For too long, children's learning and ultimate literacy have been damaged by academics and teachers unions pushing trendy reading methods. The data are in. Phonics works best. It is time all states put it back in classrooms.It is not often that the nation looks to Mississippi as a shining example of public policy, but there is no denying what the state has accomplished since it obliged teachers to use phonics in classrooms.
A product of leftist academic thinking, the “whole language” approach to teaching young children how to read first became popular at teaching colleges and then spread to schools as young teachers took their first jobs. Where phonics focuses on breaking words down into building blocks of how letter combinations sound, whole language learning focuses on memorizing entire words.