Challenging the Reading Wars

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Why Experts Ignore Evidence on Phonics and Dyslexia

The ongoing "Reading Wars" – the fierce debate between advocates of systematic phonics instruction and proponents of balanced literacy or whole-language approaches – have persisted for decades, leaving many children struggling with reading and labeled as dyslexic. Over the years, I've documented interactions with prominent educators and researchers on my blog. These posts highlight a frustrating pattern: questions rooted in real-world teaching experience and student evidence are often met with evasion, silence, or outright dismissal. This blog post summarizes five key entries spanning from 2020 to 2025, revealing a core issue that could potentially resolve much of the controversy.

 

The Central Question: Decoding Despite "Flawed" Phonics

At the heart of my inquiry is a simple observation from tutoring over 80 so-called dyslexic children and analyzing multilingual students: Most kids (around 60%) learn to read effectively even when taught incorrect phoneme sounds – such as adding extraneous "uh" sounds to consonants (e.g., "buh" instead of the pure /b/). These children use analytical skills to self-correct and decode, including nonsense words in phonics checks, usually between grades 4 and 6. 

Yet, a minority – often the brighter, more perceptive students – disengage or "shut down" when confused by these misrepresentations, leading to reading difficulties misdiagnosed as dyslexia.

In a 2020 post titled "I am capable of navigating research", I directly challenged Professor Paul L. Thomas, who had publicly stated he was "capable of navigating research." I provided video evidence of students pronouncing consonants incorrectly yet fluently reading nonsense words, asking him to replicate simple tests with his university students. This, I argued, could provide empirical evidence to end the Reading Wars.

Five years later, in November 2025, I followed up in "Paul Thomas: Five Years On, Still 'Navigating Research'...". Despite repeated tags, emails, and public challenges – including examples from Indian-Australian students and pharmacy undergraduates – there has been no engagement. Instead, silence.

Dismissal Instead of Debate

When questions persist, responses from experts like Pamela Snow, Jennifer Buckingham, and Paul Thomas have included suggestions to "mute" my tweets, as documented in a June 2020 post "Twitter has a mute function". More recently, in December 2025, Professor Snow tweeted a metaphor emphasizing foundations in reading: "We don’t build houses by starting with roofs," highlighting how "basics" (like code mastery) must come before higher-order processes—a point that underscores the need for precise early instruction but again sidesteps direct engagement with evidence of how children decode despite common teaching flaws.

I interpreted these responses—including the mute suggestions and metaphorical assertions—as signs of an unwillingness to grapple with the practical evidence from the classroom: Proper instruction in pure sounds, I maintain, could enable nearly all children to read proficiently by the end of grade one.

My credentials – years of one-on-one teaching, a UK certification for dyslexia instruction, extensive reading of books by experts like David Kilpatrick, and correspondence with researchers – underscore that this isn't armchair theorizing but frontline insight.

Critiquing Phonics Screening and Expert Claims

In August 2023, I addressed England's phonics screening check in "Phonics screening". While I support systematic synthetic phonics, I oppose the inclusion of nonsense words, arguing there are plenty of real words for assessment. Professor Thomas highlighted cases where fluent readers scored low by reconstructing nonsense into real words (e.g., "elt" as "let"), claiming the test undermines competent readers. I countered that this reflects misunderstanding of instructions, not a flaw in phonics itself – and that retesting with clarification would likely succeed.

A related 2023 post, "‘Stupid and uneducated’ people preferred", drew on a statement by Malaysia's Crown Prince of Johor suggesting education systems sometimes prefer less critical populations for control. I extended this to reading debates: Why do experts like Timothy Shanahan, Sally Shaywitz, and others downplay or ignore the role of extraneous sounds in phonological confusion, while overemphasizing fluency and comprehension over decoding? Is it stubbornness, vested interests, or something more systemic that perpetuates confusion?

A Call for Open Inquiry

These posts collectively plead for genuine engagement: Run the simple trials. Examine the videos. Debate the evidence rather than mute or ignore it. The Reading Wars thrive on ideology and mandates, but practical tests – like asking adults to pronounce letters then decode pseudo-words – could reveal how self-correction drives reading acquisition for most.

If experts truly navigate research, let's navigate it together. Ending needless reading struggles starts with answering uncomfortable questions, not avoiding them.

What do you think – is it time to test these ideas in classrooms worldwide?