Thankfully the "whole language" bad habit can be reversed. From what I read, it seems to harm boys more than girls. No wonder there's declining reading ability in this country.
I can understand how an unknown word should be pronounced from what I learned many, many years ago. I love to read and always have. I do not know why they changed the way language was taught since it was so easy to learn how a word should sound. Just like New Math. Whatever happened to that?