English spelling is quite easy if your phonics education was complete, unlikely if you were educated in the 60’s. Many older teachers were still secretly teaching some phonics back then but the curriculum they were forced to use were generally the look and say pap, which was pretty much useless in developing good readers and spellers.
There are 26 letters but 70 phonograms (letter combinations with with specific and distinct sounds) and about 30 spelling rules that tell you when to use which.
Almost everyone learns “i before e except after c” which is an incomplete rule.
It is actually “i before e except after c, when we say ‘ay’ and in some exceptions. Neither foreign sovereign seized the counterfeit or forfeited leisure and either weird heifer eats protein.” The complete rule pretty much clears up most of the confusion.
A complete and systematic phonics education ensures that kids become competent at both reading and spelling. A great teacher will also teach some history of Britain so they can understand how English became a layered language with multiple roots.
My cousin is somewhat dyslexic. He reads with difficulty, having to sort of push the words on the page together with his eyes and tediously build them up into paragraphs and such. He did not learn to read at all until he was past 30. The look-say and whole word crap that was all the rage when he was in grammar school in the 50s and 60s (yes, 50s) made reading impossible for him then. Schools in the more progressive areas were also not really grading, some just giving everyone As and Cs, the Cs being for those who learned not much of anything so Cuz got graduated. Fortunately he had a flair for things electrical and did very well with radios and later, computers.
“The complete rule pretty much clears up most of the confusion.”
That would require a SEISMIC shift in thinking. ;)