[justin66]

> I went through school in the 90s and was 100% not taught any method involving phonics or sounding out words.

I mean... would you remember? Pretty much the only thing I remember about the relevant early years of kindergarten and elementary school is the time I went to school sick and threw up on my desk. (then again, I'm old)

> The problem was in fact the reverse of what you're claiming, whole language was brought in by consultants selling a curriculum. This is also easily confirmed.

I actually have no idea how to confirm that, but I'm sort of willing to take your word for it. By contrast, it's easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents, like the one I mentioned in my post. Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.

To be clear, I don't think those lessons are necessarily useless. Time spent with kids outside class on their education is a positive thing.

> Implementation varied state to state

I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.

[ch4s3]

> I mean... would you remember?

Yes. I distinctly remember sitting through a whole year of other kids struggling to guess what a word was based on context clues in some rabbit related reading book written for whole language instruction. It was painfully slow and boring. I distinctly remember having been taught by my mother to sound out letters, so I didn't have to guess and the teachers telling me not to do it.

> I actually have no idea how to confirm that

Marie Clay is the name you want to google.

> easy to find the phonics lesson products that are sold to parents

The reason there was a market for this is because what schools were doing was not working.

> Such products used to be pumped on the ads during AM hate radio shows, among other things. Those products were complimentary to the "educators are terrible and public education is terrible and everything done by experts is terrible" message those shows pushed.

It's important to step away form the culture war aspect of the "reading wars". There is simply put an evidence based and scientific way to teach reading, and one based on wacky theories fro mt he 1960s that don't work but were popularized by hucksters. The excellent podcast series sold a story has great coverage. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ (I wish they published long for text, and its ironic I know, but here we are).

> I'm sure that accounts for a lot of the difference in lesson plans we're talking about, and some states emphasize strong local control as well.

This is to an extent true, but teachers have to get trained on instruction in literacy and for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.

That said, it's important not to over focus on the mechanical part of reading, phonics, because background knowledge and vocabulary are key to using phonics well.

[justin66]

I appreciate the thoughtful reply - thanks! There are some things here to follow up on eventually.

I'm very skeptical that the aforementioned "consultants" made money off of the phonics controversy in a way that was comparable to those selling home lessons, but that's my main quibble at this stage.

> for many years colleges were all teaching utter nonsense.

That must be an exaggeration. It made me realize I actually have no idea how many different streams of methodology there are in education, outside of what we define as the mainstream. Certainly phonics is a part of Montessori education. Ah well, another thing to read about someday.