Before we know it, Spring Initiation time will be here. Think of those colleagues and friends of education whom you have been intending to invite into membership. Take time this week to talk to them about PDK and offer applications. The new application form is on the next page. Feel free to make as many copies as you need. Then send the completed application to:

The deadline for submitting the applications is Friday March 12. Initiation is to be Monday, April 12, on the 9~ floor of the Hulman Student Union on the campus of Indiana State University. Dinner will be served at 6:00P.M. with initiation to follow. The cost of the dinner is $10 per person.

Wouldn't it be great to have even more friends with whom to share PDK??

PDK's Statewide Project on Advocacy for the Public Schools

The current session of the Indiana General Assembly faces making decisions that will have the opportunity to improve the quality of education our public school children receive. Following are some of the concerns regarding some of the major decisions the General Assembly, Governor, and state Superintendent will have to make. These are some of the concerns you will have a chance to have addressed at our February meeting.

PDK Offers Opportunities for YOUR Professional Growth

Use the toll free number above also to check into opportunities for use of various scholarships, institutes, and grants to aid YOU as a professional. You will find a list of some of the international travel seminars planned by PDK for the Summer of '99 in this newsletter.

The mission of Phi Delta Kappa is to promote quality education, with particular emphasis on publicly supported education, as essential to the development and maintenance of a democratic way of life.

THE GOOD KAPPAN QUIZ

If you answer "yes" to at least 7 of the following 11 questions, give yourself a pat on the back. You're a "Good Kappan."

1. Have I attended a majority of chapter meetings since becoming a Kappan?
2. Do I know the leadership of my chapter?
3. Have i read the latest issue of the Phi Delta Kappan?
4. Have I contributed an article to my chapter newsletter for publication?
5. Have I paid my dues?
6. When called on to serve, did I respond "yes"?
7. Have I attended an initiation banquet since my own?
8. Have I improved my professional growth through active participation in my chapter?
9. Have I enjoyed the fun, fellowship, food, and pro grams at meetings?
10. Have I submitted suggestions for improvement of my chapter?
11. Have I served on more than one committee?

Meg Potter, Newsletter Editor, Charlotte County Florida Chapter, PDK

The Phi Delta Kappa crest incorporates the following symbolism. The three organiza tions Pi Kappa Mu, Phi Delta Kappa,

Phi Delta Kappa, are represented by the three keystones. The three stars represent the student, the home, and the school. Research is symbolized by the burning lamp and the book, service by the flaming torch, and leadership by the upraised hand and the sword. Surrounding the shield are acanthus leaves which signify learning.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH SPELLING
    P.G. Aaron, Indiana State University

Johnny's teacher gave him the following spelling test: blessed, kingdom, earth, will, bread, trespass, mercy, and lead, become, and come,

Johnny wrote down: "blessid" "kyngdom" "erthe", "wile", "bred", "trespas", "merci", "lede", "becume" and "cum".

Of course, he got all the words wrong; he got an 'F'.

If Johnny had taken the test a thousand years earlier, he would have gotten an "A'9; this was how these words were spelled during the medieval period.

Does Johnny have a spelling problem?

In the previous Newsletter. I sketched the history of the writing system as it evolved in different parts of the world9 over the past 5000 years. It was noted that the earliest efforts to represent spoken language were in the form of pictograms which later became stylized into icons. The realization that icons and logograms could not adequately represent spoken language led to the development of rebuses and eventually symbols for syllables, consonants, and finally the alphabet. The alphabetic system is believed to have been borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenicians. The Etruscans borrowed the alphabet from the Greeks and transmitted it to the rest of Europe. It would appear, therefore, that a strictly alphabetic orthography - a writing system in which a one to one correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation - would be the culminating point in the evolution of the writing system. Indeed, many alphabetic scripts such as Italian, Spanish, and Finnish have an orthography in which spelling and pronunciation are well aligned.

English orthography, however, departs significantly from this ideal form with nearly 20 percent of the words having spellings that cannot be predicted by their pronunciation. The "irregularity" of the English spelling has been a source of consternation among linguists and educators and has been the target of spelling reformers.

Dissatisfaction with the English orthography, as reflected in the efforts to reform it, could be traced to as ~r back as 16th century England. Proposals to reform English spelling were made and advocated in the United States as well. There were, however, 1inguists and educators who wondered if such a reform is possible or even desirable. Sentiments about the advantages of the existing spelling had been expressed through out the past three or four centuries, the most recent being those of Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle (The sound patterns of English, 19~). Chomsky and Halle claim that English orthography comes remarkably close to being an optimal orthographic system for English. They base their view on the argument that written language is meant to represent meaning rather than sound and that even though from a phonological point of view English spelling may be somewhat irregular, from a meaning point of view, it is more regular. For example, even though the root morpheme "hear' is pronounced differently in the words rehearsal and hear, they are spelled the same way because the objective is to preserve the meaning contained in the root word 'hear".

