Actually, I would posit Chinese, Japanese, and the other East Asian ideogram languages as evidence that phonics is unnecessary. In all those languages, symbols and sounds are completely unlinked, as the language has a very limited set of sounds, and inflection and context play a big part in conveying meaning. In other words, it is impossible to “sound out” the components of a given word, such as the chinese word “ma”, which depending on inflection, can mean “mother”, “horse”, “scold” (verb), and several others (each written with a completely different single ideogram). And yet, Asians in general outperform U.S. students in academics in all areas, which would be impossible to do without a strong foundation in comprehending written material. I’m not saying phonics doesn’t have a place in education, but to claim it’s going to fix, or even substantially improve, all the problems kids have with learning to read is naive at best.
I am a brave of 67 summers. My parents encouraged me to read, often to the detriment of my other studies. While in high school, I was introduced to Shakespeare, but I usually had some type of adventure novel going at home. I read voraciously in the military and really only stopped reading books when I discovered “Books on Tape,” so I can carry on “reading” while I’m exercising every day. It opened up a whole world to me; kids who don’t are depriving themselves of some free travel around the world.
One thing to keep in mind is how much the Education Establishment enjoys having smart citizens give them cover. Whoops, there goes another million illiterates.
Only the most scholarly Chinese can memorize even 20,000 of their symbols. Apparently a more normal number is well below 10,000. But English has a truly vast vocabulary. College kids need 100,000++ words. No human can memorize such a number. Furthermore, English words come lower case, UPPER CASE, script, etc.
For anyone who is curious what this avalanche of confusing graphic designs does to the brain, please Google “How Dolch Words Cause Illiteracy and Dyslexia,” a graphical video on YouTube. About 7 minutes but it tells the story well. (I have about ten videos about reading on YouTube.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNDFTBkPBQ