Thruway to Illiteracy

Ef u kan reed this, u must saport tha simplefied speling system. If you couldn’t read the previous statement due to typographical errors, you must be for the current spelling system, which is as strong as ever before.

Proponents of a simplified spelling system argue that illiteracy rates would drop and childhood learning would grow at a faster rate. Opponents say that it would make spelling that much more confusing (it took me a few minutes just to write the opening line). Opponents only need to look at the National Spelling Bee for evidence that the current English spelling system is working fine.

Those in favor of a simplified system have taken to the streets of DC dressed as bumblebees and hoisting signs that say “Enuf is enuf but enough is too much” or “I’m thru with through.”

Alan Mole, president of the American Literacy Council which favors the simplified spelling system, argues “The kinds of progress that we’re seeing are that someone will spell night `nite’ and someone will spell through `thru.”

Donald Bear, director of the E.L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy at the University of Nevada, Reno, disagrees and believes that a simplified spelling system would do more harm then good. Since many words get their meaning from their prefixes, suffixes and roots, “Students come to understand how meaning is preserved in the way words are spelled.” This would not be the case with a simplified system.

The idea of a simplified spelling system has been around for over a century in America. In that time, it has garnered support from nationally known people including Mark Twain, President Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw and Andrew Carnegie, who created the Simplified Spelling Board. History even notes that Carnegie wrote to people using simplified spelling and required people to do the same when writing to him.

So why didn’t the idea catch on, especially with supporters like Carnegie and Roosevelt? Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, manager of the Pennsylvania department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh believes that “the average person simply did not see this as a needed change or a necessary change or something that was … going to change their lives for the better,”

While it does not look like America will be adopting a simplified spelling system anytime soon, those in favor remain very optimistic.

“Great changes have been made in the past. Systems can change,” Mole said.

Matthew Murphy is an intern with Accuracy in Academia.