Posted on 01/14/2026 5:52:59 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
Sight-words — a theory about how to teach reading — is absurd. Give me three minutes, and I’ll explain why.
The premise is that children can memorize English words without much effort. This is blatantly not true. Our words are hard to remember, and the more words you learn, the more they get in one another’s way. That’s why we have so many non-readers in middle school and high school. (Dirty little secret: Everyone running the school system surely knows this.)
Think back to when you had a meal with some friends at a restaurant. Can you bring up the scene? Most people can recall big or prominent details, but can you see a particular person? What color is his shirt? What food did he order?
There are humans with photographic memory who can actually memorize serial numbers on bills they handle. But this is extremely rare. You can’t base education methods on skills that only a fraction of the population possesses, just as you can’t teach music as if every student had perfect pitch.....
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Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, and education reformer. His literary site is Lit4u.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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There's nothing complicated or mysterious about this. Sight-words are a trick, a sophistry, a theft, a subversion. Give your kids a chance. First, they learn the alphabet, then the sounds represented by the letters, and then the blends of those sounds. That's it. Now they're reading.
Please see my book, Saving K-12, especially Chapter 2, which is about READING WARS.
I don’t know. I learned pretty well with Dick and Jane.
To make it very simple: The purpose of Sight Words is to DELAY the learning of reading in kids, so that they NEVER become fluent in reading, thus helping to bring down America (deal with it because it’s true, your kids’ teachers HATE America).
One way to know that the above is true regarding Sight Words is to look at what happens in Fourth Grade - the teachers THEN switch to phonics, and finally start to teach reading.
If phonics was good enough for the Phoenicians, damnit, it’s good enough for us.
Exactly.Sight words were meant to slow down reading so that when they actually do teach him how to read, they read well enough to be little factory workers but never well enough to actually understand concepts and ideas.
“Sight-words are a trick, a sophistry, a theft,”
Nope.
I use sight words almost exclusively when reading these posts.
I am sure you also do.
“Exactly.Sight words were meant to slow down reading “
Sightwords speedup reading. I bet you use sight words when reading these posts.
you are correct sir. I taught at university where I saw students who were beyond even remedial help, yet had been passed up the food chain.
60% of all Harvard students can expect an A grade in any course because of grade inflation.
Now I tutor reading where they try this sight-word crap. Fortunately phonics are also still taught. The point is they spent about 40 years trying everything to get rid of phonics
because it works.
Where do 2 generations of students go to get their lives back?
The issue is not reading. The issue is understanding. Also, an adult having sight words is not the same thing as teaching a new reader with sight words.
Language is woven at an early age.The longer you delay the functions of it and structures, the worse a person will be.
Expecting someone without understanding to use shortcuts that are achieved once you’ve mastered material is utter foolishness.
IMHO, the sight word technique is useful but only after a mastery of phonics.
It's analogous to learning "new math". In many ways what my kids had to learn to do for math was what my father taught me on ways to do arithmetic tricks in my head. But they should be used as only and advanced technique ... after learning the old school ways of doing math.
Likewise, teaching sight words in place of phonics is part of the nightmare our nation's kids are having. (Part, not the only reason.) But sight words in older classes after younger classes teaching mastery of phonics, I'd probably support.
Olaf worked for me.
“If phonics was good enough for the Phoenicians, damnit, it’s good enough for us.”
How did that work without vowels?
The “Nuanced Aporoach” When Reality Reaches Out & Chomps Them on the Gluteus Maximus
“Have studies tracked correlation between adoption wole-word look-say early primary reading instruction and dyslexia prevalence?”
While research has extensively compared whole-word (look-say) and phonics-based instruction, studies do not typically show that instructional methods change the underlying neurobiological prevalence of dyslexia. Instead, they focus on how these methods affect identification rates, severity of symptoms, and recovery outcomes.
Key Findings on Instruction and Dyslexia
“Dystaughtia” vs. Dyslexia: Researchers often distinguish between true neurobiological dyslexia and “dystaughtia”—a term used to describe students who struggle with reading primarily because they were not taught foundational decoding skills.
Identification Lag:
Whole-word or “balanced literacy” approaches often delay the identification of dyslexia. Because these methods encourage guessing from pictures or context, they can mask underlying phonological deficits until higher grade levels when texts become more complex and lack visual cues.
Response to Intervention:
A hallmark of dyslexia is a “resistant” response to even effective, high-quality instruction. Students whose reading struggles disappear with systematic phonics are often classified as having lacked proper instruction rather than having a lifelong learning disability.
Effectiveness Comparison:
Meta-analyses show that phonics-based instruction is significantly more effective for students with or at risk for dyslexia than whole-word or meaning-first approaches. One meta-analysis found that “balanced literacy” results were nearly three times lower for at-risk readers compared to phonics.
Coping Mechanisms:
For students with dyslexia, whole-word strategies are often viewed as a coping mechanism (memorizing shapes) rather than a functional reading strategy.
Instructional Impact on Outcomes
Recovery Rates:
Systematic, explicit phonics (often called Structured Literacy) has been shown to “prevent” the incidence of clinical reading difficulties in some at-risk children by addressing deficits early.
Neurological Evidence:
Research in cognitive neuroscience supports that the human brain is not naturally wired to read whole words; it must be taught to link letters (graphemes) to sounds (phonemes), a process often bypassed in look-say instruction.
Specific curricula are recommended by organizations like the International Dyslexia Association for at-risk students.
“IMHO, the sight word technique is useful but only after a mastery of phonics.”
Both need to be mastered. They are not exclusive.
I am 79 and did sight words in my childhood and was an avid reader.
Sight words are the terminus ad quem for the highly skilled reader. Not the terminus a quo for the beginner. If you don’t start with phonics, you’ll never be truly literate.
Because your adult brain has developed automaticity through practice and experience. It’s phonetic decoding so fast you think it’s sightreading. Rather like muscle memory in athletes.
But that is not how young skulls full of mush learn to read.
Ncrdbl hw cpbl th Phncns wr, rght?
Sight word can defiantly cause problems, such as using words in the wrong context because they are similar to the correct word.
An interesting correlation can be made with math.
Having children memorize words is bad.
Memorizing multiplication tables is good.
“Because your adult brain has developed automaticity through practice and experience. It’s phonetic decoding so fast you think it’s sightreading. “
Through decades of sight reading.
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