwriting but later had to transition to joined up handwriting.

[Arran]

Some articles about Initial Teaching Alphabet:

https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/...ching-alphabet

https://theliteracyblog.com/2015/05/...ismal-failure/

There's a discussion on Mumsnet about it

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/educati...a-in-the-1970s

It was even debated in Parliament

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-h...ching-alphabet

[Delanie]

yep that was it ITA I still blame who ever popularised it for my problems with spelling today. Sometimes even if actually spell the word correctly I still do a 'double take' and doubt myself sometimes.

[Arran]

ITA was an educational experiment and the children who attended ITA schools were guinea pigs in this experiment (that failed!).

I am vaguely aware that many ITA schools requested parents not to expose children to books written in 'normal' written English outside of school whilst their children were learning ITA at school. A request that was not always complied with.

Does anybody know about the demographics of the children at ITA schools? Did they vary considerably from school to school, or did ITA schools predominantly serve children from lower socioeconomic groups who were less likely to have parents with an interest in intellectual or cultural matters, or a collection of books at home? I mentioned that ITA was used with immigrant children where English wasn't their first language well into the 1970s, but were the ITA schools back in the 1960s overwhelmingly white British?

[Delanie]

Well I can't say for everyone or every school and for the record I hate demographics as I think they are by definition divisive, but the school I went to did not use this with immigrant children