learning reading/spelling
I learned to read the same way and in the same era, sans bombs. I sat on my grandmother's lap while she read to me and I can not remember a time when I could not read. In elementary school, reading was taught using the phonics method, so that was how you learned to spell. But the capstone of spelling instruction came in high school. I think I mentioned this in an earlier thread; in the high school I attended there was a list of the 100 most frequently misspelled words in English. This was divided up into 10 pieces and each week you had to study those 10 words and on Friday there was a test. They kept going over and over those 100 words, 10 at a time, for the 3 or 4 years you were there. Thanks to that, I could no more misspell judgment (the only word on the list I can recall off the top of my head) than I could misspell my own name.