James Pitman

Sir Isaac James Pitman, KBE (14 August 1901 – 1 September 1985) was a publisher, senior civil servant, politician, and educationalist with a lifelong passion for etymology, orthography, and pedagogy. He attempted to improve children's literacy in the English-speaking world by means of an interim teaching orthography, known as the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA). He was honoured with a knighthood in 1961 for his life accomplishments.

James Pitman followed his grandfather, Isaac Pitman, by exploring and expanding the pedagogical theories on teaching children to read the English language. Pitman obsessively studied English etymology, alphabets and orthography. He then argued that the overarching cause of reading difficulty in children was the phonetic irregularity of the English language. He compiled and published his analysis in his major work, ''Alphabets and Reading'' (1965).

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 used his position as a leading politician and educationalist along with the resources and connections from his global printing and publishing business to develop and launch the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), which was initially taken up rapidly with its use expanding to 4,000 schools in the UK and 17,000 schools worldwide, before falling out of favour in the 1970s. Provided by Wikipedia