Thanks, Micksy and LePetitMarseillais.
I had better explain what my agenda is.
My main 'agenda', even though i'm now 70, is a passionate interest in education. I would like all children to learn as much as they possibly can, because education was so transformative in my own life.
Having lived in several countries, and visited many more, and experienced how much more easily, and how much faster, children learn to read and write with more regular spelling systems, i admit that i find it a shame that the irregularities of English make the lives of young English-speaking children and their parents so much harder - with a much earlier start to formal schooling, the need for regular reading practice at home, the constant testing, less time for play, fun, creativity and exercise in fresh air – and endless worries about spelling.
What upsets me particularly, having been a helper at a club for people with learning difficulties for 34 years, is how English spelling limits the educational prospects of people at the lower end of the ability range. Their more limited brain power already limits what they can achieve. But because as children they take an inordinately long time to achieve even quite modest reading and writing skills (often still reading very poorly by age 11) they are even less able to learn much of anything else.
So yes, i admit that i would love to see English spelling made more sensible and learning to read and write made easier and less time-consuming. But i have no illusions whatsoever about it happening any time soon, if ever, because it would mean the abler sections of society having to put up with the inconvenience of change mainly for the benefit of the less able.
My main, and i think much more achievable, agenda for the rest of my life is to END THE SILLY READING WARS which have been raging across the English-speaking world for more than a century, with employers endlessly blaming schools for poor literacy standards, and worse still, teachers blaming each other.
Over and over again, there have been teachers or educational expert popping up with a fantastic new approach that is the undoubted final solution to all literacy problems, and blaming persistent literacy failure on those who fail to see the light and don't jump on their bandwagon.
What they invariably ignore is that, regardless of how hard teachers work, and even how much parents help, lots of children continue to be confused by, and take a long time to get to grips with, phonic inconsistencies like 'go – to', 'on – only – once', 'man – many', 'treat – threat'....
And they need even more time for learning, word by word, how to spell at least
352 common words with /ee/ (speak, seek, shriek, seize, scene, machine ....)
197 with long /oo/ (blue, shoe, flew, through, to, you, too....)
194 with er/ir/ur/ear (her, bird, turned, early ...).
and so on, for at least 4,219 common words in all.
I want people who try to come up with new theories about how best to teach children to read and write to take note of the nature of English spelling, instead of pretending that learning to read and write English is just like learning any other alphabetically written language. That it's all just about teaching the alphabetic code and relationships between sounds and letters - with the latest batch of newly published, officially endorsed courses, which help to make the careers of their authors and promoters.
That's my agenda.
And it goes back to 1994 when i had to retire from teaching because of overwork and throat problems and started reading a newspaper daily. Commenting about the poor literacy standards of school leavers which were much in the news then, Andrew Neil claimed in The Times that half of all primary teachers were incompetent and should be sacked, with the rest being paid double. Knowing what I already knew, i could not let that go unchallenged. And over the past 20 years, i have learned a lot more about the ins and outs of English spelling and their origins than i knew then.
Masha Bell