We'll start off with Catan at 4 and hopefully hit Terra Mystica by 8 🙏
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Didn’t phonics turn out to be a scam? Or at least incredibly scam-adjacent as it keeps coming up in the Swindled podcast.
I haven’t heard of swindled before. Forgive me, but I used an LLM to summarize it for me. Based on the summary, my professional analysis of the summary it gave me (again, I haven’t listened to it in total) would be that the podcast was critiquing the specific commercial product “Hooked on Phonics”, not phonics in general, and that the critiques involved this specific product being heavily marketed to parents (not educators) as being a panacea despite not utilizing best practices— even best phonics practices.
I’ve never used Hooked on Phonics specifically… again, it’s marketed toward parents, not educators. Some cursory, surface level research seems to show that early editions were especially bad, and in fact led to FTC citations for false advertising. Their marketing linked their product with phonics in general, which was generally untrue, and apparently the company didn’t even consult with experts (neither experts on phonics nor literacy in general!) when initially developing the program. So it sounds like they were probably a good source of material for a podcast on scams.
That doesn’t make phonics itself bad pedagogy. Phonics itself is fantastic, and produces the absolute best results.
Teacher here. (EFL teacher, but phonics are necessary in EFL as well as L1 English classes)
The opposite. Phonics is the only thing that actually works, and any and all attempts to move away from phonics creates long term systemic issues in reading.
The issue is that phonics are hard to learn at first, but the payoff for the early effort is nigh-effortless reading in the future, enabling education to continue and making literally all future self-improvement better.
Alternatives to phonics focus on the “it’s really hard at first” thing. You know, if we skipped phonics and just memorized word shapes, we’d be able to get our 1st and 2nd grade test scores up… and that means more federal funding! And it works!!!
What do you mean our 3rd grade test scores are dropping… I guess we just need to pile on MORE HOMEWORK!!! And 4th grade scores are dropping too? And 5th? And middle schoolers are struggling? And high schoolers don’t read much either, and their writing is nigh-incomprehensible? Ehh… well, must be the kids fault, am I right guys?
Phonics teaches the rules that make English work. It gives you the ability to read and write as well as you can speak, which comes naturally. It gives you the method to learn new words in seconds or at worst minutes, instead of days or weeks. You can’t tell me that isn’t powerful.
What systemic reading issues will I have from having never heard of it until recently?
If you were taught using “whole word” or “three-cueing” strategies (I’m guessing you were given the three cue method, as that’s been pushed in the past two decades pretty hard, to the detriment of everyone, but whole word isn’t great either) you’re more likely to have internalized inefficient, error-prone, and mentally tiring reading habits. Obviously you can still read, but you will find it more difficult and less enjoyable, adding an extra layer of stress when learning other things that is actually unnecessary.
It’s possible you learned/figured out phonics on your own from exposure. Some are able to do this— humans are the best pattern finding machines in the universe at the moment— in which case these problems won’t present themselves. However, being taught wrong can create issues such as guessing words based on context (or images/diagram presented with the text), skimming for clues instead of deciphering the word itself, memorizing entire words instead of pieces of them that contain sounds and meaning.
These strategies all “work”… they enable you to read, but they create extra problems when you encounter new, uncommon, or just unfamiliar words (necessary when learning new concepts), when the context is unclear (such as when picking up a new novel to read, or analyzing technical or scientific papers without illustrations), or when you need to read and comprehend things quickly and under timed pressure (such as when there are work deadlines, or… you know, standardized tests).
You can read, sure, but you probably can’t read well, unless you’ve managed to figure out patterns and strategies that weren’t expressly taught to you on your own.
Here’s an article that may lay things out for you clearly. It says much of what I’ve said here, but with more detail and probably better prose. It’s a persuasive piece, but it is backed by the current scientific research and understanding we have. At a Loss for Words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers
So it’s a scam. Got it.
Three-cue and whole word memorization are scams, yes. Possibly not maliciously intended scams, but they’re counterproductive anyway. Phonics is not.
Thought it was the other way around. I've heard many people blame low reading comprehension within a certain age band on the replacement of phonics with whole word recognition.