The Reading Warshttps://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2026/03/11/the-reading-wars-n2672687"My child can't read!"
That's become a common complaint from parents.
Why? It might be because kids are distracted by social media and video games.
But I think it's also because reading instruction became lazy and political.
"Progressives" at teachers' colleges pushed a reading technique called "Balanced Literacy."
Instead of memorizing sounds and letters, teachers push what they call "cueing," guessing words based on their context, or pictures.
Balanced Literacy downplays "structured phonics," the older technique where kids memorize letters' sounds and learn to sound out words.
...
Not teaching phonics is popular because its "drill and kill" technique is tedious.
The leftists at Time Magazine even quoted teachers calling phonics "colonizing ... the man telling us what to do." Some opposed phonics simply because George W. Bush pushed it.
But phonics just works better.
"We have all these scientists, researchers who are not political, and they've been in the labs, looking at brain scans, looking at rigorous studies, and we know that phonics is the way that kids learn to read," says reading app developer Niels Hoven.
A change in Mississippi schools provided more evidence. Mississippi once ranked last among states in reading.
Then Mississippi added more phonics to the curriculum and held back those who couldn't read.
Scores rose faster than in any other state. People call it the "Mississippi Miracle."
1. Having been taught Reading, I will agree that being taught phonics is boring. But it worked.
2. Having helped teach my munchkins to read using phonics, phonics is boring. But it worked.
3. The book
Why Johnny Can't Read was published in 1957, which called out the fruit of not using phonics. The euphemistic names have changed, but the failed method has been failing students for over 70 years.
