Modern Language Association by Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia
University. Describing the difficulty of teaching children our present
spelling, he says:

How heavy is the burden, as a matter of sober fact? To this
question it is difficult to give a strictly scientific
answer, because there is no perfectly satisfactory way of
attacking the problem. Literature teems with estimates and
computations of the time and money wasted in one way and
another because of our peculiar spelling; but from the
nature of the case they can only be roughly approximate.

Speaking broadly, it appears that children receive more or
less systematic instruction in spelling throughout the
primary grades--that is, for eight years. If now we suppose
that they pursue on the average five subjects
simultaneously, and that spelling receives equal attention
with the others, we get one year and three-fifths as the
amount of solid school time devoted to this acquirement.

This, however, does not tell the whole story; for many begin
the struggle before they enter school, many continue to need
instruction in the high school, and even in college, and not
a few walk through life with an orthographic lameness which
causes them to suffer in comfort and reputation. Probably
two years and a half would be nearer the mark as a gross
estimate of the average time consumed in learning to spell
more or less accurately.

We have now to ask: How much of this time is wasted? How
much must we deduct for the reasonable requirements of the
case? Zealous reformers often assume that it is practically
all wasted. They tell us that if we had a proper system of
spelling the acquisition of the art in childhood would take
care of itself after a little elementary instruction. This
may be so, but we have no means of proving positively that
it is so.

If any people in the world had an ideal system of spelling,
we might go to them and find out how long it takes their
children to learn spelling. But there is no such people; and
so we are forced back upon such rough and general
statements--perfectly true in themselves--as that German and
Italian children learn to spell much more easily and quickly
than do our own children.

Meanwhile, it is hardly fair to take as one term of
comparison an ideal condition which never exis