I wrote a little while back about my opposition to simplifying the spelling of English, but today one of my colleagues mentioned that he remembered a simplified spelling system that was brought in at his school for a year or so. This must have been back in the late 60s.
The Initial Teaching Alphabet, or ITA, relied on more than 40 characters (our alphabet plus a number of other characters to represent different vowel combinations and sounds such as the 'ng' of 'ring') to spell words in a more consistent, phonetic way. My colleague recalls entire books being written in ITA.
The idea was that children would initially learn to read in ITA, then move over to conventional English spelling. A number of schools brought ITA in, but it was never considered a resounding success. Many people who used ITA seem to blame it for their poor spelling in later life.
Incidentally, all ITA text was written in lower case, so I suppose it should really be called ita.
My colleague later found a BBC article about ITA that is of interest if you want to find out more. Or you can also see the full ITA alphabet online.
I'd be interested to hear from any Engine Room readers that have memories of ITA. Bonus points for anyone who writes in using the ITA alphabet!
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
I've never heard of this, and I can't help but wonder what kind of educational genius thought it would be a good idea to teach kids to spell things incorrectly before teaching them how to do it right. I mean, honestly...
He's right JD, what's wrong with just getting it right in the first place?!
I was also taught ITA at infant school. I remember being very cross when the teacher told me to write Jane as Jaen. As I remember, the a and e were linked together to form one letter making that 'a' sound, then at a later date you'd be told to move the 'e' to the end of the word. It seems very complicated but when we moved to junior school there were only three people in our class who had problems reading, and they'd all come from a different junior school. It's meant to help the slower readers and not hinder the quicker ones. It worked for my class anyway!
I'm 47 and was raised in a suburb of Chicago and learned to read using ITA (or as you note, ita). Consequently, I'm a very fast reader but a lousy speller (whether this is due to ita I don't know, but I have to blame something and ita is as good a culprit as anythng). My most vivid memory of it is that I was forced to spell my name - then it was Danny; now it's a more manly Dan - using ita-centric characters. I can't do it here given the limited typography, but it was sort of (lowercase) "dancc" with those last two letters having a "strikethrough" connecting them. I think I was in an experimetal class (this would have been about 1966/67) because it was abandoned by my school district rather quickly.
I heard that a headmaster in a school near us got the sack for using some weird way of teaching kids how to spell, long after everyone else had decided it was stupid. That was in the 80s, and kids who went to that school blamed their poor spelling on it. I guess this was ITA.
Some children have no problem learning to read the standard alphabet. They don't need ITA.
For those who would have a hard time learning to read a standard alphabet, how are they expected to have an easier time with learning to read TWICE? How are they expected to transition?
I am SO grateful to my mother for having taught me to read in kindergarten, before I was subjected to ITA in first grade. Few of my classmates were so lucky, and became terrible spellers when they transitioned. For me, it was merely a huge waste of time and effort to learn something completely useless, and sometimes rather frustrating as I tried to decipher foreign-looking misspelled words. (Probably the same feeling anyone reading this article who did not grow up with ITA experienced with the example at top, except imagine you're six and just learned to read.)
Interesting theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.
Give children a little more credit for being able to learn to read the right way in the first place, and be patient with individual learning differences (one of the smartest young women I know didn't learn to read until she was almost 8). Be supportive and encouraging rather than critical, and make it fun. And never, never force them to learn garbage like this first so they have to un-learn and re-learn to be able to communicate with the rest of the world.
Who the hell had the right to use us as guinea pigs! How dare they teach us an alphabet that would only be used in one particular classroom setting. How dare they take young ESL students and totally disrupt the rest of their school career. In my own life it caused confusion, disappointment and ultimately a sense of failure. Did anyone think that the fundamentals of the English language would ultimately have to be taught to these children? Instead, they ruthlessly threw us into the regular English curriculum without any formal training. How was this suppose to help us read or for that matter further our future academic endeavors. When I look back to my youth and think of the hardship it caused in my life I become overcome with anger and regrets. The anger comes from the pain this program inflicted on me; the regret is the mourning of a future and career I could have had. I will never understand how this program was ever accepted by our schools. Shame on them all!
Mark Said...
in November of 1966 when I was in first grade, my family moved from NJ to CT. It was decided that June that I should repeat first grade, much like almost every other boy in my neighborhood. They retained me and I was placed in an ITA first grade. I had one year completed with the traditional alphabet and then converted to ITA alphabet and then in second grade I was converted back to the traditional alphabet.
This totally screwed me up. In more ways than I can elaborate on here.
I am now 47 years old. One of my stronger skill sets is writing, but I am not a reader and avoid reading at almost any cost. I can't spell to save my life. I went through College (3.6 GPA) and had horrific spelling errors on my papers. Almost every spelling error was with vowels.
I really wonder what would have happened if I just went on to second grade and didn't repeat first grade... It was a time of experimentation for education with new philosophies like “readiness” (A slotted year between kindergarten and first grade.), "primary units" and later "Open Classroom". I feel like many of us in elementary school in the 1960's were guinea pigs.
I went to a book sale today and found an A.A. Milne book written in ITA. I had never heard of this ridiculous method before. Teachers orginizations sure do like to experiment on kids, don't they? I bought the book for the novelty of it, but won't share it with my young children. They need to see English as it IS written.
