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!
Meanwhile during my childhood I moved many many times and I remember arriving at a school in upstate New York for 7th grade, getting out of our life skills class which is like Home Ec for head injuries, going to lunch and then after lunch going out for recess.
The life skills class focused on important things like don’t talk to strangers which I thought was childish enough and then we went out for recess. We were in Middle School, and we had recess.
The kids I met there were the most behind of any kids at any school I ever went to. I was constantly accused of having my parents help me with my homework and projects. It seemed impossible to explain to them how little time my mother had to pay attention to me at all since she worked 2 jobs.