Pitman postulated that if children were taught using an interim orthography consisting of an alphabet and spelling system which were phonetically regular, then they would learn to read quickly and easily and so alleviate the problem of poor literacy which plagued the English-speaking world. He relentlessly exploited his position as a leading politician and prominent educationalist along with the resources and connections from his successful global printing and publishing business to develop and launch the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), which was initially a spectacular success with its use expanding to 4,000 schools in the UK and 17,000 schools worldwide.
Isaac James Pitman was born in Kensington, London, on the 14th of August 1901. His father was Ernest Pitman, and his mother was Frances Isabel Pitman, née Butler. He was the eldest child in the family and had five other siblings, but three were killed in the Second World War:[1]
Pitman's grandfather was the famous Isaac Pitman, who had developed Shorthand Writing known as Pitman Shorthand; in consequence, Isaac James Pitman went by his middle name 'James' to differentiate himself from his grandfather.[7] The innovations made by his grandfather were monetized into the successful family business, Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd. Due to this fact, James Pitman was born into a wealthy family and received a privileged upbringing, being educated at the elite Summer Fields School,[8]Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford where he graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) in Modern History.[9]
Personal life
In 1927, Pitman married into the British nobility when he wed the Hon. Margaret Beaufort Lawson Johnston, aka 'Beau' who was the daughter of George Lawson Johnston, 1st Baron Luke and Hon. Edith Laura St. John; they had four children together: -[10][11]
23 May 1940;- granted a commission for the duration of hostilities as Pilot Officer on probation[19]
21st Dec. 1940;- granted the war substantive rank of Flying Officer on probation[20]
23 May 1941;- confirmed in his appointment as Flying Officer [21]
It was during the war years that Pitman tragically lost three of his five siblings.
Corporate career
He joined his father Ernest Pitman and his uncle Alfred Pitman in the family business originally set-up with his grandfather Sir Isaac Pitman. In circa 1932, he became the chairman and managing director of Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd.[22] Under his stewardship, the business became one of the world's leading educational publishers and training businesses with offices in London, Bath, New York City, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Toronto and Tokyo. The publishing business re-incorporated to Pitman Limited in 1975 then went public in 1983 before being purchased by rival Pearson Plc in 1985.[23] The training business evolved into two separate businesses: Pitman Training Group and JHP Training (which re-branded to Learndirect).
Pitman became a prominent British educationalist, promoting education from kindergarten children to adult training.
His association with education started in the 1920s, when Pitman served for a time as headmaster of one of the colleges in Maida Vale under the ownership of his family's business interests (Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd).[25]
Over his career, Pitman became one of the most prominent persons in the British educational establishment through the mid 20th century, attaining leadership positions in many eminent educational institutes: -
Member of the British Association for Commercial and Industrial Education[27][28] (including the National Association for the Advancement of Education for Commerce)
Chairman of the Joint Examining Board (between 1935 and 1950) [25]
Pro-chancellor of the University of Bath between 1972 and 1981, as a result the Pitman papers reside with the university. The university awarded him an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) in 1970.[30]
Despite the plethora of esteemed positions attained or accolades received, whenever Pitman described himself, such as in his Who's Who listing, he would always place highly his rank & file membership of the National Union of Teachers,[27][31] this exposed his progressive conservative tendencies over educational matters.
Public service
Pitman was the Bursar to the Duke of York's and King's Camp
Pitman had an extensive career as a public servant:
1933–1939; - Pitman serves as the Bursar of the Duke of York's and King's Camp [27]
As director of the Bank of England during the war, Pitman was on the board in 1946 which oversaw the nationalisation of the Bank of England by the new Labour administration. During the war, the Board also had to address the Nazi attempt to financially de-stabilise the United Kingdom through the injection into the British economy of bank-notes forged at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, this often overlooked episode in Second World War history was dramatized in the BBC comedy, Private Schulz.[38]
Pitman was first elected as a Conservative M.P. in the 1945 Labour party landslide win, after which he was involved in the opposition to the nationalisation programme of Clement Attlee's government.[44] In particular, he debated extensively on the nationalisation of the Bank of England and the Gas Board,[45][46] and wrote the influential pamphlet "Management efficiency in nationalized undertakings", in which he impartially analysed the issues of consumer rights and efficiency in the different models of nationalised industries tried by the Labour government.[47]
Education
Pitman consistently used his position to petition for improvements to education and training and the funding thereof.[48] As an example, his last contribution as an MP in 1964 was a written question asking for assurances against over-crowding in schools.[49]
Pitman passionately argued in Parliament to make it easier for kindergarten-aged children to learn to read and write through orthographical and spelling reforms to the English Language. Pitman worked with the similarly minded Labour MP, Mont Follick, to table a series of private members' bills to enable the reforms. The parliamentary support for these measures forced the government to allow a trial which led to the launch of the Initial Teaching Alphabet.[50][51]
World Security
During Pitman's near two decade service as a M.P., there was a large number of wars and coup d'états in various unstable regions of the world including the British Commonwealth, in response ten parliamentarians including Pitman published a paper calling for a World Security Authority which would be a force to impose judgements from a world court to rule over cases of violation of international law.[52][53]
Honours
Badge of Knight Commander of British Empire 1917 - 1935
Pitman's main life achievement was in endeavouring to make reading & writing easier for kindergarten children and so improving literacy levels in the general population.