I was an ITA student. Raised in Bethpage Schools, Long Island, NY. I was reading BEFORE I entered Kindergarten and was placed in the ITA classroom. I had to re-learn to read using a 40 letter alphabet where cake was spelled:K long A K
BIZARRE! My mom was glad I was in the ITA class and not my brother because she knew I was smart and that I'd survive. She "questioned" the principal about the program and was told that until she had a degree in education....she should not question the philosophies and that the professionals would handle it. WOW things have changed!!! I'm a teacher now in a prestigious LI Northshore school and also hold a Masters of Social Work degree. I am a great reader but can't spell to save my life. I've taught myself coping strategies and techniques but wonder why no one has done a PhD dissertation on this disaster. I would love to buy an old ITA book because people think I made this "alphabet" up!!
I can't believe my school was doing this in the '70s! I was in Kindergarten and 1st grade when this was being taught in the mid '70s and it hurt my spelling for the longest time. I'm happy to report that I've been able to spell correctly for many years...but I still remember being in 4th grade and spelling said "sed" over and over again and my mother trying to get me to stop doing that. Thank goodness my daughter didn't have to deal with anything so stupid.
I was taught ita and have the most wonderful memories of it. No problems in reading writing or spelling then or now. The change over was just a progression - bit like using lower case letters and then moving on to capitals really. This is just one way of teaching phonics and this is really no different to what is happening today just in a different form.
I was taught to read and write using ita. Being dyslexic it was the worst possible thing that could have happened to me. To listen to people say it was just another system reminds me of teachers in the 60's and 70's (and possibly still do today) saying everyone else can do it why cant you. This is intolerable educational totalitarianism at its worst. They binned it; it’s in the trash and thank god. It was the most ill conceived educational tool ever and along side the mistakes of the British government with the 1988 ERA it will only be time that will bear out the heavy burden that ita put on the learners. There are still stupid mistakes going on today disguised as 'jolly phonics' and advanced phonics recognition programs. The fatal error of these schemes is to heavily rely on the interaction of the parent. No parent interaction... no success. Therefore a programs success depends entirely on parental involvement. This is great in a clinical research environment... but hello welcome to the real world! The children who will get on in life will always have an advantage by class or social position (See Basil Bernstien) so most of the harebrained schemes place little emphasis on turnkey solutions that can be executed solely in the classroom. In the case of ita it was foundation stage - reception through to year 2. It should have had a much longer trialling period before they (pedagogists and educationalists) got trigger itchy with the magic bullet of ita into the general population. The shocking thing about ita is that it exacerbates certain learning dysfunction but teachers were encouraged to continue to use it as a remedial way of teaching the 'slower' kids. What they were doing was delaying their entry into reading and writing society. Even more shocking was the fact that ita was phased out in the UK but continued in establishments where there was a need for remedial teaching. I was lucky because I taught myself to read real books before it became an issue but I was never able to make the transition in my handwriting from ita basic to standard cursive. As a result I have developed a mildly dyspraxic style. My 7 year old has better writing than me. I cannot write in front of another adult. It is still crippling after all these years. I just turned 45 recently and it ita is still dealing me a bum hand. That said, it never stopped me from getting three advanced degrees!
Actually as an afterthought... I wonder what effect 'text speak' and IM language is going to have on future generations. It's possible that it will have a domino effect at sometime in the future.
darlene from toronto canada 46 yrs.old I to was tought in ita and always felt i was used as a ( ginni pig ita spelling) guinea pig. after 2 years of learning to spell in ita they put me in a classroom expecting me to know how to read and write... i was so lost. i started acting out in school... instead of relizing they scrood me up for the rest of my life... the teacher would send me down to the office with a piece of paper with a number one or a number two. and i'd be sent into a empty office room and set a timer for a half hour and just sit there with nothing...over the years i tought myself to read and write... with my pocket dictoinary by my side witch i am not using right now... so you can see how poor my spelling is. i have got by luckly my sister has a busness where i got myself a trade. but i still work my but off for penuts.where if i could have read and wrote better i know i could have done very well for myself. i went to a job fare a year ago first time i had to fill out a application i got all panicy and just made a total mess of it becouse i couldn't use my dictionary. i was so embarist... see i know thats not the proper spelling...this is the way it is and it is awful, humiliating and emberessing. and no i didnt get the job... who's going to hire someone who cant spell...no one. some one should pay for this... this ita has ruind a lot of lives and someone sould pay... one time i had to be a wittness in court and had to write a statment. in front of a packed court room the judge pointed me right out of the crowd and said he could barly read my statment and told me to go back to school... i almost cried...hope you can read thisas you can see i didnt use my dictionary just so you can see how bad my spelling is... i wish i could sue some body becouse this ita has ruined me along with many many other people.... thx for letting me vent.
They tried to teach me ITA at school in the West Midlands during the 1960's. But there was a great many fuel strikes and i had to go to work with my mom. I was taught to read properly in the normal alphabet by her work mates. They were fantastic.But when i went back to school i was beaten by the teacher for being cheeky when i refused to read in ITA. In actual fact the alphabet made no sense to me at all. I was too frightened to go to school, and eventually my mother persuaded them to give me normal books to read. She remembers that the teachers made her feel ignorant for not accepting ITA as the perfect system for learning to read. But those teachers only taught me to hate school at an early age. I eventually got good degree in Philosophy and literature, and a healthy suspicion of so called Educationalists, there methods, and their motives.
In 1975 I was hired as a first grade teacher in Harford County, Maryland primarily because I had knowledge of i.t.a. The summer before I was hired, I traveled to England and volunteered in a British Primary School in East Horsley. Now, thirty three years later, and still teaching, I admit that i.t.a. taught me what I needed to understand in order to teach decoding, or phonics to my students. Although the school where I started my teaching career abandoned the program due to political dissent, I still hold i.t.a. in high regard.
Post a Comment