Notwithstanding this perspective, the establishment of organizations such as the Simplified Spelling Board, Simplified Spelling League, and the Simpler Spelling Association. all in the US, and the British Simplified Spelling Society, in England7 bear witness to the general notion that English spelling needs to be straightened out. The involvement of men such as Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, Isaac Pitman, and George Bernard Shaw in the reform movement indicates widespread and persisting dissatisfaction with English orthography on both sides of the Atlantic.

But how did the English orthography come to be so deviant in spite of being an alphabetic system? The answer lies in the fact that English orthography is a product of its history, both political and linguistic. An excellent survey of the history of English spelling is provided by D.G. Scragg in his book A history of English spelling ( 1974). According to Scragg, the history of English orthography begins at the end of the 6th century when Roman and Irish missionaries converted the Anglo-Saxons in the British isles to Christianity and introduced the Roman alphabet. This represents the beginning of the era commonly referred to as the Old English period. During the next four centuries, writing and reading were confined to monastic activities. Writing was also used for regal enterprises such as the recording of the king's acts, ordinances, and law codes. From this period on, till the tenth century, four dialects appear to have existed in the British isles, the West Saxon dialect being the most widespread. According to Scragg "as a whole, Old English spelling as developed in the West Saxon tradition was much nearer a one-to one relationship with sounds" (p. 111. From this perspective, the modern English orthography is a regression from this ideal system.

In the subsequent period, however, this one-to-one relationship between spelling and sounds was gradually lost. The end of this idyllic Old English period and the birth of the Middle English period was ushered in 1066 when the French Normans invaded the British isles. In the years following the Norman conquest, large numbers of Frenchspeaking settlements were established, and for some two centuries England had two languages, with French being the language of the ruling class and the aristocracy. Since English ceased to be the language of the administration, there was no national standard to follow; spelling was governed by local dialects and conventions. During these two or three centuries, a large number of French words were adopted into English, the estimate of French words in modern English being as high as 40 per cent Thus, the orthography was made to adapt to two spoken systems, English and French and spelling became suitable to represent neither language. Furthermore, ~e vagaries of local dialects were responsible for creating additional disjunction between pronunciation and spelling. Generally speaking, loan-words adopted from one language to another are forced to accord with the sound Patterns of the recipient language. For example, the words heir, honour, honest, and hour have preserved the letter "h" from French, but not the sound. Other examples of inconsistencies are mouse and louse, and their irregular plurals mice and lice which were spelled mus, mys, lus, and lys in Old English. Even in early middle English, gray was as good as grey. Middle English scribes had several ways of representing "e", but under ~e influence of French, "ie" came to predominate and English words began to be spelled as brief, piece, and relief. In the 15th century, the "ie" spread to other English words such as thief, and chief . Words that did not falI prey to the French influence preserved the "ee" as in words such as deed, heel, and seek . But for the Norman conquest, relief would be spelled as "releef", piece as "peece", thief as 'theef", and so on. All would have been well. When children in your class misspell these words by '`regularizing" them, they are not to blame; it is the Normans who did it.

Under the Norman influence, many legal documents were written in Latin, which introduced yet another source of divergence between spelling and pronunciation. An example is the biconsonant "ch". Under the French influence, it is pronounced /tf/ as in chauffeur and machine, but under the Latin influence, it is pronounced /k/ as in chorus, and archive. The settlements of Vikings in England also contributed to the alienation of spelling from pronunciation. For instance, the sound /sk/ was spelled with "sk" as in skate, and sketch, which are Dutch in origin, but was spelled with "sc" as in scarce, and scorn, the words being French in origin. With the dawning of the Renaissance, an increased awareness of Latin became evident and scribes were responsible for Latinizing spellings such as debt, island, and receipt, which can be traced to Latin words such as "debitum", "insula", and "receptum". Even during the pre-renaissance Middle English period, these words were spelled "dette", "yland", and "receite".

