I'd Like to Meet the Muppet

Who thought that the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) was a good way to teach children to read.

ITA was a very popular 'modern' teaching tool when I started infant school (in 1965), although, thankfully, my school taught in the old fashioned way.  My grandfather, who had been a teacher, strongly cautioned my mother against the ITA - and thank heavens he did.

I knew that the ITA was a now-discredited blip in the history of teaching children to read, but I had no idea how crazy it was until I came across this book yesterday.

In order to make sense of the text you have to read it out loud (presumably that was the whole idea) and there are characters in there that bear no relation to the alphabet in English at all.  Oddly enough, there is just the faintest hint of 'text speak' in the shortening of words - which just goes to show that nothing is really new.

Can you imagine how confused the children were who learnt to read this way and then had to start all over again and learn to read 'proper' English.

Having totally rubbished ITA, I must say that the illustrations in this book are lovely and take me right back to my days learning to read with good old Janet and John books.

Was anyone out there taught to read using the Initial Teaching Alphabet - did it actually work or was it the total nightmare it seems to be?

Comments

[apieceofwood]

Found this fascinating - never ever heard of ITA.. and you're right - I sat there saying it out loud!

[sharie]

Now that is weird and I'm really glad I never learnt to read like that.Surely it could send kids deranged? It nearly unhinged my mind trying to read it LOL

[Jen]

Wow! I never knew that! I learned to read in 1964 or so, and thank goodness, we had the "normal" Janet and John books. I found one in a charity shop once and pounced on it. I just love them and even have a Janet and John illustration as my PC wallpaper at the moment. DD thinks I'm weird...