In our main post, we challenged the dominant narrative that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness. We argued that many children already possess strong phonemic skills, and that the real barrier is distorted phonics instruction—especially the widespread habit of teaching consonants with added schwa vowels (e.g., b as “buh”).
This companion post offers practical strategies to fix that.
Across the Western world, educators and researchers increasingly claim that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness—the ability to identify, isolate, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This idea has become the cornerstone of reading interventions, teacher training, and curriculum design. But what if the problem isn’t in the child’s brain at all?
This morning I read a post in The 74 entitled: Do Kids Really Stop Learning to Read and Start Reading to Learn After Third Grade?
As usual, here are some extracts and my comments.
The Myth Repeated
I have read what the title says over and over again for years. Someone said it once, and every other person copy-pastes it across social media.
This morning I came across two tweets that highlight the ongoing confusion in literacy instruction.
Waveofthefuture (@Sustain_VA) wrote:
“Phonics can be a tool for the simplest words and should be used in the beginning. But English is not a phonetic language unfortunately so it’s a very limited tool. Don’t believe me? Try to read your own tweets using basic phonics as if you didn’t already know those words.”
And Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) tweet:
Why Kids Shut Down (And How to Fix It Without the Drama)
For weeks now, I’ve been in an ongoing exchange with @NielsHoven on X about phonics, dyslexia, and why so many bright kids end up hating reading. We agree on the fundamentals—phonics works. Full stop. Yet the conversation keeps looping, not because of disagreement, but because people refuse to click and read the links I provide. So let me lay it out clearly, using only my own words and the blog posts I keep referencing.
The Fatal Blind Spot in Phonics
The Giant Hole Nobody Talks About
Greg, like almost every phonics advocate in the English‑speaking world, believes the main problem is that teachers are not being explicit enough.
I argue the opposite: teachers are being explicit about the wrong sounds.
The reading wars are full of loud voices, confident claims, and endless debates about “what works.” One of the loudest is Greg Ashman, deputy principal in Australia and champion of explicit teaching. His tweets and articles win applause from teachers who are tired of trendy distractions. But beneath the surface, something vital is being missed.
This two‑part series takes a plain‑English look at Ashman’s arguments — where he is right, where he is dangerously wrong, and why children keep failing to read despite all the research and rhetoric.
Why China's Kids Are Shutting Down from Reading—and How to Fix It
As a dyslexia advocate who's spent over a decade battling misdiagnoses and flawed teaching methods, I've seen firsthand how "curious, intelligent kids" get labeled as broken when they're just confused. In English phonics, we add extraneous sounds like "buh" for B, turning bright minds into shutdown cases. Now, imagine that same error infiltrating Mandarin's gateway: Hanyu Pinyin. Across my recent posts, a pattern emerges—many Mainland China schools are teaching Pinyin not as the clean, syllable-based bridge it was designed to be, but corrupted by Bopomofo (Zhuyin Fuhao) initial sounds from Taiwan. This isn't just a phonetic hiccup; it's a literacy crisis misdiagnosed as dyslexia, affecting millions and stifling China's next generation of innovators.
The Core Problem: Extraneous Sounds That Don't Add Up
Today I viewed a YouTube video which said that reading is not natural. Read the rest below:
Why So Many Kids Struggle with Reading (And What Needs to Change). For decades, we’ve been teaching reading the wrong way—and the consequences are clear. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40% of fourth graders in the U.S. are performing below basic reading levels. While some progress has been made, the reality is that many children are still falling through the cracks.
In this video, I explore:
I saw a post by Larissa Phillips @larissaphillip today 22nd November 2025 and tweeted her.
Larissa:
Phonics-skeptics fuss over this sort of thing, but the majority of low-skilled readers who come to my adult literacy program can’t decode or encode even three-sound words that they don’t know. They can’t read words like rad or tot or zig-zag.
Couldn’t we all agree that it would be helpful to be able decode the 50-85% of English words that ARE phonetically predictable? Or do they propose just guessing on all of them?
I wish they’d talk to the people who are affected by this inability.
I can tell you exactly what they would say because I hear it all the time: “Why didn’t anyone teach me this?”
This was my response:
Preface to the Greg Ashman Series
This Evening News series examines the writings and claims of Greg Ashman, an educator whose views on literacy and reading instruction have gained attention in Australia and beyond. I have chosen to respond to his posts not because he is my adversary, but because he represents a wider pattern in education: confident assertions made without confronting the real reasons children fail to read.
Lately, I’ve noticed a troubling resurgence of the learning styles myth—so this post couldn’t be more timely.
Why the Learning Styles Myth Persists
Intuitive appeal: It feels right. People are different, so it seems logical that matching teaching to a learner’s “style” would help. But feeling right isn’t the same as being true.
Martin Bloomfield's Wake-Up Call and the Evasive Echo Chamber
If Julian Elliott is the evasive maestro, Dr. Martin Bloomfield is the unwitting spotlight – shining light on the dyslexia farce without realizing it. In his 2024 interview with Elliott, Bloomfield probes the "dyslexic" label's ghosts, only to get half-answers that circle back to square one. But here's the rub: After decades of "research," why are these pros still asking basic questions? In this Evening News follow-up, we dissect Bloomfield's chat, spotlight the dodges, and call out the broader academic blackout. Educators who won't reply aren't just rude – they're roadblocks to literacy for millions. Buckle up; the con unravels further.
We often hear the claim: “All emotions foster learning.” It sounds appealing, almost romantic. But is it true? My experience with children who struggle to read tells me otherwise.
Emotions are deeply intertwined with how we learn. They shape attention, memory, and motivation. Yet not all emotions pull their weight in a helpful way. Some emotions—curiosity, joy, pride—open the mind and expand learning. Others—fear, shame, despair—shut it down.
Julian Elliott’s Decade of Dodging the Truth
🎭 The Master of Evasion
In the lucrative world of dyslexia research, where labels fuel billion‑dollar programs and “special interventions,” one figure has perfected the art of sidestep: Professor Julian Elliott. For more than a decade, Elliott has danced around the real reasons children struggle to read — and the silence from his peers is just as telling.
He admits dyslexia is “a severe and persistent problem with reading.” Fair enough. But if that’s true, why ignore the simple fix that has transformed over 80 children under my guidance?
