James Pitman
Sir Isaac James Pitman, KBE 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. 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.
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, 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.
Early life
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:- Christian Ernest Pitman, born 28 Nov 1902
- Major John Pitman, born 22 Jan 1907
- Captain Peter Pitman Butler, born 05 Mar 1911
- First Officer Honor Isabel Pitman, born 30 Oct 1912.
- Diana O. Pitman, born 1914
Personal life
In 1927, Pitman married into the British nobility when he wed Margaret Beaufort Lawson Johnston who was the daughter of George Lawson Johnston, 1st Baron Luke and Edith Laura St. John; they had four children together.Sports
Pitman was a natural sportsman and excelled in athletics, skiing and boxing in which he won the Public Schools middleweight boxing championship of 1919.However, his principal sporting passion was rugby union, in which he played as a running Wing Three-Quarters. Pitman gained his 'blue' at the Oxford University Rugby Football Club in 1921, but his main playing career was for Bath Rugby Football Club in 61 appearances between 1919 and 1928. He was captain between 1927 and 1928. He later became President of the Bath RFC from 1952 and 1954. His career culminated in his selection to play for the England rugby union team against Scotland in the Calcutta Cup, played on 18 March 1922; it proved to be his only international cap.
Military service
During World War II Pitman served as a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. In May 1940, he was granted a commission for the duration of hostilities as Pilot Officer on probation. He was later promoted to Flying Officer.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 around 1932, he became the chairman and managing director of Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd. 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. The training business evolved into two separate businesses: Pitman Training Group and JHP Training.Pitman also served on the board of directors of several large publicly limited companies including Boots the Chemists, Glaxo, Bovril and the Equity & Law Life Assurance Society.
Educationalist
Pitman became an educationalist, promoting education from kindergarten children to adult training. His association with education started in the 1920s, when he served for a time as headmaster of one of the colleges in Maida Vale under the ownership of his family's business interests.Over his career, Pitman became one of the most prominent British educationalists, attaining leadership positions in many educational institutes:
- Chairman, Royal Society of Teachers
- Chairman of Council, National Centre for Cued Speech
- Vice-president of the British and Foreign School Society
- Member of the British Association for Commercial and Industrial Education
- Chairman of the Joint Examining Board
- Chairman, Treasurer & committee member of the Simplified Spelling Society
- Chairman of Council, the Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation
- Life President of the UK Federation of i.t.a. Schools
- President of the Society of Commercial Teachers
- Chairman of the management committee of the University of London, Institute of Education
- 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 in 1970
Public service
Pitman had an extensive career as a public servant:Pitman served as the Bursar of the Duke of York's and King's Camp 1933–1939.
Pitman served as a Director of the Bank of England during the war years of 1941-1945.
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 banknotes forged at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Pitman served as the first Director of Organization and Methods, a senior civil service post at HM Treasury 1943–1945.
Pitman served as vice-president of the Institute of Administrative Management for 1965–1969.
Member of Parliament
At the 1945 general election, Pitman was elected to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom as Conservative Member of Parliament for the Borough of Bath, he was subsequently re-elected four times: - 1950, 1951, 1955, 1959 before finally retiring from Parliament just before the 1964 general election. As a member of parliament, he championed many notable causes, notably nationalisation, education, and world security.Nationalisation
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. In particular, he debated extensively on the nationalisation of the Bank of England and the Gas Board, 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.Education
Pitman consistently used his position to petition for improvements to education and training and the funding thereof. As an example, his last contribution as an MP in 1964 was a written question asking for assurances against overcrowding in schools.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. He 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.