If you graduated before they implemented this or aren’t American, the system they started to use to teach kids how to read is called three cuing. They teach kids to identify unknown words by guessing based on clues in pictures with the sentences, what word would ‘make sense’, and whether the answer they came up with looks right based on the first letter.
As you may have noticed, none of that is reading a word. These are strategies that borderline illiterate people will use to try to understand words, and for decades it’s been the method used by many schools across the country.
So that person you’re arguing with online who keeps going off on bizarre rants barely related to anything you said might not be a troll, they might just be functionally illiterate due to having never been taught to read. Yaaay!
That’s simply not true, fortunately. All public schools are to follow common core standards and that includes phonics (sounding out words) over sight words and certainly over context guessing. Going contrary to the core is possible, I guess, but certainly not the norm.
If you’re curious, the debate was mostly settled in the 90s, during what my PhD advisor called the “reading wars.” Well, mostly settled… sight words still have a place in reading, especially when a word is contrary to its phonics. But basically, policy has prioritized phonics since Clinton, with to only some revision under Obama.
That’s not to say Americans aren’t dumb; doesn’t mean much if standards aren’t met. But it’s not as simple as saying we’re taught incorrectly. I could give a variety of reasons, although Lemmy users can probably guess poverty, politics and capitalism are pretty central to a lot of it.
Agreed I sub in multiple schools in rural PA. They’re all doing heavy phonics. More phonics then I was a kid for sure.
And the fact that you have a culture that rewards ignorance!
Researchers have tried to test that, too, although it wasn’t that strong an impact compared to funding discrepancy and parental neglect due to overworking and such. However, traditionally that type of research had racist undertones that assumed black inner city kids were the ones rewarding ignorance and somehow completely ignored the white Christian nationalist crowd.
I’d be curious to see more contemporary research on that, though I think researchers are scared to challenge religious or MAGA norms. That seems to be where ignorance is rewarded, compared to the college-first mentality you see in urban schools. But that’s my two cents, not backed by research (yet), unlike the data on poverty and curriculum standards.