“So now Drill and Kill is a GOOD thing. In kindergarten and first-grade, and sometimes into second and third grade, kids are drilling and killing their little brains in an attempt to memorize the English language as graphic designs.”
Let me help here. Drill and Kill is JUST FINE when it prevents (or actually delays) real learning - in this case Phonics. The idea is to keep the parents and kids distracted until the kids are TOO OLD to be able to read fluently. Yes, they will, finally, learn phonics in 4th grade, but they will NEVER be nearly as good in reading as my kids (or anyone else’s) that learned the skill at age 3.
RE: “Yes, they will, finally, learn phonics in 4th grade, but they will NEVER be nearly as good in reading as my kids (or anyone else’s) that learned the skill at [a young] age.”
Yes, this is my sense of it. They do finally find the phonics inside the sight-words. But now they have a bit of schizophrenia in their cognitive skills, because their brains have TWO ways to attack a word. And you can’t know which works until you try one...then perhaps the other...But now a second or two has been wasted. Recreational reading is very fast, about 3, 4 or 5 words a second. Occasional small delays are going to prevent what most of us think of as normal fluency.