Scragg (1974) considers sixteenth century to be the period to which Modern [3nglish spelling conventions could be traced. In England, educators such as John Hart (1569), Edmond Coote (1596), and Richard Mulcaster (1582) began the spelling reform movement. Even though these reformers appealed to "reason" by stressing the relationship between sound and spelling, they also wanted to take into account "custom". Mulcaster's "custom" was the traditional spelling as it existed in his days which, according to him, should be stabilized in order to avoid future fluctuations. His 'reason" was to render spelling systematic by introducing rules. An example of his rule is the introduction of final unpronounced "e" as a marker of vowel length. Before that period, double vowels such as "aa" and "ee" (e.g., "naam" for name; "saam", for same ~ were in use. Thus, "rules" were introduced and, not surprisingly, children find it difficult to master rule-based spellings. It is noteworthy that later, in 1755, Samuel Johnson the famous lexicographer also sacrificed uniformity to custom and left the spellings of words such as deceit, receipt, and phantom unchanged.

On this side of the Atlantic, educators such as Noah Webster and Edwin Leigh tried to reform spelling. Webster was responsible for the dropping of "~" from words such as "favour", and "colour'. In addition to a desire to reform spelling, a nationalistic spirit to make American English distinct from British English, might also have contributed to these changes. American spellings have had some impact on the British spelling as well, as seen in ~e current 13ritish usage of words such as encyclopedia, hemorrhage, and fetid which used to be spelled "enclyopaedia", "haemorrhage", and 'foetid". But the British have their national pride too. Hence they cling on to: "focussed", "biassed", "dulness", and "dietician".

During the seventeenth century, a spate of spelling books were produced to aid the learner which, according to Scragg, had a considerable degree of influence in stabilizing English spelling. By about 1650, printers started adopting a consistent spelling system that, with very few modifications, is in use today. Spelling became stabilized by about 1700 and relatively few changes have taken place since then. Among the few changes that have occurred since then are the replacement of "ph" with 'f' as in phantasy vs. fantasy, the dropping of "k" from words such as "musick" and "comick', and the addition of two graphemes '~v", and "j". It has, however, to be noted that what became stabilized was not an orthographic system which was well aligned with the spoken language, but a system that was warped and deformed by political and linguistic influences.

As early as 1768, Benjamin Franklin worried that "our words will gradually cease to express sounds; they will only stand for things, as the written words do in the Chinese language" (Scragg, 1964, p. 103). Considering the evolutionary development of the writing system, English spelling represents a system that went adrift, or is at best a mutation. The acquisition of spoken language provides us with a cue why English orthography should be considered a "mutant" variety. During the acquisition of spoken language, very young children tend to "regularize" and produce words such as "drinked", "sleeped", and "runned". Linguistics consider these regularizations as evidence of rule acquisition. Similarly, phonetic spellings (e.g., blue as "bloo", and water as "wader") could be considered as instances of regularizations. Researchers who have studied children's spelling propose that the acquisition of spelling skills goes through four identifiable stages: preliterate, prephonetic, phonetic, and morphophonemic. This stage theory of spelling acquisition considers the morphophonemic stage, in which the child acquires the ability to correctly spell "irregular words", to be the most advanced However, from a phylogenetic perspective, the morphophonemic stage represents a regression rather than the culmination of spelling evolution.

Ouestion: Which word, within the following pairs, is correctly spelled: "caligraphy" vs. "calligraphy'; "ecstacy" vs. "ecstasy"; "supercede" vs. "supersede"; and "surprize" vs. "surprise"?

Answer all the words are spelled correctly, depending on where you live, England or the United States.

The current 'officers would like to have much of the schedule for neat year's programs in place For the new officers. IF you have any ideas or suggestions For topics, or if you could write a showcase of something you have done For a possible program, please contact' Greg Ulm at 237-2906 or Charles Clark at 237-2700.

We would like to thank Dr. P.G. Aaron, our research representative, for once again contributing an article to the newsletter.

PDK's dues, both fraternity and chapter, are collected by PDK International. Where a mem ber desires to hold membership in two chapters, dues may be collected for both chapters.

The initial billing to members will be made three months prior to the expiration of good-stand ing membership. If a second notice 16 necessary, it will be mailed during the month in which membership expires.

Members not in good standing will be dropped from the mailing list of the Kappan after two issues of the journal have been provided following expiration of membership.

