The principles behind ‘synthetic phonics’, the latest educational reading nostrum, have been around for thousands of years. Heaps of papyrus exercises, exercise-books (and a primary school text-book) have been found, dating from the Greek world of the 5thC BC.

The first thing to be learned was the Greek alphabet, by means of a metrical, chanted song: est’ alpha, beta, gamma, delta, t’ ei te kai / zêt’, êta, thêt’, iota, kappa, lambda, mu etc. Useful hint for teachers: King Herod had a dim son who could not remember the names of the letters, so had 24 slaves of the same age brought up with him, each named after a letter. Then came syllables, each learned in full, and in order: ba, be, bê, bi, bo, bu, bô; ga, ge, gê etc; and they were spoken before they were pronounced (‘bêta alpa ba’). Then came words: first monosyllables, then disyllables and so on, printed e.g. O:dus:seus, Le:on:to:me:nês, including tricky words to test pronunciation, like knaxzbrikh (apparently an illness). There is a ‘quick brown fox’ equivalent (and even more meaningless): bedu zaps khthôm plêktron sphinx, each letter used only once. ...