Guess how they did it.
They taught little children the sounds of each of the letters first. Then they taught them how to put vowels and consonants together. Then they showed them how to put them together to make words.
This is how little kids learned to read in the "Dark Ages."
What John Dewey did in the early 1900s was to influence the teacher colleges, beginning with Columbia, on how to take out that one very important step of getting the children to first become familiar with he sounds of each letter. By 1923 he had made headway.
That one step does more to handicap a kid from reading fluently than anything else. And as a result, we can have illiterates graduating from high school and sometimes college.
I'm very interested. Could you share some references?