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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How can somebody say "phonics didn't work?" That is how all phonetic languages work. A symbol corresponds to a sound and then you put it together. [/quote]

They didn't, really.  In education, every time someone points out a problem - usually a real problem - with some method of teaching, then suggests a new way, schools immediately throw out everything they used to do, declaring it "bad teaching," and jump on the new bandwagon. All old knowledge is lost or forgotten or disallowed, as though nothing old is good.  It's kind of like fashion, going in and out of style.  Then after a while, people realize that the old stuff might have had some good qualities too, and just like fashion that trend comes back in a slightly more modern form, and the trend that displaced it becomes out of style.  We call it the pendulum, and good teachers dodge the pendulum.

Phonics had plenty to recommend it.  Like, you know, actually teaching kids to read words.  But the instruction was often very dry and boring, and sometimes it was all phonics drills and no actual reading. The idea that reading real books could be incorporated into the teaching of reading, even before kids could read the words, was a good one.  A lot of the ideas about learning through reading discussions and comprehension strategies were also good additions to reading instruction.

But of course, as education is by far the stupidest industry ever, it was taken to an extreme.  Teachers were literally not allowed to teach decoding (phonics), even when it was clear that without it lots of kids just weren't going to be able to read.  Dodging the pendulum meant integrating some phonics into the day, but in some districts micro-management made that very difficult.  I know I literally felt anxious about it all the time, like I had some dirty secret.

So anyway, that's what happened to phonics, and will happen again.  And again.  And again.[/quote]

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