1910 Phi Kappa Mu, Phi Delta Kappa, and Nu Rho Beta, united to form Phi Delta Kappa.
1911 Phi Delta Kappa charted at Indianapolis, Indiana.
1916 National magazine designated the Phi Delta Kappan.
1923 First Executive Secretary authorized for PDK, Paul M. Cook (Dec 1927~July 15, 1956)
1938 Established national office at Homewood, Illinois.
1942 "White" clause eliminated from constitution.
1955 Moved headquarters office to Bloomington, Indiana.
1956 Established News, Notes, & Quotes newsletter.
        Maynard Bemis appointed Executive Secretary (1956-1970).
1966 PDK Educational Foundation created by George H. Reavis.
1971 Lowell C. Rose appointed Executive Secretary (1971 -1995).
1974 Women became eligible for membership (Bessie F. Gabbard-first woman member).
1989 Dedicated a major addition to the headquarters building and a new conference center.
1991 Silver Anniversary of the Educational Foundation celebrated.
1995 Conference Center renamed Rose International Conference Center.
        Ronald J. Joekel appointed as Phi Delta Kappa's fourth Executive Director.

AllWays Travel

Kappans needing the services of an experienced travel agency may want to consider arranging travel through a

travel agency in which PDK is the principal stockholder. Members can call 812/332-2135 or can use the toll-free number 1-800-833-2929. Tickets are dispatched by mail.

I am a teacher! What I do and say are being absorbed by young minds who will echo these images across the ages. My lessons will be immortal, affecting people yet unborn, people I will never see Or know. The future of the worlds is in my classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad. The pliable minds of tomorrow's leaders will be molded artistically or grotesquely by what I do.

Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. I must never forget these same young people could be the thieves or murderers of the future.

Only a teacher? Thank God I have a calling to the greatest profession of all! I must be vigilant every day lest I lose one fragile opportunity to improve tomorrow.

Ivan Welton Fitzwater
How to Improve Student Achievement

WHAT'S THE VALUE OF ONE MEMBER?

Ten little members standing in a line.
One disliked the president, then there were nine.
Nine ambitious members offered to work late.
One forgot her promise, and then there were eight.
Eight creative members had ideas good as heaven.
One lost enthusiasm, then there were seven.
Seven eager members planned and got into a fix.
They quarreled over programs and then there were six.
Six members remained with spirit and drive.
One moved away, and then there were five.
Five steadfast members wished there were more.
One became indifferent, then there were four.
Four cheerful members who never disagree
'til one complained of meetings then there were three.
Three eager members! What do they do?
One got discouraged, then there were two.
Two earnest members each enrolled one more
Doubling their numbers, then there were four.
Four determined members just couldn't wait
'til each won another, and then there were eight!
Eight excited members signed up sixteen more.
In another six verses, there'll be a thousand twenty-four! ! !

                        ~Anonymous
 

PDK's Educational Foundation

The idea of an educational foundation reaches back to Plato's Academy. George H. Reavis had this idea in mind when he founded the Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation on October 13, 1966. His hope was that the Foundation, as an integral part of Phi Delta Kappa, would provide Kappans, fellow educators, and chapters with the time and resources to promote excellence in education through research, service, and leadership. He envisioned publications and programs that would aid educators and the general public to better understand the nature of the education process and the relation of education to human welfare. His visions have been addressed through the network of nearly,666 Phi Delta Kappa chapters, their 110,000 plus members, and programs sponsored by PDK International. .

For more information contact the chapter's foundation representative or Phi Delta Kappa, P.O. Box 789, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-0789. Phone 800/766-1156 or 812/339-1156 or FAX 812/339-0018.

A Special opportunity for Kappans

Individuals are recognized in a variety of ways by levels of giving to the Educational Foundation.

Giving societies include the Maynard Bemis Society ($25), Executive Director's Society($50), FoundersSociety($89), President's Society ($100 and above), and the George H. Reavis Society ($10,000). The George H. Reavis Associates program recognizes persons whose cumulative contributions exceed $1,000. Tangible recognitions of society memberships such as complimentary publications and special mementos are provided to members
 

Greg Ulm--President
Deb Hardin---VP for Membership
Charles Clark—VP for Programs
Lynn White Secretary
Barbara Lincoln—Treasurer
Teri Titsworth—Historian
P.G. Aaron—Research
Jane Curley—Scholarships
Jeri Justice Foundations
Richard Antes—Delegate
Loran Braught—Advisor
Patty Faught—Newsletter

Nominations for New Officers???

Beta Lambda Chapter NEEDS your nominations for officers for next year!!! Many of the same people have been serving year after year and feel there is a need for new blood In the organization. One especially important opening will be for Chapter Delegate as Dick Antes has announced he intends to give up that post. It would be great for the new Delegate to talk to Dick and even have the advantage of Dick's accompaniment to an international meeting, which he has kindly offered. More Involvement and input into our local chapter would bring Immeasurable rewards to your professional development Consider one of the officer positions and contact any of the current officers today!!