Rationale

Here are the links to the Youtube and the podcast.  A transcript of the content follows:

Youtube:

Podcast:

Here is a transcript of the content:

SSSS versus CRESS

Rationale for Fixing for the Reading and Writing Problem

A Fundamental Contrast

• SSSS: Senseless Spelling Sabotaging Society: the existing system of traditional English spelling makes no sense
• We see painful and costly cultural nonsense: traditional spelling is as hard to learn as anything that does not make sense
• CRESS: Consistent Regular English Spelling System: a scientific and engineering innovation carefully designed to fix the problem
• CRESS is carefully designed to be the only fully worked out and effective solution to the English reading problem
• It provides massive benefits for foreign speakers learning to pronounce and write English
• Traditional spelling violates the concept of phonetic spelling upon which much of civilization is based
• There is cultural destruction in teaching a phonetic idea based on massive phonetic confusion
• Teaching of sound letter correspondence is self-defeating by any system that confuses sound letter correspondences.
• CRESS has been carefully engineered for essential requirements over 20 years
• Previous reading systems are remedial and superficial embedding confusion while maintaining it
• CRESS goes back to fundamental underlying basic science principles
• A sound is a sound and a letter is a letter and always the twain shall meet

Primary questions

• What single innovation can help both general society and disadvantaged groups the most?
• Is there an alternative to SSSS?
• Do we care if 25% of the population is functionally illiterate?
• Do we care if senseless spelling problems disadvantage the disadvantaged?
• Do we care about a system that confuses itself at great economic, social, and psychological cost?
• How best to fix a cultural impedance that lowers joy and productivity for a whole society and minorities in particular?
• How to stop the massive waste in human potential from a system that contradicts itself?
• When does new technology make it the right time to disrupt the teaching of nonsense to children?
• What are the costs of being behind the times hundreds of years in terms of sound spelling correspondence?
• Has English spelling put the wonderful cultural engine of phonetic orthography in reverse gear?
• How/why to overcome the WhyNots of mega massive materials in traditional spelling?
• It’s about the economy, stupid.
• It’s about computer transliteration, stupid.
• Technology removes the WhyNots of friction in change.
• It’s about obvious, undeniable common sense.

Background

• A sample of nonsense of digraphs, silent letters, confusions, contradictions
• Don’t be fooled by this short list. There are tons of tons more.
• Dozens of other problem patterns are not illustrated here
• These problems number in the thousands of words, filling many pages of issues for reading teachers
• Examples of problems – tip of the iceberg
• The spelling ‘read’ is pronounced two different ways, so don’t count on regular spelling.
• The pronunciation /red/ can be spelled two different ways: read and red, so don’t count on pronunciation
• The ‘gh’ in the word ‘right’ is silent but not in ‘rough’ so silent things may not be silent.
• The final ‘e’ in the word rate has no sound but makes me go back and refigure how to pronounce the ‘a’.
  • It’s not even next to it.
  • Why go to the gas station two doors down from the bakery to buy bread if there’s just a sign to go back to the bakery and use a secret knock?
• The first sound ‘fed’ is the same in ‘phone’, but the symbols differ, which might discourage any child pursuing phonics.
• Children in school are launched into a primary curriculum of phonics contradiction nonsense
• Children face an introduction to education that makes no common sense
• Goals of education are thwarted when it’s a difficult uphill climb
• English spelling confusion takes away from the joy of learning
• Less time remains for interesting learning
• Friction creates aversion: early confusion ultimately lowers educational interest and attainment
• The academic world has failed to rectify an unscientific system that confuses itself.

A Scientific Strategy for Rational Reading Success

• Do not teach two things at once that confuse each other: English spelling confuses and impedes the phonemic awareness it is built on!
• Establish phonemics first, simply and completely, with none of the confusion of English spelling. First things first.
• Teach children carefully engineered simple phonemic reading and writing first, prior to standard spelling.
• Use careful system design to bridge scientific truth and traditional spelling.
• Design a phonemic system
• Maximize similarity to English spelling
• Take learners quickly to achievable mastery of traditional spelling
• Clarify for students that traditional spelling is confused, not they themselves
• Give children the intellectual Eureka and emotional high of seeing easily for themselves the confusions in standard spelling
• Advantages of putting the phonemic spelling bridge in place first
  • greatly eases traditional spelling
  • shows children traditional spelling for the confusion it is
  • creates fast literacy
  • offers a functional fallback and alternative
  • promotes the liberty of choice by children, parents, educators and the larger culture
• Provide tools to translate back and forth from CRESS to traditional English spelling
• Watch change over time as young people, relieved of nonsense, adapt

Benefits of a new system

• An educational world that makes sense launched in rationality
• Children experience more joy, learn more, become more productive

Fixing regrettable circumstances

• The pain of learning something if it depends on something that confuses the thing you are trying to learn
• The pain of learning something if the underlying principle (phonemic awareness) is confused by the thing you are trying to learn
• The pain of learning something that contradicts itself
• The pain of learning something if it depends on something that is somewhere else it makes no sense to look (silent e on the other side of consonant)

Learnability without confusion:

• Teach fundamentals before systems that depend on them
• Don’t teach something based on something that makes learning it harder
• Don’t teach A (phonics) based on B (digraphs) where B confuses A itself
• Just teach one level of learning at a time unless the second helps the first

Social and Economic Advantages:

• Quick large reduction in 25% functional illiteracy
• Unburdening of disadvantaged students lacking enough school hours to overcome the built-in confusion of standard English spelling
• Removal of an artificial class system from American schools based on reading proficiency
• Increasing the potential and productivity of American society

Psychological Effects Enhancing the Potential of American Society

• Makes early schooling more fun and leads more quickly to advanced learning
• Prevents inaccurate low esteem in students confused and stymied by an irrational, confused, trickster spelling system
• Provides relief and academic advancement for the well-known category of talented learners who lack interest and ability in traditional spelling
• Reduces difficulties for dyslexics
• Quick unconfused, less discouraging learning leads to love of education

Elements of Science

• Scientific basis means children experience the benefit of science in early grades
• Basic science of linguistics and phonetics is built into CRESS
• Naturally bootstraps accurate understanding of the science of language and pronunciation
• Learning to read is also learning actual science

Linguistic Design for Dialect Variation

• Provides a basis for dialect differences, allowing adjustment to local pronunciations when desired
• Pragmatically represents the general pronunciation for each sound without detailing the fine phonetics which are a distraction for the purpose of reading.
• Despite some phonetic generalization, aids awareness of social variation through phonetic science while learning to read

Positives for diversity:

• CRESS spelling can be flexible to vary with dialect pronunciation if desired
• Scientific awareness of phonetics encourages constructive diversity in society
• Minor Variations bring out dialect differences
• How to pronounce the ‘a’ in the first syllable in ‘Boston’, the backing > arrow can be added: a>
• How to compare British English: flexibility to reflect differences by adding arrows to a, o etc.
• How to represent dialects with o sound where others might have an ‘a’: caught as kot not kat

Dramatic Benefits for Learning English as Second Language

• World-wide billions of people are learning English
• Many learn to speak with strong accents and are unable to write
• CRESS makes both pronunciation and writing/spelling much easier
• CRESS spelling is much easier
• CRESS software translates CRESS spelling to traditional spelling
• Peace and understanding are promoted by ease in learning English as the world language