Only if you were taught incorrectly. If you were taught actual phonics, and not an inane parody thereof, you would know that certain letter pairs indicate a distinct sound from either of the letters individually. Did you not know that?
You're trying to defend the indefensible. English (and, in fact EVERY European language going back at least to ancient Greek) is fundamentally phonetic.
I can't address what you learned, I wasn't in your classroom.
I learned how the words were formed, how they were built, where they came from. It seems that your learning was a bit incomplete.