Dane

I think that teachers SHOULD "tell children that English spelling is silly or illogical", because it most certainly is. U ar attached to it because u had to spend many years learning it. But looked at objectively, hundreds of its spellings are insane.

Decorating words like 'frend, bild, cruse' with clearly surplus letters (friend, build, cruise) is stupid and extremely unhelpful to children learning to read and write (cf. send, bill, ruin). What few people realise is that this is because in the 16th century, when printing first really took off in England after Tyndale translated the Bible into English, printers were paid by the line. This made them fond of making words longer with extra letters (olde, worlde, worde, hadde, fisshe, shoppe) and so they deliberately messed up many earlier more sensible spellings (lern, frend, reson).

The mindless habit of sticking a useless –e onto hundreds of words is especially nasty (e.g. give, promise) because it undermines the main English method of spelling short and long vowels (spiv - five, tennis- surprise).

I realise that "the spelling aint going to change in a hurry", but overall literacy standards in Anglophone countries won't improve until it does. The Russians simplified their spelling after the 1917 revolution.

English is "an easy language to learn" but ITS SPELLING MAKES LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE EXCEPTIONALLY DIFFICULT.

Learning about its history is fine for the intellectually able, but learning to read and write are essential life skills and should not take as long to learn as they do, if we want to attain higher overall educational standards.