I couldn’t believe this when I first heard about it. Crippling children for life is right. If you learn via sight reading versus phonetics, you will only be able to read words that you’ve memorized, very limiting.
Yes. The kids can recognize McDonalds versus Jack-In-The-Box. They're keying in on shapes and logos, without understanding the spelling differences. That's how it was for our granddaughter when she was three. Now she is four, and reading words besides being able to write them. She began to stumble at lower-case versus all upper-case, but has a handle on it now. When she goes to Kindergarten in next September, I cringe to think they would bore her with sight-word crap. She'll climb the walls in boredom. Teach at home, because the schools aren't cutting it.
I was on jury and I was the only one who could read some chemical names on the indictment and they all thought I must be a scientist. I just sounded them out.
Phonics requires the child, first, to memorize a few rules, secondly, to learn that there are exceptions to some of those rules, and thirdly, to apply reason and connect the pieces into a coherent whole.
If children are not being taught this very basic discipline which is so necessary in reading, which in turn is necessary to explore the whole world and to consider everything in it from differing perspectives, then why are we surprised when our high schools and colleges are filled with ignorant little robots who cannot think, cannot consider differing perspectives, and refuse even to try?
Sometimes I suspect the real reason the SJWs are so busy attending meetings and walking out of class to attend protests is in order to cover up their collective illiteracy.
God forbid they be required to study and be tested on what they’ve learned. Or worse, to have to read up on a given subject, and prepare an articulate defense for their puerile viewpoints in a debate.
There will be no debate; it’s easier, and moreover, absolutely necessary, to shout down the opposition.
The brats can’t read! That fact presents its own compelling reason to hide that fact!
Whatever. Rant off. Sorry! :-)