Why are US schools so bad at facts?

[Ominous Gamer]

"phonics" is just a general term describing word-sound relationships despite what Wackypedia says at the moment.

You heard it here first folks, agamemnus > wikipedia

The phonics system, which I refer to, and that was attempted to be shoved down my brain, was some sort of weird system with tons of symbols above (or below?) the letters, indicating their pronunciations. It didn't make any sense.

This is what you consider phonics? Wait...this also means you don't know how to read a dictionary definition. You're telling me you're able to pronounce all those words from memorization and sight?

Learning suffixes and prefixes, however, does make sense, because it goes towards understanding new words formed from combinations of simpler words or word pieces.

still on this, and it still has nothing to do with the coversation

I don't believe in spelling tests, though. I never did well on them... spelling, just like reading, economic formulas, math, programming etcetcetc is best learned through practice, not memorization or some sort of crazy hand waving system...

Someone who doesn't understand phonics, complaining about not doing good on spelling tests. Awesome.

Then what do you mean when you said

Without phonics I was still able to gain a rudimentary understanding of language, easy enough to pass as an elementary student (since I was one).
Without phonics the other reading and pronunciation methods fall flat in higher learning. Especially when other languages come into play. Who wants to take a guess at a few, lets say African, country names that could get a student without an understanding of phonics in some serious trouble?