Half of Americans can’t read

Some Americans are certainly unable to paste a tracking number into a box on the postal site of their national service - the USPS - and check on the progress of a package. In the last year Ive had 3 buyers contact me to say "I have not received this" when the package was only a few days in the mail. Or "can you give me an update on this" as if I was a courier service. Errm no, that's not my job. If I did it for one I would have to do it for everyone. Keeping track on the package is the buyers job.

I had one lazy guy ask 3 times for updates and then file an "item not received" when the tracking showed it was handed to the concierge of his apartment block. His attempt at theft was denied. Another left a negative because they had to pay a customs fee. Ebay removed it. Some buyers try on outrageous things and then forget that If go on live chat or call customer services the agent can see all the messages that were exchanged.

Well, I don't know what you've seen but it's not phonics as it's taught in schools 🤷‍♀️. The word ship would be taught as sh-i-p, with the sh being another digraph. Children would not be told to sound out s-h-i-p.

I'm 66. I learned to read via the whole word method (in Fife, Scotland). It worked well for me, but I have a clear memory of my mother expressing her surprise that I wasn't being taught to sound words out.

At the same time, in some parts of the UK they were using the Initial Teaching Alphabet. I recall seeing children's books with ordinary spelling on one page and the ITA on the opposite page. I remember thinking that it was daft. (This was when I was a child.)

I've since read that children taught via the ITA had difficulty switching to ordinary spelling.

As an aside, I recall reading a Tony Buzan book where he said that dyslexia is practically unheard of Serbia, because Serbian is written phonetically.

(That's not wholly true now - some loan words follow the original spelling.)

It's still the case that Serbian magazines will spell foreign actors names phonetically - for example, "Fajnz" instead of "Fiennes".

NB Serbian children are taught two alphabets - Cyrillic and Latin. (The rule is that you don't mix the two, though I've seen people doing it as a joke.) Since the break-up of Yugoslavia, Cyrillic has been used in official documents.

For many years now, children have been taught "Write as you speak."

I think I learned whole word ,I remember learning by flash cards in 75.

In the 80s we could chose Latin or German ,bog standard high school.