https://teachingbattleground.wordpress. ... -fool-you/3 ways phonics denialists will try to fool you
November 25, 2017
I don’t teach reading. The only reason I take an interest in the phonics “debate” is that it’s the one area of teaching where the evidence seems overwhelming. Study after study, review after review (or rather the ones that look at a significant body of empirical evidence) conclude that the closer a method of teaching reading is to Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP), the better it is. This is not just the best established empirical result in education, it’s probably the best established result in the entire social sciences. As such, the teaching profession’s willingness to listen to the evidence about this, also indicates our status as evidence-informed, rational professionals.
Unfortunately, like climate change, evolution or vaccination, the conclusions reached are challenging to some ideologies. This means there are those who wish to deny the evidence, usually by confusing people, misleading them or outright lying to them. I wrote about phonics denialism a few years ago.
This link above leads to Andrew's other posts written over a number of years as the debate has unfolded in England (but all relevant internationally).