The people I attended school with somehow learned to speak and spell, limited as we were! Maybe it is because we didn't have a bunch of liberal crap around to distract us, and teachers who wouldn't accept excuses.
Plus you didn’t have teachers who felt it was more important to be sure you had high self-esteem than to correct your spelling. I can remember papers having all sorts of corrections marked in red ink, and whenever they occurred, not just when spelling was stressed. Nowadays some school districts have even banned the dreaded “red pen” for fear of making kiddies feel badly about themselves.
When my kids were going through school, the teachers tolerated “creative” spelling so it would supposedly not interfere with their “creative” writing. But the way I learned to spell was largely on recognition and repetition and if I had been allowed to repeatedly misspell words, my mind would have imprinted it to be a stumbling block the rest of my life.
I, too, grew up in an atmosphere where you learned to spell correctly. Voracious reading also taught me a lot about our marvelous language. I am currently going through Richard Mitchell’s “Crazy Fractured English” again. I love Mitchell’s books skewering pompous English bloviating and Edwin Newman’s book on the same subject. English is a fascinating, creative language and if we “simplified” the spelling, we would lose the ability to figure out what the words mean because the spelling is a sign of which language contributed the word. It would be a tremendous loss and pretty confusing.
By the way, I love your photos.