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Do we really need to subject our children to this monotony? No wonder so many students hate English classes.
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What monotony? Not all students hate English classes. Some of us loved English. Some of us enjoyed learning to spell words and the fact that the rules seemed slightly arcane and esoterical at times made it all the more interesting. I loved it. My youngest niece, who is a lot like me, loves it. It was precisely those early lessons in words that gave me my most abiding passion in life: language, words, their usage, their origins.
You point out the word 'debt' and the fact that the 'b' is a cuckoo in the nest. True enough. But that just makes it more interesting. That is history right there. We carry our history in the words that survive and migrate and change, or that vanish into the distance to be found only in ancient texts.
It's a little like, to my mind, setting aside odd herbs and spices, eschewing the little details like breadcrumbs or nutmeg, and holding up as better, purer, more wholesome, a plain dish of rice and peas. I like herbs and spices, I like the scorched top on a flambed dessert, I like the detail.
Back to children learning their lessons. Unless you have some figures to show that the curent method is resulting in more illiterate than literate children, then I will consider you have a valid point. But since most children do learn and it is a minority who struggle; and since so many children learn from this a love of the English language and books (as can be evidenced partly by the immense popularity of English Literature or Language degrees in universities across the English speaking world), then what you are suggesting is replacing one lot of disillusioned kids who hated English classes, with another. The ones who enjoy the variety and spice of English would hate the classes where they now like them, and those who currently hate classes, might find them fun.
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There are other words of this kind that tell lies about their origins. Anyone who advocates the etymological spellings of these and other such words must be made aware that false etymologies do exist.
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Well...I don't know about your schooling. But by the time I got to o-level (15/16) those were the sorts of things we were being taught. Those are precisely the kinds of things that our teachers picked up on to catch our interest. In terms of the current education system: a basic understanding of word origins and oddities is tagged to (if I recall aright) either Entry3 or Level1 literacy. That's an equivalent to about an age 10/11 reading age.