“Teach a child what each letter stands for and he can read. I know, you say, it can’t be that simple. But it is.”
Yea, verily! I was able to read about as well as anyone in my one-room country school on the day I first entered the building, because (1)I had been given a colorful alphabet book as a “toy,” and my grandfather (a proxy Dad in my case) satisfied my innate curiosity about the sounds represented by those letters; and (2) books were made available to me at least a year prior to my enrolling in a school, and Grandpa helped me as needed in my attempts to do what came naturally, read.
Much later, my own children, supplied with alphabet books and a mother that would sit down and read to them, at age 4-5 were trying to read the words on the Wheaties box at the breakfast table. Why is it so difficult to teach children something that they want to badly to learn, imitating what they see their parents do?
Possibly I just answered that question.
When the trader/silversmith Sequoyah - George Gist- introduced his syllabary the Cherokee people were suspicious of it and tried him for witchcraft but after proving it was just symbols of sounds by testing communication between him and his daughter, they asked him to teach them how to use it. In one week he taught the first group of men to read and write in their own language.
Within mere months a large part of the nation learned the new skill.
In short order literacy among the Cherokee and halfbreeds was higher than the average of white settlers.
And he did it all without the federal government. Phonics.