“One of the main reasons our literacy skills are so abysmal is the rejection of traditional phonics-based pedagogy in favor of trendier, “ground-breaking” or “leading edge” methodologies pushed by prominent schools of education at prestigious universities.”
I told people that Phonics works and was DIRECTLY responsible for my kids being fluent readers by age 5. They laughed at me (behind my back, of course) and instead trusted the ‘experts’.
But I did get the final laugh in, as the ‘competition’ that my kids were subjected to was reduced by at least 90% in college and the job market, with the only decent competition coming from the kids of Asian immigrants - kids who had parents that knew better.
Phonics was part of my education from kindergarten onward. The basic principles cross nicely to other languages. Welsh is very phonetic as is German. Simple rules to pronounce words. I can confidently read Welsh or German correctly even if I don't have a complete understanding of the words. Turkish is also very phonetic. I'm still learning the more complex rules in Irish and Scots Gaelic. Broad and slender vowels and consonants. Lenition. The rules are clear, just not quickly mastered. I've dabbled in Japanese (phonetic with hiragana and katakana, but not with Kanji) and Mandarin Chinese (very exacting tones and a phonetic form called pinyin). Written Chinese has pictograms that need to be learned in a rote fashion and paired with a spoken form (Mandarin or Cantonese). Written Chinese is mutually understood, yet Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually understood as spoken languages.