Grandfather's Legacy
Building owned by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons promoting Phonetics
Initially, Pitman inherited the ideas formulated by his grandfather, Isaac Pitman, who was a lifelong advocate of spelling reform for the English language and passed this advocacy on to James Pitman. Isaac's major work on spelling reform was the development of the alternative English orthography known as Phonotypy which he published in 1844. Isaac's interest in orthography also led to his development of the most successful form of phonetic shorthand which was known as Pitman shorthand, this eventually became the great source of wealth in the family and led to the formation of Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, established 1886.[55]
Alphabets & Reading
Consequently, Pitman obsessively studied the etymology of English orthography. He bemoaned the post-war government statistics showing that 30% of fifteen year-old who had passed through school education could barely read,[56] and he demonstrated that the irregularity of English phonology was the primary cause of the poor levels of literacy in the English speaking world. In 1969, he published his findings in Alphabets & Reading which was a collaboration with John Robert St. John, a professional writer.[56]
Simplified Spelling Society
In May 1936, Pitman was elected to the committee of the Simplified Spelling Society after a fortuitous meeting on board a steam-ship in the mid Atlantic between Pitman and committee member, Professor Lloyd James, Professor of Phonetics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University.[55] Pitman re-invigorated the society by bringing both enthusiasm from his grandfather's phonetic legacy and the resources of Pitman and Sons. The first item of business was the publication of the seminal book "New Spelling" which Professor Lloyd James considered as 'One of the most remarkable statistical investigations into English spelling ever undertaken.', the publication costs were funded by Pitman.[57] Pitman would become treasurer of the Society and was eventually elevated to the President in 1936.[29]
Parliamentary Pressure
In 1949 and 1953, as a member of parliament he used his position to agitate for orthographic reform through backing private members bills. Pitman was part of a parliamentary group led by the Labour MP Dr, Mont Follick, who argued that orthographic reform to the English language was needed to improve levels of literacy and to make it easier for young children to learn to read and write. They succeeded in extracting compromises from the education minister, Florence Horsbrugh, to allow a trial of an orthographic means of teaching children to read.[58]
Initial Teaching Alphabet
Pitman then went on to the crowning achievement of his life, to develop the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), which was first published in 1959 as The Ehrhardt Augmented (40-sound, 42-character) Lower Case Roman Alphabet.[59] It was designed with the sole purpose of simplifying the task of learning to read English.[60] Pitman had to exploit the resources of his printing & publishing businesses and his extensive connections with the educational establishment to deploy his system.
The trial was successful and the use of the i.t.a. spread unchecked through the UK and onwards to the English speaking world including the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.[61] By 1968, the i.t.a. federation of schools calculated 4,000 schools in the U.K. and 17,000 schools worldwide used the i.t.a.[62] During this time, It was heavily studied by researchers and eventually the UK government asked Professor Frank Warburton & Vera Southgate to carry out an independent assessment of all the research, which they published in 1969.[63] As an example of the positive outcome, Southgate polled 90 teachers on their preference for i.t.a. or traditional orthography (t.o.), and only two teachers preferred t.o. and one had come straight out of teacher training college to teach using i.t.a. so had never experienced the difficulty of teaching children conventionally.[64] Due to the technological limitations of the time, printed i.t.a. books were expensive and teachers trained in using the i.t.a. were in short supply consequently the i.t.a. gradually became economically unviable and mainly fell into disuse in the 1980s despite its reported advantages.[62]
George Bernard Shaw and the Shavian Alphabet
Shavian alphabet - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - book cover
Another proponent of orthographic reform during that period was George Bernard Shaw, who, on his death in 1950, bequeathed a considerable portion of his estate, a sum of £8,300, towards the promotion of alphabetic reform. As a leading advocate of such reform, Sir James Pitman was invited to become a public trustee of Shaw's will, where his duties would include the administration and judging of a competition devised by Shaw to design an improved, more economical alphabet. This competition was won by Kingsley Read, who developed the Shavian alphabet with most of Shaw's legacy spent demonstrating the Shavian alphabet through a special phonetic edition of Androcles and the Lion, published in 1962 by Penguin Books.[65]
^ abUpward, Chris (1986). "OBITUARIES"(PDF). The Simplified Spelling Society - the Newsletter. Journal 3 (1986 (Summer Issue)): 2 – via The Simplified Spelling Society.
^Conservative Political Centre; Black, C. Wilson; Dodds-Parker, A. D.; Foster, J. G.; Harris, R. Reader; Hay, John; Hughes-Hallett, John; Maddan, Martin; Pitman, I. J. (1958). A world security authority?. C.P.C. London.
^Ripman, Walter; Archer, William (1948). NEW SPELLING. London: SIR ISAAC PITMAN & SONS.
^Harrison, Maurice (1986). "A History of the Society up to 1970"(PDF). The Simplified Spelling Society - Newsletter. Journal 3 - 1986 (Summer): 34–35 – via The Simplified Spelling Society.
