Double post!

Quote Originally Posted by lolli
The really cool thing is that phonics can be adapted to fit a variety of different situations.
I do concede that it is theoretically possible that a small amount of children will not automatically pick up word-sound combinations when reading with parents/teachers/classmates/by themselves. However, I speculate it is in the minority, in disagreement with Aimless. I believe that nowadays a lot of children are not being allowed to reach their full potential: In my high school, 10 years ago, there was special ed. (dunno exactly what it was called), CP2, CP1, Honors, and (for 11th and 12th grade, sometimes) AP. Honors courses took up maybe 10% of the student body, and that is sad because I did not consider most Honors courses to be particularly rigorous; we didn't really have a huge number of what I would consider "smart" people in Honors courses either.

I will paraphrase some author or another and say "the human brain is a terrible thing to waste"... there is an incredible amount of learning that 99% of all people can do, simply if you don't restrict them.

I suppose that not all phonics learning is bad, as I have later clarified, but I still believe it is being taught in excess and without any sort of planning or research in the school system.