Is Simplifid Speling The Way Of The Futr?

My daughter, who will be going into the first grade this fall, has been taught to spell phonetically at her school. A sample of her writing can be found here. It took us a little while to learn to read it, but it's really not that hard.

There has been an off and on push to simplify the English language since Ben Franklin, one of the founding fathers of our country, unsuccessfully rallied to change things. The reason: English has 42 sounds spelled in a bewildering 400 ways! For someone like me, who's been out of school for awhile, spelling can become elusive! You've all seen the e-mail that shows that as long as the first letter and the last letter of a word are in the correct sequence, the other letters in the word can be rearranged and you can still read it. Are all the different spellings in the English language necessary?

"In languages with phonetically spelled words, like German or Spanish, children learn to spell in weeks instead of months or years as is sometimes the case with English."

Text messaging and IM users are already using a simplified version of the English language. And Donut and nite are acceptable spellings for the former words.

I'm ready for a more laid back form of spelling just so I'm not constantly criticized for the way letters come out of my keyboard. I don't think everyone should switch over now, but the children learning in school can be taught to "spell it like it sounds."

Read the article and tell me what you think . . .

And That's What I Think.