Leg Iron draws my attention to this cack – in, what I might add, is a delightfully witty piece of prose.
A high number of “inconsistencies” in the way basic words are spelt makes it much harder for children to read and write at a young age, it is claimed.
Rubbish. Pure nonsense. Generations of people – natives and foreigners alike have learned to master the English language. It is not “too difficult”. It is a rich, evocative language capable of subtlety and nuance that may be used to convey humour, pathos and undercurrents of both concurrently at the hands of a gifted wordsmith – in a manner that other languages lack. This mongrel language derived from the Latin tongues of the south and the guttural languages of the Germanic and Nordic countries peppered with influences from every immigration since, is so rich and expressive because it is such a complex pot pourri.
Masha Bell, author and literacy researcher, will tell a conference of English teachers on Friday that sweeping reforms are needed to the spelling system to improve children’s linguistic skills.
No! No! No! No! And thrice, no! Our spelling may be odd at times, it may lead on occasion to confusion, but a word’s spelling betrays its linguistic roots and from there you can see similar patterns in other languages. Change the structure of spelling to make it easier – or, as I prefer, dumbed down – then those roots are lost.
But in Finland – where words are more likely to be pronounced as they look – children can read fluently within three months.
So? I was a fluent reader by the time I started school at the age of five. I did not find it “too difficult”, despite those oddities. I simply learned the rules – that wasn’t “too difficult” either. Since then, I have used the oddities to help me when learning French – I can see straight away where a word has come from and it helps me to remember the French equivalent. Of course, if we were taught grammar and usage rules, learning French would be easier still, wouldn’t it?
What this risible little proposal tells us is that teaching standards have fallen. It is not “too difficult” for children to learn, rather it is “too difficult” for piss-poor teachers to teach.
“It is difficult to learn any subject, or even to train for a trade nowadays, without learning to read and write first, but roughly 20 per cent of all speakers of English leave school with very poor literacy skills,” she said.
“The antique, inconsistent spelling system of English is probably the main reason why the UK has a far longer tail of educational underachievement than any other European country, why more of our young people are Neets (Not in Education Employment or Training), why many end up in jail, and why improving their chances of re-offending while in prison is much more difficult too.”
Er… The failure has nothing to do with the antiquities of etymology as previous generations have managed to cope perfectly well with it, but everything to do with poor standards of teaching. People like Masha, for example who seem to think that people in jail should be re-offending… Shome mishtake shurely?
This insane idea gets floated every so often and on each occasion it needs to be robustly resisted – along with a healthy dose of ridicule.
I suspect its more to do us forcing education on kids before they are ready. Its no coincidence that pre-school doesn’t start until age 6 in Finland.
They also spend the first year teaching the kids how to behave and interact.IIRC they don’t even start teaching them reading until the age of seven, by which time the kids have been taught how to behave in school and how to learn.
We seem to be obsessed with getting our children to read at ever younger ages.
I would suggest that it is simpler than that; children learn differently and pick up new skills at their own pace. I was an avid reader at an early age, yet struggled dreadfully with mathematics. We are not some lumpen mass that needs to be measured and taught in exactly the same way. We are individuals and develop as such.
Extraordinary. As you say, the rest of us managed quite well to grasp the basics – that is, the ability to have a conversation AND read a simple book – by the age of 5. Spelling is not difficult to teach. Repetition and exposure are tried-and-tested methods. The great thing is that can be done by, y’know, reading new books and stuff.
What struck me most, however, is:
“It is difficult to learn any subject, or even to train for a trade nowadays, without learning to read and write first, but roughly 20 per cent of all speakers of English leave school with very poor literacy skills,” she said.
“The antique, inconsistent spelling system of English is probably the main reason why the UK has a far longer tail of educational underachievement than any other European country, why more of our young people are Neets (Not in Education Employment or Training), why many end up in jail, and why improving their chances of re-offending while in prison is much more difficult too.”
Yes, dear, the reason so many school-leavers are illiterate is the difficulty of the language…
Perhaps she ought to attend a logic class?
Teaching of English in this country is fairly diabolical. I took my English GCSE roughly 8 years ago (yes, the entirety of my secondary schooling was under a Labour govt.), and there was nowhere included in the syllabus a requirement to understand the mechanics of the language. Not even reinforcing basic things like verbs and nouns, to the more complex like clauses, cases and tenses. Consequently, at A-level the majority of students were completely unaware of some of the most basic grammatical rules and quirks of their own language and, instead of learning the finer points of linguistics and literature, a good deal of the modules were directed at teaching students what really ought to be assumed knowledge at age 17. The funniest thing is that all of them were actually pretty decent at spelling. Ho hum.
English language too difficult? No. Teaching piss poor? Yes.
Quick addendum: the majority of my grammatical understanding came from learning German and Latin… and I’m quite sure that others have had similar experiences!
For me, it was learning French. You cannot effectively grasp a new language without a basic understanding of grammar. I did some at school, but not nearly enough.
No! No! No! No! And thrice, no!
Um… Something’s grateing here. Can’t quiet put my finger on it…
(and at the risk of rune the joke, no, there is no word for the 5th in that sequence. Not according to ‘Oxford’ anyway – they don’t go past 3. Unless you take the advice of one Yahoo answer(!) where it ‘should’ be quince. Yum!)
[intentional puns were intentional. speeling mistake might not have ben.]
The incongruity was intentional, yes 😉 I was and still am, a lousy mathematician.
English too difficult? This from someone who wrote “Understanding English spelling”?
Heavy sigh. Sounds like ‘buy my book’ to me.
Masha Bell, author and literacy researcher, will tell a conference of English teachers on Friday that sweeping reforms are needed to the spelling system to improve children’s linguistic skills.
No! No! No! No! And thrice, no!
I’ve just done a whole bloody post on this, quoting from the GCSE. Shall put your post in there too for good measure.
If you wish to destroy a people, destroy their language.
The Turks do it in those parts of Kurdistan ruled by the Turks, the Communist East Europeans used to do it on all their minorities, no doubt the British have done it at some time somewhere, and now the Progressives are trying to do it in England.
Just convict her of being a Progressive (ie Traitor), and take her outside to do the necessary.