There are two ways to teach children to read. 1) Whole Word enthusiasts say that children must memorize the shapes of words one by one, just as the Chinese memorize their ideograms. This is the wrong way. English has far too many words for this approach ever to be considered. Even if an industrious child could memorize 2,000 word-shapes (which is extremely difficult and takes MANY years), that child would still be functionally illiterate. The vast majority of the English language remains unknown. Just as bad, words the child supposedly knows are rarely known with automaticity. Sight-word readers typically stumble,...