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Phonics

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As a high school English teacher, I am not trained in the scientific specifics and intricacies of the reading process, however, I do see the long-term results of this debate in real life on a daily basis, and so my argument is based on first-hand testimony.

Education and educator theory has gone through many different "waves" of popularity, with differing opinions on what is the "best" way to teach. Years ago in the 1960's and earlier, it was simple: go to school, sit in rows at your desk, memorize what the teacher said, and voila! Then we started to see a gap between boys and girls in achievement, especially in math and science. So in the late 1970's-1990's something called "girl power" emerged, whereby our teaching methods became more cooperative and less competitive (think circle time and group work) in order to cater more efficiently to the way that girls naturally learn. As girls got better grades in these areas, boys got worse, and then came the advent of labeling anyone with extra energy with an acronym and thereby prescribing something for the problem. (Boys, unfortunately, who naturally have more physical energy at a young age, were labeled as ADD and ADHD and were drugged to solve the problem of not staying in their seats, but that's a topic for another article).

When I was in elementary school during the late 80's early 90's, I vividly remember learning phonics. We had work books and text books for it and I can still see the colorful hot air balloon on the cover in my mind. Although I don't remember specific phonics exercises, I do know it has served me well. I was a voracious reader ever since I can remember, and as soon as I was able to study foreign languages, I jumped right in and did very well with those. Throughout my academic career I've studied 4 languages other than English, which has been well-served by my training in phonics, which provided the basis for deconstructing words into sounds and pieces, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. I've also always been a good speller because of this training, competing in spelling bees in middle school and such, and even if I don't know the meaning of a new word I come across, I can at least pronounce it correctly. Unfortunately, this is not a skill my current students often possess.

This natural progression of a love affair with language has led to my career as an English teacher. And I probably wouldn't have thought twice about phonics or the method by which I learned English

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