The Reading Debate That's Missing the Point

                                             

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.

 

Phonics Works—But Only If Done Right

I’ve said this repeatedly:

 

“Phonics works. There should be no debate on this.”

 

Niels cites NAEP scores and the “Mississippi miracle” as evidence for structured phonics. Fair points—phonics does work when done right. But when I point out that millions learned to read during the whole language era, or that guessing only happens when decoding fails, it loops back to “phonics is the only way.”

 

Here’s the real issue: phonics fails when consonants are taught with an added schwa. Teaching B as “buh,” C as “kuh,” or D as “duh” overloads working memory, turns blending into a nightmare, and makes kids guess from pictures instead of sounding out. The result? Intelligent, curious children shut down, feeling stupid for something that’s actually bad teaching.

 

From the thread:

 

“Did you hear her pronouncing the letter B? That is not phonics, or is it?” Niels replied: “It is not.” I responded: “Thank you for your confirmation, my friend. Unfortunately, this is how it is taught by most teachers and this is the basic problem with intelligent curious kids shutting down from learning to read.”

 

I’ve seen it flip in days once corrected—no therapy, no excuses. Just clean input.

 

Born to Read: What Science Now Confirms

Children are not blank slates. Ohio State research shows the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA)—the brain’s print recognition hub—lights up in newborns before they’ve seen a single book. It’s wired for language, connected to speech networks from birth.

 

But exposure to garbled letter sounds scrambles it early. Kids are “born to read” if we don’t sabotage them with confusion.

 

📖 Read the full post: Born to Read

 

Why Kids Shut Down

Teach letters pure: /b/, not “buh.” /c/, not “kuh.” Add that schwa, and blending “cat” becomes “kuh-aah-tuh” mush. Kids’ brains rebel. They disengage. We label them “dyslexic” or blame poverty and phonemic awareness (PA).

 

But poverty hits vocabulary later. PA? We adults never needed drills to segment sounds—we just spoke. The shutdown is from instructional casualties, not cognitive deficits.

 

📖 Read the full post: Why ChildrenShut Down

 

Even Sally Shaywitz gets it wrong in the NYT—breaking “dog” into “duh-aah-guh.” Read it, then tell me kids are the problem.