Right on. Boiled down to the nubbins, this is it. It's absurd to say that anyone who teaches a child to read an alphabetic script is not going to take advantage of the distinction that makes a letter a letter, the fact that it represents a sound. That's the genius of the alphabet. On the other hand, it's absurd to say that learning is a matter of stimulus-response, that letter-sound knowledge is learned piecemeal, one microscopic part at a time. Humans are complex beings, not pigeons. The disagreement isn't about what needs to be taught, it's about whether there is one way to teach it and every teacher should gom on remote control.
This distinction feels important.
The issue is not whether phonics has value.
It is what happens when a valid instructional tool becomes a universal script.
Learning is not just stimulus → response.
A student brings confusion, curiosity, fear, context, and motivation into the room.
And a teacher’s judgment matters because real learning often happens exactly where the script stops working.
Right on. Boiled down to the nubbins, this is it. It's absurd to say that anyone who teaches a child to read an alphabetic script is not going to take advantage of the distinction that makes a letter a letter, the fact that it represents a sound. That's the genius of the alphabet. On the other hand, it's absurd to say that learning is a matter of stimulus-response, that letter-sound knowledge is learned piecemeal, one microscopic part at a time. Humans are complex beings, not pigeons. The disagreement isn't about what needs to be taught, it's about whether there is one way to teach it and every teacher should gom on remote control.